Why is this G2 unlike all the Gs that have come before...?

Posted By David Rothkopf Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 9:13 PM Share

Want the best illustration of a challenging and intriguing relationship that will be centrally important to Barack Obama? Take one of the truly momentous changes that's come out of the past three weeks' travel: the emergence of the United States and China as the acknowledged G2 of the world.

In the past the G2 and the G8 were primarily comprised of like-minded nations, culturally and ideological similar. G8 counterparts became close, there was a glue of affinity that helped the group work. China and the United States are culturally and ideologically very different and there is little personal affinity between the leaders of the governments in anything like the way there has been between the United States and Europe (or even the United States and their counterparts in the former Soviet Union). We need to cooperate with China on everything. We have never had such an important single partner in virtually all policy matters...and this one is also a rival with a different worldview. Warmth is not a bad place to start such a relationship...but the challenges it will be pose this administration are clearly going to be enormous and it is going to take something like a major new diplomatic initiative to begin building the diplomatic infrastructure and policy positions such a partnership-rivalry will demand.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:CHINA, DIPLOMACY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

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DAVE PORTER

5:28 AM ET

April 23, 2009

Mandarin and high school study in China Initiative

Even more fundamental than a diplomatic initiative, Obama should realize that US-China relations (and the probably arc of that relationship over this century as China rises to power) requires a rethinking of the US educational system. Obama should command Education Secretary Duncan to use some small part of the educational stimulus funds to do two related things:

(1)to increase Mandarin programs in schools across the US, with an emphasis on immersion programs beginning in kindergarten, such that 5% of US students will be studying Mandarin by 2015; and

(2)to get school districts (and states, if they are part of school funding) across the US to pay for high school students to study abroad (especially in China) with public funds. There are existing high school study abroad programs from organizations like AFS, ASSE, and CIEE that offer academic year abroad programs for high school students, often at costs less than the per pupil costs in a students local school district. So the US could have thousands of its high school students studying in China each year at no additional public or private costs. Obama should propose such a program.

We have a bill in the Oregon legislature to create the Go Global High School Study Abroad Program. It would permit school districts to use state and local funds to send high school students to study abroad. It had a public hearing but has now probably died in committee.