Chinese President Xi JinPing’s first state visit to America last month brought forth numerous conversations about the U.S.-China relationship and its inherent value to both global powers. During Mr. Xi’s visit, Obama announced a nationwide initiative to have 1 million American students studying Chinese by 2020 called the 1 Million Strong Initiative. This is an expansion upon the 100,000 Strong Initiative that was launched in 2013 to strengthen U.S.-China relations through education and language learning. In July 2014, this initiative achieved its goal of having 100,000 Americans studying in China.

It hasn’t only been politicians who have put Chinese language learning in the spotlight recently; Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was featured in interviews showing off his Mandarin language skills. Most recently, he conducted a meeting with Xi JinPing entirely in Chinese.

Studying a language can be a fun and fulfilling personal experience, but a big question still stands; what sort of policy implications are entwined with having more Americans learn Chinese, and what makes language study so important that the leaders of two world powers are putting this goal on their agenda?

The use of “language diplomacy” has been part of China’s intentional strategy to increase its “soft power”. Soft power is an approach to international relations that involves the use of economic or cultural influence, and China has made efforts to invest in its international image with strategies that vary throughout the world. It benefits China to support Obama’s new 1 Million Strong Initiative because of the positive impact this exchange can have on China’s global image, especially as China faces heavy criticism for human rights violations. A better international image, in theory, should gain China more leverage in international policy decisions and international disputes, although the efficacy of using “soft power” to improve its image without changing its human rights track record is questionable.

For the United States, having more students learning Chinese is recognition of the strategic importance of the U.S.-China relationship. These are the three goals of the 1 Million Strong Initiative:

• To grow the next generation of student leaders by increasing their understanding of China;
• To create a pipeline of China-savvy employees in a range of fields; and
• To ensure that US students from all backgrounds, wherever they may live, have the opportunity to gain China skills.

The U.S. has political, economic, and social reasons for spearheading this new initiative. Government organizations like the NSA and CIA fund and recruit students learning ‘critical languages’ like Mandarin for U.S. international relations activities. Not only does the U.S. need more China-savvy employees for government positions; it also needs them as employees for companies who do business with China — a crucial component of the U.S.-China relationship. Improving Chinese language learning across the U.S. also has the potential to be an equalizing factor among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, because knowing Chinese will broaden a student’s job prospects in the future.

While it is important to note that increasing Chinese learning domestically will not solve the U.S.’s persistent socioeconomic divide, a similar phenomenon occurs in China, where students study English to improve their future prospects for universities and jobs. To expand Chinese learning in the U.S., government agencies like the State Department and not-for-profits like the Institute for International Education, who focus their energies on promoting language exchange, need to target areas of the country where Chinese language education is most uncommon. It is much easier to convince a student at a prestigious college the importance of learning Chinese, but until we have middle school students from the rural regions of a small state learning Chinese, we cannot claim to have transformed America into a more China-savvy place through language learning. Existing programs like the National Security Language Initiative for Youth and Project Pengyou seek to bridge the geographical gap between who gets to study abroad, but we will not reach our goals of 1 Million Americans studying Chinese until government and nonprofit entities can create a more inclusive system of distributing foreign teacher placements, Chinese program funding, language initiatives, and Chinese-language resources.