A bipartisan commission focused on the rule of law and human rights in China is recommending that the US Congress scale up immersion programmes for Mandarin and other languages spoken on the mainland in American high schools and universities.
The recommendation, made as part of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s (CECC) annual report, comes as Washington has scaled back funding for cultural exchange programmes since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second administration.
It also comes as US lawmakers are pushing to restrict Chinese influence in US elementary and secondary schools by conditioning federal funds on cutting institutional ties with Chinese government-linked entities – including ones that provide Chinese language training – as well as on new transparency and disclosure requirements.
Improving American student access to Mandarin, Uygur and Tibetan languages will deepen linguistic and cultural expertise, enabling the US to better confront “malign” attempts by Beijing to increase its influence, the CECC said.
The commission, currently chaired by Republican lawmakers Dan Sullivan and Chris Smith, named the US-Taiwan Education Initiative, created in 2020 to expand Mandarin teaching in the US and opportunities to study in Taiwan, as a model for expanding access.
