Barack Obama confidently predicted that one million Americans would learn Mandarin Chinese by the end of 2020. But U.S.-China relations have weakened beyond recognition since the then-U.S. president made his prediction in 2016.

That decline, however, does not signal the end of Western interest in learning Mandarin, according to Hui Ching, research director at the Hong Kong Zhi Ming Institute.

“Learning (Mandarin) Chinese is not the exclusive province of Obama,” Hui said, adding that President Donald Trump’s granddaughter Arabella can fluently recite poems in Mandarin.

Democrats like Obama – middle-class liberals – have often interacted with Chinese people in their study or work, which makes them amenable to studying the language, Hui said. They may also be immigrants to the U.S., which makes them more open to racial and cultural diversity.

Hui said the current situation is comparable to American and British liberals in the 1980s and 90s, who learned Japanese to better understand their business counterparts in Japan. Learning Mandarin would give Westerners better access not just to mainland China, but also to Hong Kong, Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia, he said

Other prominent figures in the West who have learned Mandarin include Prince William, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, he noted.

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