My take on US-China relations

One thing I like to do before traveling to a foreign country is to write down my impressions before going and then looking over them after the trip is over. So here are my free-flowing ideas on the US and China...

Like many others, I see China as a country that is already and will become more and more of a key player in the international stage. It seems inevitable that China will surpass the United States in GDP and in the process of the US’s trade imbalance with East Asia, China is hungry to buy up much of the US’s deficit. This is dangerous. It means that China wields an uncomfortable amount of power over the American economy because theoretically they can ask for their money back whenever they want, causing American interest rates to go up and making America's economy grind to a halt. Realistically, this is unlikely since a hit to America’s economy is a hit to China’s, but the bottom line that should be taken from this increasing political and economic interdependence, is that I think we need more Americans studying Asian languages and cultures, as opposed to European ones. As Susan Shirk (author of China: A Fragile Superpower) argues, wars are caused by misunderstandings and if the US and China are not able to understand each other in the future, there is a definite possibility of an escalation of conflict. In large cities, Chinese who speak English are much easier to find than Americans who speak Chinese, which is unfortunate. After all, there are more native Mandarin-speakers in the world than there are English-speakers; what makes Americans think they don’t need to learn foreign languages? What impact will this have if most interactions between Chinese and Americans are primarily in English? It is also unsurprising but important to note that most Americans who speak Chinese are of Chinese decent. What impact will this have if most interactions between Chinese and Americans in Chinese are between Chinese and Chinese-Americans? The bottom line is that in my opinion we need more Americans studying and becoming interested in Asian languages and cultures, which is a large part of the reason why I've become interested in Asia recently.