I write about once per month to all 90 legislators. This was emailed on 2/7/09:
Dear Senator / Representative
Please hold at least one legislative informational hearing on what China’s rise means for Oregon’s future. Please pass bills expanding Mandarin programs in Oregon’s K-12 public education system. And, please, pass bills creating an Oregon high school study abroad program. All these should be high priority efforts to keep Oregon competitive, relevant, and focused on the most significant issues of the 21st century.
Oregon is a state on the west coast of the United States with one percent or less of our K-12 public school students studying Mandarin. We send no high school students to study abroad at public expense. While we isolate ourselves in these ways, advances in communications and transportation have made the globe smaller and more interconnected. And our future Oregon economy will depend increasingly upon how well our companies can sell our goods and services in emerging foreign markets. China’s market is the biggest of these. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated last summer that China’s economy will be as large as the US economy in 2035 and twice as larger in 2050.
China is key not just for our economic growth, but for a whole range of other high priority issues. The book “China, the Balance Sheet” published jointly by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Institute for International Economics summed up China’s importance to us thus:
The direction that China and the U.S.-China relations take will define the strategic future of the world for years to come. No relationship matters more – for better or for worse – in resolving the enduring challenges of our time: maintaining stability among great powers, sustaining global economic growth, stemming dangerous weapons proliferation, countering terrorism, and confronting new transnational threats of infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime, and failing states.
One of those issues that will be with us over generations is the global environment. Like for our economy, China is the key. In his 2008 book “Hot, Flat & Crowded,” Tom Friedman writes:
It’s all in the numbers: China is one-fifth of humanity; it’s now the world’s biggest carbon emitter; it is the world’s second-largest importer of oil, after the United States; and, according to a report in The Times of London (January 28, 2008), it is already the world’s largest importer of nickel, copper, aluminum, steel, coal, and iron ore. Timber is certainly up there as well. It is not an exaggeration to say: As goes China, so goes the planet earth. If China can make a stable transition to clean power and an energy-and-resource-efficient economy, we as a planet have chance to mitigate climate change, energy poverty, petrodictatorship, and biodiversity loss in significant ways. If China can’t, China’s emissions and appetites will nullify everything everyone else does to save the earth, and the Energy-Climate Era will careen toward the unmanageable. So for me, the crucial question of this book is actually two questions: “Can America really lead a real green revolution?” and “Can China really follow?” Everything else is just commentary.
I know this legislature is working on the issues of how Oregon, and the US, can lead “a real green revolution.” This past week I watched the four hour joint committee hearing on SB 80, the cap-and-trade system proposal. Let me suggest respectfully that just developing such a program (as important and as difficult as that may be) may not be enough. Without a sustained and effective effort to reach out to those who must follow (China), such environmental efforts may not make a difference globally. That means a thoughtful, long term strategy to engage China needs to be a component of any efforts to reduce global warming.
So, let us get about the business of figuring out how to engage
China best. That means legislative hearings, reports, task forces, missions to
China and all the processes of government focusing on this as one critical
priority for our future. And let us invigorate Mandarin (and, while we are
about it, other foreign language) programs. And let us create a high school
study abroad program to connect our next generations to those emerging market
all around the global.
Respectfully –
PS: I have proposed six legislative bills. Representative Jules Bailey is introducing them. Others are signing on as cosponsors (contact his office). Three are funding bills for developing Mandarin programs. Three relate to creating a high school study abroad program.
Only three have come out of Legislative Counsel and now have bill numbers (texts can be found here):
(1) HB
2605 – Establishes Critical Need
Foreign Language Study Abroad Scholarship Program within the Department of
Education and appropriates $500,000 for additional academic years study abroad
scholarships for “critical need languages.” FY 1 -$150,000 for 50 students; FY
2 - $300,000 for 100 students; plus $50,000 to the Dept of Ed for
administration. Scholarship intended to supplement those provided by school
districts through their high school study abroad grant programs (to be created
by a separate bill below).
(2) HB 2606 – Allows school districts to award high school diplomas to students who do not meet graduation requirements but who completed a school year in a study abroad program.
(3) HB 2607 – Appropriates $1.6 million for developing, establishing and administering five Mandarin immersion programs, intending one in each congressional district.
Three are still being drafted in Legislative Counsel:
(4) HB 2763 (2007 session) again, same appropriation of $350,000. Would promote Mandarin statewide, involve school districts and develop curriculum for a variety of settings.
(5) Establishes a High School Study Abroad
Program that permits local school districts to use the funds they get from the
state and any other funds to give scholarships to high school students to study
abroad.
(6) Appropriates $550,000 for scholarship for sending high school students to study abroad in China for one month in the summer. FY 1 -$150,000 for 45 students; FY 2 - $300,000 for 90 students; plus $100,000 to the Dept of Ed for administration.
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