I remember the muted pain in my classmate’s voice when he raised his hand to speak. He wanted to know why, as a Chinese person studying science in China, he was required to take English and pass proficiency tests in order to graduate. “Leave English to the English majors,” he said.
The teacher explained that English is the global language of science: the best journals are published in English. The best schools are taught in English, which also means that they are located outside of China. A competent scientist, regardless of nationality, needs to be able to communicate in English.
“That’s not fair,” the classmate mumbled as he sat down. The teacher did not respond. A knowing sorrow flashed across his face. He was not in disagreement.
My teenage self secretly relished this exchange, because my English was good. I thought my classmate was only making excuses. More importantly, had English been no longer necessary, I would lose a critical advantage over my peers. After university, I went to the United States for my PhD. It took me a long time to see through the myth of meritocracy, that no learning field is created equal. The ability to train and gain a foreign tongue, like many other prized possessions in life, is often reliant on privilege.
I’m reminded of that episode each time I hear the debate in professional circles and on social media over the thorny issue of whether one needs to know Chinese to be an “expert” on China. Some claim it as a prerequisite. Others point out that language is but one skill among many. The exchange quickly devolves from the professional to the personal, with a good dose of envy and insecurity in the mix.
My first impulse is to laugh, immediately followed by a feeling of sadness as I recognise that on the other side of the seemingly absurd question is a painful reality – that one needs to know English to know China. English-language publications in China are accorded more leniency from censorship (even if that space is shrinking). It’s only from foreign shores and through a foreign tongue that I’ve been able to access the forbidden archives of my native land. English, the language of privilege and exclusion, can also be the language of mobility and emancipation.
It is more difficult to learn Chinese in the west than it is to learn English in China. Characteristics of the languages aside, the main hurdle is access. English is ubiquitous, while relatively few in the US or Europe have the opportunity to take Chinese lessons. As Beijing tightens its authoritarian grip, it’s also restricting foreign journalists and academics seeking to study or work in the country.
Lived experience alone does not equate with scholarship, and at the same time, linguistic dexterity alone is a poor metric for genuine understanding. Plenty of excellent reporting and analysis on China is conducted in non-Chinese languages. The real question, then, is not about enforcing a specific linguistic skill. Beneath the arrogant gatekeeping and flippant dismissals is an old tale of power and personhood: who is interested in China? Whose opinions are valued? What constitutes Chinese-ness, and who gets to define it?
As China develops from an impoverished backwater into the world’s second largest economy, many in the west have looked to it as fertile ground for promising careers. Their passion is not in Chinese history or culture, at least not as a priority. To the corporate elite, China is a market to be mined. To the security expert, China is a threat to be addressed. To the politicians and pundits, China is a “problem” to be solved. The lives and wellbeing of Chinese people, affected by policies, rhetoric and business deals, barely register in these discussions. Knowledge of the local language becomes irrelevant when the natives are presumed silent.
Some of the self-labelled “China experts” proudly cite their many trips to the Middle Kingdom as proof that one does not need to know the language to have a pleasant, productive time there. They conveniently ignore the hidden labour that underpins their comfort: the years-long effort by the Chinese public to learn English and the daily toil of fixers, guides and interpreters. Mostly young Chinese women move between languages to serve distinguished foreign guests, mostly older, white men. In both my birth country and my adopted home, English is coded with whiteness and whiteness signals expertise. The racialised and gendered hierarchies of the world are reflected in the shifting of tongues.
Language is more than a medium for communication. It’s an instrument of power, a measure of humanity, a map for world-making. It is also never neutral. A national language, like a nation itself, is accomplished and appropriated by force. The Chinese language I speak, Standard Mandarin, is as old as Chinese civilisations and as young as the modern Chinese state. Its dominance has pushed many Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages in the territory to the verge of extinction, as the Chinese government dictates a singular, politically correct way to be Chinese. The othering gaze from the west inadvertently aids Beijing in its mission.
The Party points to racism from the west as a shield to deflect criticism. It makes self-orientalising gestures, mirroring the worst of the China watchers, by defending its policies as suited to China’s “unique national condition”: disputed borderlands are described as “part of China since prehistoric times”, and authoritarianism is welcomed by a people with “Confucian values”.
Understanding a foreign language is desirable, but takes resources that not everyone can afford. What is more important is the ability to hold foreign people in the same regard as one’s own. As a young child in China, I knew English and science would be the two wings that carried me across the oceans. After more than a decade in the US, I often wonder if my grasp of Chinese has become as tenuous as my relationship with my birthplace. Guilt and longing are the eternal companions of the exile. At this time of planetary catastrophe, the magnitude of crises has put us at a loss for words.
The end of the world does not arrive through water, fire, or the plague: it begins with the slow death of language, when words grow stale and complacent with power, when artificial boundaries between nations harden. A new order for our collective survival can only be birthed when we acquire new ways of speaking.
Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist and a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School