Urging More Mandarin in the Oregon Public Schools - 3/26/08:
I have been urging more Mandarin and study abroad programs in Oregon's public schools and universities since the summer of 2006. This is the latest in a series of regular emails to all 90 Oregon legislators. This one is titled:
"China is slowly emerging as the next Silicon Valley."
Dear Senator / Representative,
Please support the Legislature holding hearings on economic growth and change in Asia and passing legislation to increase Mandarin and study abroad programs in China for our public K-16 students. With less than one percent of our K-12 students now studying Mandarin we simply are not preparing our next generations for the challenges they will face. Consider the following two recent articles. One indicates how economic growth and innovation are shifting to China in the form of venture capital. Oregon’s strategy should be to connect our next generations through our educational programs to the dynamic economy of China. The other article speaks to one of the main themes of the twenty-first century, the rise of China as perhaps the dominant superpower, and what our long term national strategy should be.
First, Rebecca Fanin, author of the recent book Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race, in an online interview at Forbes.com. says:
"China is slowly emerging as the next Silicon Valley.
"If you look at venture capital money flowing in, it's a phenomenal rate. China has been the fastest-growing target for venture capital in the last four years: far faster than anywhere else in Asia or the U.S. or Europe.
"Venture capitalists used to say they'd never invest outside a 30-mile radius of their offices. Now VC firms like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Accel Partners are all focused on China. Virtually all of the major venture capital firms in the U.S. have teams and funds there. It's been a huge shift. And for every startup that's funded in China, there's a startup that's not funded somewhere else."
Second, Brad DeLong is a Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is here writing about trade policy, but his perspective transcends trade and the other current issues like Tibet and Dafur that we currently have with China. He writes:
"Think of it this way: Consider a world that contains one country that is a true superpower. It is preeminent--economically, technologically, politically, culturally, and militarily. But it lies at the east edge of a vast ocean. And across the ocean is another country--a country with more resources in the long-run, a country that looks likely to in the end supplant the current superpower. What should the superpower's long-run national security strategy be?
"I think the answer is clear: if possible, the current superpower should embrace its possible successor. It should bind it as closely as possible with ties of blood, commerce, and culture--so that should the emerging superpower come to its full strength, it will to as great an extent possible share the world view of and regard itself as part of the same civilization as its predecessor: Romans to their Greeks.
"In 1877, the rising superpower to the west across the ocean was the United States. The preeminent superpower was Britain. Today the preeminent superpower is the United States. The rising superpower to the west across the ocean from the world's industrial and military leader is China.
"Throughout the twentieth century it has been greatly to Britain's economic benefit that America has regarded it as a trading partner--a source of opportunities--rather than a politico-military-industrial competitor to be isolated and squashed. And in 1917 and again in 1941 it was to Britain's immeasurable benefit--its very soul was on the line--that America regarded it as a friend and an ally rather than as a competitor and an enemy. A world run by those whom de Gaulle called les Anglo-Saxons is a much more comfortable world for Britain than the other possibility--the world in which Europe were run by Adolf Hitler's Saxon-Saxons.
"There is a good chance that China is now on the same path to world preeminence that America walked 130 years ago. Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America's future national security, nothing more destructive to America's future prosperity, than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and in the years after 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible."
DeLong uses the phrases "embrace its successor" and "bind it as closely as possible with ties of blood, commerce, and culture" to describe a "long-run national security strategy" for dealing with China. My argument to you is that this strategic process of embracing or binding, to use DeLong’s terms (I prefer "engaging"), would call for us to teach many more of our students Mandarin and to send many more of them to study in China. How else can it happen? That such an educational policy also aids our economic development and prepares us, if necessary, for conflict with China strengthens my arguments for your action.
So, I urge you to heed these thoughts, to recognize that our children will live in a very different economic and geopolitical world, and to act to increase Mandarin and study abroad in China opportunities for Oregon students. They have very large challenges ahead!
Respectfully – Dave Porter
PS: The Forbes.com interview with Rebecca Fannin is here.
PPS: The Brad DeLong blog post "Free Trade and Fair Trade" can be found here. I edited it slightly to clean up a garbled phrase. The part I quote comes at the end. In the youtube, the part I quote starts at 7 minutes 25 seconds.
PPPS: I am working on what proposals to bring to the 2009 Oregon legislative session. My current thinking is posted on my website at here. I would especially appreciate comments as I try to develop a proposal for a high school study abroad scholarship program. See herefor my latest thoughts.