Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

A fascinating article. Back in 2015, there were more than 20,000 Americans studying in China. Today it’s less than a tenth that. Whatever the future brings, the U.S. and China need to better understand each other, and you can’t get the level of understanding necessary by watching a few movies on Netflix. It takes making friends, which you need the language for. Kids in Mandarin immersion today are going to be important to decades to come.

Fewer opportunities, less passion, no clue? How the US’ China expertise is fading

Geopolitical friction and a lack of career paths are hollowing out the pipeline of US specialists who truly understand China.

By Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post
19 Jul 2026

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Meredith Chen looks at how tensions and shrinking academic exchange may be eroding America’s deep, experience-based understanding of China.

Long before China could be studied through satellite images, social media, big data or computer modelling, American scholars learned about the country the slow way.
Many travelled to the country. Some went far beyond its major cities, reaching remote county towns and villages by train, bus and boat to conduct fieldwork.

They spent months, even years, knocking on doors, lingering over tea, combing through archives, and interviewing cadres and ordinary members of the public to build a deep understanding of a country undergoing extraordinary transformation.

This was the reform era. As China reopened and the two countries’ relationship normalised after prolonged Cold War estrangement, American scholars gained access to a society that had been closed to them for decades.

Many of those who entered China in those years would go on to become the backbone of American expertise on the country, shaping scholarship, training future generations and influencing how Washington dealt with Beijing.

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, however, that intellectual tradition is under strain.

Please read more here.