Judul : ‘Huge shift’: why learning Mandarin is losing its appeal in the West
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‘Huge shift’: why learning Mandarin is losing its appeal in the West
Available figures suggest enthusiasm is waning after years of rapid growth, with analysts pointing to China's economy and image problemsWhen Colby Porter began Mandarin classes in sixth grade in Syracuse, New York, he was studying alongside 20 of his peers. By his final year of high school, only two other students remained, and the school had fewer than 25 Mandarin learners in total.
Soon after he graduated in 2020, the programme was shut down entirely due to dwindling enrolments and budget cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The situation at Porter's school is not unusual in the United States and other countries in the Global North. While data is scarce, the available figures suggest that interest in learning Mandarin - once globally hailed as the language of the future - is waning after years of rapid growth.
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In the US, Mandarin language enrolments in universities were down by 25 per cent in 2021 from their 2013 peak, according to the Modern Language Association's most recent report.
Across New Zealand, official data shows a decline in the number of Mandarin learners at secondary school level since 2020.
Meanwhile, university students in Britain pursuing Chinese language studies saw a 35 per cent drop in 2023 compared to their 2016 high, according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
And even in some European countries like Germany and France where Mandarin learning continues to grow, its expansion is modest compared to other more popular languages.
Analysts attribute this decline - a reflection of China's soft power challenge - to the country's sluggish economy and a less favourable international image.
"The main force driving increased enrolment in Chinese language [previously] was the rise of China," said Clayton Dube, who was director of the University of Southern California (USC) US-China Institute from 2006 to 2024.
"The perception that China was growing meant that there were opportunities for people to engage in business, cultural exchanges, and a lot of things," he said. "Now, with the slowdown in the Chinese economy, that has suggested fewer business opportunities."
Mandarin's glory days in the decade following the turn of the millennium coincided with China's rapid economic expansion, with annual growth rates frequently around or above 10 per cent. And as Western economies faced devastation in the global financial crisis, China escaped largely unscathed.
The success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics added to this, establishing the country's image as a prosperous, modern and capable rising power.
The world took notice. In the US, Barack Obama's administration in 2009 announced the "100,000 Strong" initiative, a push to dramatically increase the number of Americans studying in China, and six years later, called for a million pre-university American students to study Mandarin by 2020.
In 2013, then-UK prime minister David Cameron urged young people to look beyond French and German and instead learn Mandarin, the language that would "seal tomorrow's business deals". Many other countries had also begun expanding Mandarin programmes in their education systems, signalling a global belief in its future.
But today, the landscape of Chinese language learning looks starkly different, and the promise of a universally embraced Mandarin-speaking future has largely failed to materialise.
"It's clear that after Covid there was a huge shift," said Claus Soong, an analyst at Berlin-based think tank the Mercator Institute for China Studies. "China's international image is just not very positive right now."
China's strict lockdown measures and prolonged border closures reshaped its global engagement. Foreigners residing in the country left in droves, unable or unwilling to return. International students, in particular, found themselves locked out even as other countries had already reopened their borders to admit foreign students.
"China essentially banned foreigners for three years. There were exceptions, of course ... but it really discourages people from coming to live in the country," said Jake, not his real name, an American who did a master's degree in China, taught in Mandarin, during the pandemic.
Only 20 international students, less than half the number admitted to his programme, were present at their 2023 graduation. Of those, just five stayed in China afterwards, most having already had experience in the country before the pandemic.
For foreigners interested in working in China, its post-pandemic economic downturn - marked by sluggish consumer spending, a real estate crisis and declining foreign investments - has created a less favourable environment than previous decades.
Amid growing tensions between Beijing and Western capitals, as well as concerns about the world's second largest economy turning inward and tightening national security, some multinational companies have relocated from China in recent years. The domestic job market is also challenging, with foreigners facing intense competition from increasingly skilled local workers who are often cheaper to employ.
Unlike back in 2008, language skills alone are not enough to help a foreigner stand out, according to Jake, who now works at an international organisation in Beijing and acknowledges that he would earn more in the US.
"The vast majority of my Chinese colleagues speak excellent English and have a very international mindset. There's very little that I can do that they can't do," he added.
And with a growing number of highly proficient Chinese working abroad, competition is equally stiff for China-facing positions outside the country.
"You would think that knowing the Chinese language would be more useful in the US, but it doesn't feel like it sometimes ... because the Chinese people you'd be working with would all speak English as well," Porter said.
French national Tom Blime shares similar observations from Europe.
"Most often, English is still the preferred language even when dealing with Chinese businesses here," said Blime, who stopped studying Mandarin several years ago after losing interest and realising he had no plans to live or work in China.
The boom in Mandarin learning may have now largely been concentrated in regions such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where economic opportunities remain robust and are perceived as more accessible.
"For young people in the Global South, learning Mandarin offers an alternative path to improving their lives," said Soong, noting that China's Belt and Road Initiative in those countries presented an image of a promising vision for the future.
In the West, where relevant economic opportunities are fewer and the desire among foreigners to live in China has diminished, analysts say it is unsurprising that the Chinese language has lost much of its appeal.
The increasingly restrictive environment as Beijing tightens its grip on national security has not helped. Soong said the space for foreigners with an interest in learning Mandarin, such as journalists and scholars, had "shrunk dramatically" in mainland China while Taiwan's appeal had increased.
According to Taiwan's Ministry of Education, 36,350 foreigners were studying Mandarin at university-affiliated language centres on the island in 2023, the latest available data, marking a 12 per cent increase from its pre-pandemic peak in 2019.
US citizen Lizzy Zerez, who has a Chinese parent and has previously learned both traditional and simplified characters, will be heading to Taipei for a year of intensive language study in September.
While she is looking forward to living in the culturally vibrant city and understanding more of the etymology of characters through the traditional Chinese script, a key draw for Zerez is that she will be on a scholarship from the Taiwanese government.
"It allows me to learn Mandarin and gives me the funding, and it happens to be in Taiwan," she said, noting that she knew of several friends from the US who did the same programme, while similar scholarship opportunities for the mainland were not as easy to find.
Taiwan's intentional positioning of itself as an alternative destination for Mandarin study comes at a time when the US is increasing scrutiny on mainland-affiliated language programmes.
"Tensions between the United States and China have only increased. That also discourages people [from studying Mandarin]," said USC US-China Institute's former director Dube.
The Department of State's Critical Language Scholarship Programme, which used to offer several cities in mainland China for Mandarin studies, now only lists one mainland city, Dalian, alongside two Taiwanese cities, Tainan and New Taipei City, as study locations.
And almost all the Confucius Institutes in the country, established to promote Mandarin language and culture with Chinese funding, had closed by 2023 amid accusations of acting as propaganda arms.
Beyond limited opportunities, this hostile environment now makes even specialising in China challenging for American experts, who risk accusations of undue influence or jeopardised security clearances if they spend too long in the country.
Similar anxieties are shaping interest in Europe, where China's alignment with Russia amid the war in Ukraine creates a particularly difficult dynamic for Europeans.
Hue San Do, who works for Bildungsnetzwerk China, the German Education Network on China, observes that Chinese culture is quite distant for most people in central Europe.
"People who haven't been to China, they only read news [about the place]," Do said. "I find the media here tends to focus on the things that don't work in China - the human rights violations, environmental pollution, poverty and all that - but less on what has improved and how humans manage to thrive in the face of adversity."
Such perceptions of China have affected the appeal of learning Mandarin in Germany, she noted.
Germany's pre-university Mandarin programmes added fewer than 700 learners between 2017 and 2023. In stark contrast, popular languages like Spanish surged by over 30,000 learners in the same period, according to a report Do co-wrote.
"And even though Chinese culture is very multifaceted, it still has the image of being very traditional," Do said.
According to Dube, "the hot East Asian language now is Korean, and we can point to a single source driving that. It's 100 per cent K-pop driving that."
The tangible impact of this cultural phenomenon is clear. For instance, wildly popular boyband BTS, whose four sold-out shows at Los Angeles' biggest stadium in late 2021 earned US$33.3 million and marked the highest-grossing run at a single venue in a decade.
As Mandarin enrolment declined in American universities, Korean enrolment soared by over 57 per cent between 2013 and 2021, according to the same Modern Language Association report.
Despite China's limited cultural exports, Do believes that direct experience in the country, such as through school exchange partnerships, can spark and maintain interest in Mandarin learning.
"Young people are much more motivated to carry on learning after they have experienced the cultural life rather than only reading from the textbook," she said.
Having spent a year working in Shanghai, Porter from Syracuse said he would "definitely strongly consider moving back in the future".
Though currently back in the US due to homesickness and limited lucrative career options for fresh graduates in China, he plans to keep up with his Mandarin studies.
Porter added that recent viral content showcasing Chinese culture, such as YouTube star IShowSpeed's visit to China and the influx of American TikTok users flocking to RedNote, indicates a growing recognition of China's advancements and interest in the country.
"People are brought in by openness," Dube said. "But if it's too overlain with politics and if it's too scripted, it doesn't last."
And despite US-China tensions, Dube remains optimistic these dynamics will eventually spur Mandarin learning once again, whether it is driven by security or business interest.
"For American self-interest ... those who [have political power] may conclude it would be better to have more people who know more about China and are able to speak Chinese," he said.
Additional reporting by Sylvie Zhuang
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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