Today’s piece is another Q&A with Simone Pieranni, of Il Partito. If you remember, we also did another Q&A together regarding the Century of Humiliation and the topic of “Party vs People” a few months ago.
I’m genuinely shocked that self-described “China Hands” can make such a large statistical error. It suggests not just a numerical slip, but a complete blind spot toward the Chinese diaspora. The United States has more than five million Chinese-Americans, and even by extremely conservative estimates at least two million of them are fully literate in Chinese. That is 0.6 percent of the U.S. population. Using the podcast’s own number of ten million fluent English speakers in China, that is 0.7 percent of China’s population. The supposed 30-to-1 or 100-to-1 imbalance simply doesn’t exist. Using their percentages, the gap is 1.7 to 1.
There is also an important regional reality that never appears in these discussions. English fluency in China is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few municipalities around elite universities and corporate headquarters. If you go to Tengchong, Xishuangbanna, Tieli, Nanning, or hundreds of other prefecture-level cities, it is difficult to find a single fluent English speaker on duty even in hotels. By contrast, Chinese literacy in the U.S. is widespread across dozens of states because of the size and depth of the diaspora.
The error here isn’t just mathematical; it is conceptual. It ignores millions of Chinese-literate Americans and inflates the idea of functional English fluency inside China. Anyone who has lived and travelled deeply in both countries knows the reality is far more balanced than the narrative being presented.
Great point about Chinese diaspora, it’s interesting how I overlook that. Perhaps the majority of Chinese Americans (citizens, not just PRs or visa holders) I met are much more American than Chinese, and can barely speak Chinese. Also, in terms of their actual influence over narratives and policies over China, I can hardly sense it. But let me dwell on this a bit. It seems like a conceptual blind spot of my own that has some meanings. Thank you for pointing out.
I stand by overall my overall intuition that China knows more about the other side than the other way around. I will need to see if there are better ways to express this idea.
Recent Census data show that Chinese Americans maintain their heritage language at strikingly high levels. The United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) reports that about 3.4 million people in the U.S. speak a Chinese language at home, making Chinese the third most spoken non-English language nationally.¹ Although the ACS counts all residents, its detailed language tables show that the vast majority of these speakers are Chinese-heritage families, including second-generation children.² The pattern reflects shifting migration waves from Cantonese to Mandarin dominance and demonstrates strong cultural continuity rather than assimilationist decline.³
There is also the possibility (or likelihood) of one's peripheral contacts. I find those in the intellectual environments of Beijing or Shanghai to know much about America, but move into the interior provinces and it's very fair to say no ones gives a crap about America because they're too busy trying to survive. 1st tier cities are often like different planets, not to say there aren't intellectuals in the hinterlands, but it's rare. I mean, I live in Wuhan and I can go for weeks without seeing another laowai anywhere.
Anecdotally as a Chinese American, Chinese language fluency is mostly limited to 1st generation immigrants, and even then their knowledge of modern China ranges. To the point of the article, speaking some amount of Chinese at home and understanding China from a social/cultural/political perspective are very different.
Regardless, I doubt that the opinions of Chinese Americans has any effect on US policy decisions regarding China. So it’s a bit of a moot point.
I’m genuinely shocked that you actually think Chinese-Americans understand China. Do you think those who went to the United States decades ago understand today's China? Or do you think that their descendants, who have been eager to integrate into American society since childhood and almost do not speak Chinese, understand China? Or are you referring to those anti-China ‘democrats’ who maliciously curse China's collapse every day? The mainstream anti-China ideology of the United States doomed it to select only those who, like Maochun Yu, claimed that China would yield as long as tariffs were imposed on China, and the CPC would collapse. The remaining few normal Chinese-Americans who understand China will not get involved in the foolish politics of the United States, but only make money in a low-key manner
I'm not challenging the stats, but I'm always amazed at how many young people have some ability in English. I'm talking primarily Hubei...Wuhan and Enshi in the West, where I'm most familiar with. But, big picture, you're right.
These numbers are true, but the issue is that given the extremely oligarchical nature of all the institutions in America that funnel people into the "make decisions related to foreign policy" bucket, you're going to get very few Chinese-Americans into that bucket. Like there are absolutely more white guys who speak Chinese involved in American foreign policy than Chinese-Americans (both of these groups are very small, to be clear).
In contrast, although not many Chinese are that hyper-fluent in English, the ones involved in foreign policy decision-making probably mostly are!
As American McCarthyism most likely gets worse in the upcoming years, I suspect that small group to get even smaller. Also important to note that enrollment in Mandarin classes in America is actually crashing.
The article makes a valid point about how few Chinese-Americans enter the narrow pipeline that leads to senior U.S. foreign-policy roles. I agree that this elite cohort is extremely small. My earlier comment addressed a different issue: the claim that only “10,000” Americans speak Chinese, which understates the much larger linguistic base of more than three million. Population and pipelines are not the same, so both observations can be true without contradiction.
Where I think the article becomes unbalanced is in overlooking the wider knowledge ecosystem that shapes U.S. policy toward China. If we move beyond under-secretary appointments and look at the research infrastructure—PhD programmes, think-tank fellowships, and the analytical labour behind policy briefs—we find a substantial presence of Chinese-heritage scholars in both the United States and Canada. Their work forms the informational architecture that senior officials rely on, even if they do not occupy top political posts. Elaine Chao is a rare example of someone who reached Cabinet level as a Secretary, but most influence flows through research rather than elected office. This is offered as a counter-argument, which is healthy academic practice.
Examples of Chinese-heritage scholars with major books:
Minxin Pei; Susan Shirk; Victor Shih; Jessica Chen Weiss; Xiaoyu Pu; Yuen Yuen Ang; Ling Chen; Wenfang Tang; Cheng Li; Lanxin Xiang; Alice Ba; Xiaohong Xu; Keyu Jin; Zhiwu Chen; Xiaodong Zhu; Gordon H. Chang; Madeline Y. Hsu; Yong Chen; Evelyn Hu-DeHart; David Der-wei Wang; Haun Saussy; Xu (Victor) Yan; Wenran Jiang; Yuen Pau Woo; Diana Fu; Lynette Ong; Elaine Chao.
If you walk into the State Department, leading think tanks, major fellowship programmes, or faculty rooms in Political Science, IR, and journalism, you will find a very influential cohort of Chinese-heritage scholars shaping the debate in ways that the top-line numbers do not capture
Apropos of nothing in particular, we're wrapping up our redecoration of the new joint in Wuchang and the young tradespeople all want me to take them to America (my career was in construction and consulting) because they've heard they can make a lot of money there. Which, for a high skill trades person, is true. Young Chinese trades workers kick ass. Same with the guy at the local car repair/car wash...he thinks he can make more money in America fixing cars. The absence of skilled trade labor in America is remarkable. Everyone wants to be an influencer, no one wants to be a laborer, even though one can knock down good money doing it. It's a class thing. No one wants to do it because they think it taints them. I know HVAC techs knocking down a quarter mil a year. Surprise! There's never been a better time to be a laborer.
Per Marco...He's just a dope. Thinking about him at all will rot your brain.
Per Noah... He's gone off a cliff. His latest excretion with that line of "in China, there's nothing to do but sit in your apartment or drive to the mall"...I've written him off. He's a one man exemplar of Turchen's theory of the overproduction of elites. I hate predictions, but I'll make one now... Noah will slowly melt away. It'll take several years, but how long can anyone knock out an informative, useful dally economics column? He's already running out of gas, which is why he has to go back to the well and write something stupid about China because he doesn't have anything intelligent to say about anything else. Reinventing oneself on a daily basis can only lead to attenuation. It takes time and reflection to write something worthwhile with useful information, emphasis on USEFUL.
Per Trump and his trade war... Why? He's a narcissistic moron. When I say he doesn't know what he's doing, I mean it literally. If his old man hadn't gifted him a half a billion dollars and one of the largest real estate businesses in America, he'd be deep frying chicken at Popeye's. No...wait...I like Popeye's. He'd be asking if you want fries with that.
Here in Wuchang, there's something like a million students within a (roughly) 5 kilometer radius of me. I don't hear much about dissing America. Maybe they're being polite (probably). There's an overemphasis on "Us vs. Them" in pop media theorizing. There's little (no) credible data, leading to inconclusiveness, which makes me conclude I'm going out for some midnight noodles.
If two Imperial Romans Senators had a question between them about the Goths, they'd likely have consulted Herodotus from 400-500 years earlier, but at least they'd be consulting a Greek doing his best within the constraints (Eastern Late Rome (Byzantine) was far more sophisticated). My feeling is the ruling class of the American Empire first checks their stock broker about what position they can play to advance their short term market manipulation.
I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of strategic asymmetry. While it’s true that more Chinese individuals can speak English than Americans can speak Mandarin, this hasn’t translated into institutional competence in understanding and operating within Western systems.
Two examples:
Huawei largely failed at going global in the US not because of government intervention (though that came later), but because all their US operational and legal decisions were made by people in Shenzhen who didn’t speak English or have an American legal background.
Similarly, China has largely failed to win the hearts and minds of people in Hong Kong. They never bothered to learn the language and culture. They couldn’t understand what made the system work because they refused to engage with it on its own terms. And now locals are angry about political interference and many long term expats like myself have left.
I realize this is a much bigger, complex debate, but for me Robert your application generational thinking was apposite. <When someone is young, they think they know everything, can do anything, and are always right. They tend to view those who disagree with them as inherently wrong or just plain bad people.
In comparison, China can seem like an older person who has seen it all—perhaps less inspiring, less idealistic, but also more pragmatic and more resilient, and can sometimes be surprisingly more accommodating of different opinions.>
Honestly, I don't know if I'm unique in my thinking of America & Americans. But I'm going to give you my opinions that I've had since I was a young adolescent. I'm British by the way & I was born in the late 1960's. My views upon America have only been proven correct & totally right in my opinion. My views upon & thoughts on China have been changed totally. All I've ever believed America to be is a fantasy land. I've always thought everything about it is false. Everything about America is false. No one can name anything to me about about America. That I can't prove is total BS. It's military, It's economy, It's so called power is all pathetically false . America won't do shit to no one by itself, it can't it won't because it always gets it's ass kicked. Does that seem big strong & powerful to anyone? Because it's a fact. It's military history is very false. It's politicians are compulsive liars, everything foreign policy wise are lies . A wealthy country that is do much in debt it will never pay it back. With tens of millions in poverty. No Healthcare. It has to import talented people from foreign countries to achieve anything as it can't itself. It's crime rates have always been staggering they're that high. China I thought they'd realised how naive & basically stupid they'd been in the past. Stating it was a century of humiliation. I thought they'd finally realised that Western countries, will only ever work in their own interests & have never cared about win win situations. No matter how much China has advanced in fantastic ways. It's still as naive as it always was. It's laughable how every single Chinese person hasn't realised the facts of what Americans view of China & Chinese people are. Americans are told 24/7 by politicians & media
That every problem America has is China's fault. Don't Chinese people realise this creates nothing but hatred of them in America. Are Chinese that naive that they believe America will wake up with a new friendly President who wants to he friendly with them or something? Because it's never going to happen America will carry on stirring as many problems up for China as it possibly can. But it won't confront China by itself. It knows it always fails trying that game. Take a look at Japan lately it's so obvious what's happening . Wake up to facts for God's sake.
I’m genuinely shocked that self-described “China Hands” can make such a large statistical error. It suggests not just a numerical slip, but a complete blind spot toward the Chinese diaspora. The United States has more than five million Chinese-Americans, and even by extremely conservative estimates at least two million of them are fully literate in Chinese. That is 0.6 percent of the U.S. population. Using the podcast’s own number of ten million fluent English speakers in China, that is 0.7 percent of China’s population. The supposed 30-to-1 or 100-to-1 imbalance simply doesn’t exist. Using their percentages, the gap is 1.7 to 1.
There is also an important regional reality that never appears in these discussions. English fluency in China is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few municipalities around elite universities and corporate headquarters. If you go to Tengchong, Xishuangbanna, Tieli, Nanning, or hundreds of other prefecture-level cities, it is difficult to find a single fluent English speaker on duty even in hotels. By contrast, Chinese literacy in the U.S. is widespread across dozens of states because of the size and depth of the diaspora.
The error here isn’t just mathematical; it is conceptual. It ignores millions of Chinese-literate Americans and inflates the idea of functional English fluency inside China. Anyone who has lived and travelled deeply in both countries knows the reality is far more balanced than the narrative being presented.
Great point about Chinese diaspora, it’s interesting how I overlook that. Perhaps the majority of Chinese Americans (citizens, not just PRs or visa holders) I met are much more American than Chinese, and can barely speak Chinese. Also, in terms of their actual influence over narratives and policies over China, I can hardly sense it. But let me dwell on this a bit. It seems like a conceptual blind spot of my own that has some meanings. Thank you for pointing out.
I stand by overall my overall intuition that China knows more about the other side than the other way around. I will need to see if there are better ways to express this idea.
Recent Census data show that Chinese Americans maintain their heritage language at strikingly high levels. The United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) reports that about 3.4 million people in the U.S. speak a Chinese language at home, making Chinese the third most spoken non-English language nationally.¹ Although the ACS counts all residents, its detailed language tables show that the vast majority of these speakers are Chinese-heritage families, including second-generation children.² The pattern reflects shifting migration waves from Cantonese to Mandarin dominance and demonstrates strong cultural continuity rather than assimilationist decline.³
Footnotes:
1. ACS “Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over: 2017-2021” table — https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/language-use/2017-2021-lang-tables.html
2. Census Reporter summary of language spoken at home (Chinese among Asian/Pacific languages) — https://censusreporter.org/tables/C16001/
3. ACS overview page “Language Use in the United States” explaining data collection and language categories — https://www.census.gov/topics/population/language-use.html
I will definitely take a read. This is a topic I want to explore in more detail in a future post. Thank you again for point it out.
I became aware of this because I was researching this article:
https://open.substack.com/pub/alkoch55/p/the-mandarin-speaking-backbone-of?r=kmlt&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=post-publish
There is also the possibility (or likelihood) of one's peripheral contacts. I find those in the intellectual environments of Beijing or Shanghai to know much about America, but move into the interior provinces and it's very fair to say no ones gives a crap about America because they're too busy trying to survive. 1st tier cities are often like different planets, not to say there aren't intellectuals in the hinterlands, but it's rare. I mean, I live in Wuhan and I can go for weeks without seeing another laowai anywhere.
Anecdotally as a Chinese American, Chinese language fluency is mostly limited to 1st generation immigrants, and even then their knowledge of modern China ranges. To the point of the article, speaking some amount of Chinese at home and understanding China from a social/cultural/political perspective are very different.
Regardless, I doubt that the opinions of Chinese Americans has any effect on US policy decisions regarding China. So it’s a bit of a moot point.
I’m genuinely shocked that you actually think Chinese-Americans understand China. Do you think those who went to the United States decades ago understand today's China? Or do you think that their descendants, who have been eager to integrate into American society since childhood and almost do not speak Chinese, understand China? Or are you referring to those anti-China ‘democrats’ who maliciously curse China's collapse every day? The mainstream anti-China ideology of the United States doomed it to select only those who, like Maochun Yu, claimed that China would yield as long as tariffs were imposed on China, and the CPC would collapse. The remaining few normal Chinese-Americans who understand China will not get involved in the foolish politics of the United States, but only make money in a low-key manner
I'm not challenging the stats, but I'm always amazed at how many young people have some ability in English. I'm talking primarily Hubei...Wuhan and Enshi in the West, where I'm most familiar with. But, big picture, you're right.
These numbers are true, but the issue is that given the extremely oligarchical nature of all the institutions in America that funnel people into the "make decisions related to foreign policy" bucket, you're going to get very few Chinese-Americans into that bucket. Like there are absolutely more white guys who speak Chinese involved in American foreign policy than Chinese-Americans (both of these groups are very small, to be clear).
In contrast, although not many Chinese are that hyper-fluent in English, the ones involved in foreign policy decision-making probably mostly are!
As American McCarthyism most likely gets worse in the upcoming years, I suspect that small group to get even smaller. Also important to note that enrollment in Mandarin classes in America is actually crashing.
The article makes a valid point about how few Chinese-Americans enter the narrow pipeline that leads to senior U.S. foreign-policy roles. I agree that this elite cohort is extremely small. My earlier comment addressed a different issue: the claim that only “10,000” Americans speak Chinese, which understates the much larger linguistic base of more than three million. Population and pipelines are not the same, so both observations can be true without contradiction.
Where I think the article becomes unbalanced is in overlooking the wider knowledge ecosystem that shapes U.S. policy toward China. If we move beyond under-secretary appointments and look at the research infrastructure—PhD programmes, think-tank fellowships, and the analytical labour behind policy briefs—we find a substantial presence of Chinese-heritage scholars in both the United States and Canada. Their work forms the informational architecture that senior officials rely on, even if they do not occupy top political posts. Elaine Chao is a rare example of someone who reached Cabinet level as a Secretary, but most influence flows through research rather than elected office. This is offered as a counter-argument, which is healthy academic practice.
Examples of Chinese-heritage scholars with major books:
Minxin Pei; Susan Shirk; Victor Shih; Jessica Chen Weiss; Xiaoyu Pu; Yuen Yuen Ang; Ling Chen; Wenfang Tang; Cheng Li; Lanxin Xiang; Alice Ba; Xiaohong Xu; Keyu Jin; Zhiwu Chen; Xiaodong Zhu; Gordon H. Chang; Madeline Y. Hsu; Yong Chen; Evelyn Hu-DeHart; David Der-wei Wang; Haun Saussy; Xu (Victor) Yan; Wenran Jiang; Yuen Pau Woo; Diana Fu; Lynette Ong; Elaine Chao.
If you walk into the State Department, leading think tanks, major fellowship programmes, or faculty rooms in Political Science, IR, and journalism, you will find a very influential cohort of Chinese-heritage scholars shaping the debate in ways that the top-line numbers do not capture
Great observations and thinking!
Apropos of nothing in particular, we're wrapping up our redecoration of the new joint in Wuchang and the young tradespeople all want me to take them to America (my career was in construction and consulting) because they've heard they can make a lot of money there. Which, for a high skill trades person, is true. Young Chinese trades workers kick ass. Same with the guy at the local car repair/car wash...he thinks he can make more money in America fixing cars. The absence of skilled trade labor in America is remarkable. Everyone wants to be an influencer, no one wants to be a laborer, even though one can knock down good money doing it. It's a class thing. No one wants to do it because they think it taints them. I know HVAC techs knocking down a quarter mil a year. Surprise! There's never been a better time to be a laborer.
Per Marco...He's just a dope. Thinking about him at all will rot your brain.
Per Noah... He's gone off a cliff. His latest excretion with that line of "in China, there's nothing to do but sit in your apartment or drive to the mall"...I've written him off. He's a one man exemplar of Turchen's theory of the overproduction of elites. I hate predictions, but I'll make one now... Noah will slowly melt away. It'll take several years, but how long can anyone knock out an informative, useful dally economics column? He's already running out of gas, which is why he has to go back to the well and write something stupid about China because he doesn't have anything intelligent to say about anything else. Reinventing oneself on a daily basis can only lead to attenuation. It takes time and reflection to write something worthwhile with useful information, emphasis on USEFUL.
Per Trump and his trade war... Why? He's a narcissistic moron. When I say he doesn't know what he's doing, I mean it literally. If his old man hadn't gifted him a half a billion dollars and one of the largest real estate businesses in America, he'd be deep frying chicken at Popeye's. No...wait...I like Popeye's. He'd be asking if you want fries with that.
Here in Wuchang, there's something like a million students within a (roughly) 5 kilometer radius of me. I don't hear much about dissing America. Maybe they're being polite (probably). There's an overemphasis on "Us vs. Them" in pop media theorizing. There's little (no) credible data, leading to inconclusiveness, which makes me conclude I'm going out for some midnight noodles.
Sarcastic but well put…
Thanks. Cynical sarcasm is my superpower.
If two Imperial Romans Senators had a question between them about the Goths, they'd likely have consulted Herodotus from 400-500 years earlier, but at least they'd be consulting a Greek doing his best within the constraints (Eastern Late Rome (Byzantine) was far more sophisticated). My feeling is the ruling class of the American Empire first checks their stock broker about what position they can play to advance their short term market manipulation.
I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of strategic asymmetry. While it’s true that more Chinese individuals can speak English than Americans can speak Mandarin, this hasn’t translated into institutional competence in understanding and operating within Western systems.
Two examples:
Huawei largely failed at going global in the US not because of government intervention (though that came later), but because all their US operational and legal decisions were made by people in Shenzhen who didn’t speak English or have an American legal background.
Similarly, China has largely failed to win the hearts and minds of people in Hong Kong. They never bothered to learn the language and culture. They couldn’t understand what made the system work because they refused to engage with it on its own terms. And now locals are angry about political interference and many long term expats like myself have left.
I realize this is a much bigger, complex debate, but for me Robert your application generational thinking was apposite. <When someone is young, they think they know everything, can do anything, and are always right. They tend to view those who disagree with them as inherently wrong or just plain bad people.
In comparison, China can seem like an older person who has seen it all—perhaps less inspiring, less idealistic, but also more pragmatic and more resilient, and can sometimes be surprisingly more accommodating of different opinions.>
What did the ancient Chinese think about the US, Mexico, North and South America?
.
Reference:
Chinese had visited America Continent earlier than the European.
.
https://substack.com/@absolutetotalcompound/note/c-183249651?r=5g11d4
Honestly, I don't know if I'm unique in my thinking of America & Americans. But I'm going to give you my opinions that I've had since I was a young adolescent. I'm British by the way & I was born in the late 1960's. My views upon America have only been proven correct & totally right in my opinion. My views upon & thoughts on China have been changed totally. All I've ever believed America to be is a fantasy land. I've always thought everything about it is false. Everything about America is false. No one can name anything to me about about America. That I can't prove is total BS. It's military, It's economy, It's so called power is all pathetically false . America won't do shit to no one by itself, it can't it won't because it always gets it's ass kicked. Does that seem big strong & powerful to anyone? Because it's a fact. It's military history is very false. It's politicians are compulsive liars, everything foreign policy wise are lies . A wealthy country that is do much in debt it will never pay it back. With tens of millions in poverty. No Healthcare. It has to import talented people from foreign countries to achieve anything as it can't itself. It's crime rates have always been staggering they're that high. China I thought they'd realised how naive & basically stupid they'd been in the past. Stating it was a century of humiliation. I thought they'd finally realised that Western countries, will only ever work in their own interests & have never cared about win win situations. No matter how much China has advanced in fantastic ways. It's still as naive as it always was. It's laughable how every single Chinese person hasn't realised the facts of what Americans view of China & Chinese people are. Americans are told 24/7 by politicians & media
That every problem America has is China's fault. Don't Chinese people realise this creates nothing but hatred of them in America. Are Chinese that naive that they believe America will wake up with a new friendly President who wants to he friendly with them or something? Because it's never going to happen America will carry on stirring as many problems up for China as it possibly can. But it won't confront China by itself. It knows it always fails trying that game. Take a look at Japan lately it's so obvious what's happening . Wake up to facts for God's sake.