Penn must get on the China bandwagon, and fast

College students: Prepare for the rise of China. Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in Washington next week. Yahoo is helping the Chinese government capture dissidents by providing information about how they've accessed the Internet. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are pushing legislation to levy a 27.5 percent tariff on imports from China.

And it's becoming more and more obvious that the most important bilateral relationship in the world is the one between the United States and China.

So it disturbs me that Penn's East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department does not have a single faculty member who specializes in modern China. Keep in mind that the department was created just last year, following the dissolution of the awkwardly organized Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department.

Penn boasts some modern China experts, including History professor Arthur Waldron and Political Science professor Avery Goldstein. Their classes count toward the EALC major, but they're not associated with the program.

"China's role on the world stage is only going to grow," EALC and economics major Adam Kritzer said. "Penn certainly lags behind some peer institutions in its capability to prepare students for China's rise."

Kritzer, a College senior, also pointed out that being an EALC major with a China concentration requires taking only four classes on China; language, breadth and elective requirements compose the rest of the major.

"I learned far more about China by studying abroad there and by reading The Economist than I have in classes at Penn," he said.

Penn, unlike Princeton, Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia, offers no summer language-study program in China. While Penn encourages students to take advantage of other schools' programs, that doesn't make up for the dearth of its own. When I attended Princeton in Beijing in 2004, students from Harvard, Yale and Princeton composed about two-thirds of the program's 150 students. I was the only student from Penn.

I do not seek to criticize Penn's EALC Department; in fact, in my experience, the department's professors and courses vary from pretty good to terrific. However, Penn could and should do more.

The Wharton School has recognized the opportunities studying China will provide. The success of the Wharton China Business Forum and the proliferation of Huntsman students with China as their target country demonstrate that China's astronomical economic growth has not gone unnoticed in the Tower of Greed.

The College of Arts and Sciences must fall in step. First of all, there are plenty of non-business opportunities resulting from China's growing prominence. The demand for China experts in academia and the public sector is ballooning. And don't forget the $114 million that President Bush requested in January to fund the study of "critical-need foreign languages." Mandarin is on the short list.

Most importantly, our country needs government officials, businessmen, academics and voters who understand enigmatic China. Today, experts like Waldron and Goldstein remain divided about whether China will emerge as a superpower challenger to U.S. security or as a team player in a multipolar global environment. But everyone agrees that how America deals with China will play a large role in determining what kind of China will emerge. They also agree that these decisions will not be simple.

After all, if Kritzer didn't know so much about China, he would not be able to explain to me that the Schumer-Graham bill will not, as its sponsors suggest, pressure China to trade more fairly. Instead, it will increase costs for the American companies which export from China and increase prices for American consumers of their products. If you're not sure which companies I'm talking about, check the tags on everything you own.

Furthermore, erecting trade barriers will not bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Even if the bill were to force Nike to move factories out of China, the manufacturer would relocate to Vietnam or Indonesia, not Detroit.

And remember that the dollars flowing to China are then loaned back to the United States to fund our massive budget deficit. Therefore, people such as Schumer and Graham who misunderstand the China could lead it to stop exchanging yuan for U.S. dollars, collapsing the global demand for U.S. securities and sending the U.S. economy -- and thus, the world economy -- into the toilet.

It's that important. So, as China's influence only continues to grow, Penn must not be left behind.

Daniel Nieh is a senior East Asian Languages and Civilizations major from Portland, Ore. Low End Theory appears on Fridays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.