The Economist fairly recently wrote an article that falsely claims China is losing interest in the west, because people in China are losing interest in English. I know they grossly misconstrued the PRC government and language community’s intent, because I was part of the conversation that led to the superficial changes noticed by The Economist. My interpretation is that The Economist’s writers viewed China through the colonialist mindset of the British Empire, where even today the King’s English is a symbol of English cultural supremacy. The fact that Britons need not learn the language and cultures of others, but everyone in the world must learn good English and all about British culture, places Britishness on a pedestal in a superior to all other peoples and cultures.
But colonialism is wrong, culturally dominating people in Asia and Africa and changing their cultural identity was wrong. People in China know it’s wrong, they are still angry about what the UK did, and engaging with China or any other country from a frame of cultural supremacy is injurious to the dignity of those other peoples. This was also proven in court: in Brown v. Board of Education, minority children in experiments revealed they internalized a notion of whiteness as superior. So, the inequality espoused by The Economist, where Britons need not learn about China, but Chinese must learn about Britain, otherwise it shows a lack of interest, is one that causes harm. China has a lot of economic power these days, and it would be perfectly reasonable to expect China to use that power to fight back against this kind of inequality.
Therefore, I interpret the same true facts reported by The Economist, in the context of PRC government policy positions, to interpret this as not withdrawal from Western engagement, but rather a coup against British soft power: a coup against English cultural hegemony. But a strategic coup against ancient colonialist white racial and cultural supremacy is not the same thing as disinterest in engagement. Rather, it reflects Chinese interest in being engaged as cultural equals, not as supplicants.
What Happened?
In August 2024, I wrote a blog post here arguing that Mandarin Chinese is not worth learning, for a variety of reasons, but largely based on a 2013 article by The Economist “False Eastern Promise” which argued that because Chinese people are so very interested in learning English, going to China, learning Mandarin, or professionally engaging in China is a waste of time. In particular, I focused on how an overriding expectation to use English means that business people will intervene to make you stop using Chinese and possibly use their power to achieve that demand. Therefore, without change from China, learning Mandarin would have no value.
Four months after this post, The Economist and other media outlets, oblivious to the conversation in China, ran news stories based on their shocking experience that government workers at airports were refusing to speak English with travelers. Instead, they were using translation apps and tools. These journalists concluded that this and many other facts, mean that China is losing interest in engagement with the West generally.
Journalists get things wrong all the time, which is why it’s important to point out when they get the story wrong: The Economist reached a false conclusion because it didn’t look for facts that could contradict the opinion it reached. In particular, they fail to note the Guangdong Foreign Studies University’s intensively funded research program on the use of trained artificial intelligence programs to facilitate and increase foreign engagement. In particular, GFSU scholar Kizito Tekwa’s papers found that use of these programs increases cross-cultural engagement, and policymakers were advised that they should adopt the technology to increase motivation to be engaged with foreign persons. A particularly glaring oversight by The Economist was failing to address the contradiction between its previous conclusion that universal English adoption makes it pointless to learn Chinese, and fails to recognize that having this kind of national policy may not actually be in China’s best intrerest.
The Economist when writing this report could, at least, have reached out or looked for facts that challenge its own position here. I’ve written numerous posts reaching the opposite conclusion of The Economist, so this opinion is available for anyone who would look, but they seem to have simply organized numerous interesting phenomena into a narrative, drawing a false conclusion from it. This doesn’t mean they are guilty of bad journalism, in fact their accuracy is still among the best you can find in reporting. Getting things wrong or only telling half the story is very common if you’re working under that kind of publication pressure.
China’s Direction is Logical Here
A logical and ideal cross-cultural engagement program for China is not to have the entire population memorize the English dictionary as was done in the past, but rather to have a small cadre of highly trained specialists using the technology and making strategic decisions based on deep knowledge of this particular language. For example, Walgreens has phone medical interpreters online for whenever a customer needs it. In low risk cases, an AI under the direct control and supervision of a linguist can effectively handle routine cross-cultural engagement needs, while summoning the online linguist to help with tasks the AI is unprepared for. Concentrating superior English education on professionals who will focus on this one skill, rather than spreading resources thin among millions of students, is a classic division of labor strategy. Moreover, rising interest in teaching languages such as Spanish, Arabic, and Urdu, can allow higher quality engagement with a variety of other countries.
If The Economist had read what China’s President, Xi Jinping, said in various directives to the administration as published in newspapers, they would see that he has recently both advocated for enhanced focus on Mandarin Chinese and simultaneously more vigorous cross-cultural engagement. No doubt a big motivator for Chinese policymakers was The Economist’s own 2013 report, “False Eastern Promise,” which advocated that Western persons’ engagement is a waste of time, because people in China mastered English. We can see that with these recent policy changes, President Xi is making room for English-speaking people to be rewarded for engaging with China and obtaining deep expertise in the country, and subsidizing study for foreign students in China.
This also shows interest in increasing China’s engagement with the UK and other countries, but not through dictionary memorization, but through Mandarin-language debate with Britons about bilateral relations and politics. For example, Duke student Christine Gerbode wrote about debating Chinese on Democracy, in Shanghai and engaging local opinions and viewpoints. Of such programs, some old revolutionary guards in China once criticized the Princeton in Beijing program as a backdoor for “spiritual pollution” to China. Nonetheless, China has consistently chosen this route as a key focus for foreign engagement, willing to hear and often be persuaded by foreign views. Chinese-taught English classes don’t provide any meaningful foreign engagement, as most they exemplify an outdated worship of the King’s English.
In a particularly remarkable story, Chinese language classes offered in China put students from North Korea and Europeans in the same room and they would talk to each other, first from “I love the Party” to why Western students are free to not love their Parties–but be skeptical of them. The fact that China is promoting North Korean engagement with the West, and exposing individuals to anti-dictatorial views through the medium of Mandarin Chinese, deserves careful consideration and study.
Rather than engaging with these contradictory facts about increased engagement with Western countries, The Economist only looks at facts supporting their conclusion, myopically focused on facts related to the way things have always been done, and ignoring signs of a subtle Chinese plan to overthrow English cultural hegemony.
Do Chinese Want a Culture Coup?
Based on what people on the street are saying, I think there is immense interest in such a soft power coup against English cultural hegemony. President Xi’s remarks about the cultural importance of Mandarin, seem to be echoing popular sentiment. Below is what I’ve seen.
I talked to several Chinese professionals at leading American and British companies. Job titles include, senior tooling engineer, corporate law associate, corporate counsel, and director (financial services). Behind the scenes, all of them complained that they felt discriminated against. For example, a corporate law associate in the US called “that Asian girl” or more subtly, “our China expert” when she wants to be seen as a corporate law expert. In the series Interior Chinatown, being called the “Chinatown expert” is characterized as in fact demeaning and marginalizing. So, they have a point.
In another example, senior engineers complained that they always have to stay up late to make meeting on US time, feeling the treatment they receive to be very unequal, and in fact discriminatory. In my view, this is not a legitimate complaint because work hours and salary are negotiated items of the contract, and the cost of paying someone to meet late at night in China is a lot lower than in the US. Nonetheless, it’s the mere perception that will impact the bilateral relationship and change behavior, and I think it shows these workers believe they occupy an inferior position in an ethnic hierarchy as reflected through corporate practices about being on US time, and in this respect, about having the burden to learn English.
Secondly, as an American speaking Chinese with these people, these complainers also talked about me differently. They used, and emphasized, the word “brother,” for example “brother (xiongdi), let’s strike out and form our own firm, away from this discrimination.” Or “Adrian, brother (gege), I am going to meet with the Senior VP for product development, please help me figure out how to impress them!” This nomenclature is absent from non-complainers, which I think reflects an immense sense of alienation from their English-speaking colleagues, and at the same time a yearning for genuine acceptance and close ties with them, but not as their cultural inferior or supplicant, but rather as equals. Thus, when they do have an opportunity to exist as cultural equals, enabled by the medium of Mandarin Chinese, they sought a familial-characterized relationship.
On an individual level, we see these persons withdrawing English-language relationship where they are an inferior alien, like the grotesque bug of Kafka’s literature rejected by his own family, but also seeking Chinese-language relationships which are characterized as being close as family. Therefore, these Chinese individuals undoubtedly have not merely an interest, but a yearning for connection with the West, embodied in my own personality. Not everyone feels that way, but those who do feel that way are outspoken and influential.
If we aggregate these individual desires to a national level, policy choices emphasizing changing the language of interaction away from English and to allowing people to speak Chinese, reflects an interest in deepening relationships with western people in China, but as equals, and not cultural inferiors. Language experts who do learn English, approach their interlocutors not as supplicants, but with the mindset of a cultural anthropologist expanding their expertise through direct immersion and engagement.
Implications for Journalists
Journalists covering China should try to look for more facts and opinions that deviate from what the mainstream narrative appears to be, because of the effect of groupthink on China. Looking closer at The Economist article on language in China, they seem to have been largely informed by the opinion of so called China experts writing from the US and UK, but who make relatively rare in person visits to China and do not have extensive experience engaging directly with local culture. Moreover, these experts are under tremendous social pressure to conform to a certain specific line of opinion. Good evidence of this is Professor Rory Truex who had to write a letter to the public to explain why his moderate perspective on China is not some kind of social evil. The Economist seems to have been listening too much to an echo chamber about China opinion.
I think a lot of the reason journalists rely on this particular echo chamber is because the language barrier with Mandarin Chinese, and the cultural barrier is really hard. Most likely, they find it impossible to contact local academics or professors for comment because those academics don’t really check their email. Local China policy documents are beyond the ability of Google Translate to handle coherently, so these are skipped by journalists. As a result, they don’t really get to look close at opposite viewpoints, and in this case, were mostly oblivious to what China’s language policy directions might be. However, if they look close, it’s possible to find quite a lot of people who have a difference perspective on what’s going on in China, something different than the “foreigner bubble.”
While the China Experts and Sinologists constantly reveal truths overlooked by local experts, it’s because they have a unique perspective and methodology that allows accessing truths not available to others. Likewise, good application of critical thinking to China requires objectively evaluating a range of possibly correct answers.
China itself could do a lot to correct this situation. Why are almost all of the China experts working from outside China? There are multiple reasons. The working conditions are much better, for example tenure and publication regulations. Not only that, the pay is vastly superior, a sinologist at a university in China may be offered $12,000/year salary, so if they can get ten times that amount in Boston then that’s what they’ll do. As a result, the academic and journalism professionals you see going off to work in China tend to be people who have very serious problems and generally lack specific China knowledge. A technology expert under the thousand talents plan, will be authorized a pay package about ten times what a sinologist would.
Instead of seeing China experts as a strategic resource, Chinese policy continues to see Sinologists as essentially glorified English teachers. For example, Peter Hessler, author of Oracle Bones, was teaching English writing classes in Sichuan, apparently also for the $12,000 package because he was doing freelance journalism. After he was asked to leave China, I asked several lawyers, who asked the Immigration Bureau and also Foreign Experts administration, and in opinion at the time, this fact pattern would put him in violation of the employment laws at the time. Moreover, the university’s rules would require terminating him on those grounds, and while citing poor performance reasons, the university did fire him, which is the correct human resources policy answer when there’s a breach like this.
While there is much media speculation that Hessler was fired over speech issues, it also came at a time China was emphasizing obeying the law, and he broke the law in a way that wouldn’t be accepted in the US or UK at all. At the same time, reasonable regulators shouldn’t enforce that kind of outdated law.
Hessler’s story illustrates, I think, how self-defeating these laws are for China’s interests. Hessler is one of the greatest ambassadors for China’s cultural influence and soft power worldwide, so why is there a policy that conditions Hessler’s residence in China on him stopping publishing so many insights into China? Setting up a program where the best China Experts are required to be mere English teachers, something they’re not even qualified for, otherwise they have to leave China, means that those experts have to draw conclusions in isolation from China’s people. And that leads to situations like with The Economist’s article, where the conclusions reached are totally out of touch with what’s happening in China.
As I wrote in my previous article, the whole notion of mastering China knowledge and getting a job in China is an extremely awful career move.
Implications for Business
When looking at this issue from a business perspective, I don’t think we should look at concepts like DEI, rather we should look at power dynamics in the context of these social interactions. If the social dynamic beneath the surface is demeaning and unequal, it fosters resentment in the team, which can affect performance and also lead to problems like intellectual property theft. In this respect, they can consider two options. First, consider using professional translators with a tiered quality approach, for example emails and chats can use supervised AI translation and some with machine translation and post editing. Reportedly, Samsung in China uses this approach between Korean and Chinese, as do numerous chaebols, enabling access to a larger talent pool. Critical documents such as contracts or patents can use specialized experts. Some companies have tried using unsupervised AI, but doing that saves little money and allows errors to go unnoticed.
Secondly, hire and deploy some Chinese speaking staff from the headquarters country to China. General Electric took this approach, deploying American engineers with strong Chinese skills to China, who interfaced with staff and workers using Mandarin. These employees built strong relationships with local staff, serving as ambassadors from the headquarters, and interacting more deeply with local staff. The headcount and salary cost overall was actually quite small compared to the overall staffing total, but the impact on GE’s relationship with local employees was notable.
Summary & Conclusion
In this article, I’ve argued that The Economist made false inferences about trends in China’s engagement with the west, based on a limited selection of evidence that fits their conclusion. The facts are however that Chinese policymakers have advocated for a more equal cultural relationship with the English-speaking world. That’s a relationship where westerners are learning and using Mandarin Chinese, and it’s not a universal obligation for all Chinese to master English. I also recognize The Economist and the China experts they read, do top-tier work in their fields and remain the best sources for information about China. I think the underlying problem for why The Economist is wrong about China in this case, has to do with the difficulty China Experts and journalists have with spending a lot of time in China and really getting to know the country and what’s going on there. It has to do with the lack of foreigners who’ve escaped the expat bubble who know what western journalists might be interested in, who could provide good leads on stories.
Those are problems that could be remedied by good policy and better partnership. What’s clear is that distorting the facts about what’s going on in China is not good for the English speaking world and it’s not good for China. Something urgently needs to be done to bridge the language and culture gap–and it’s not more English education, it’s going to be genuine engagement with China.
