The ‘Red Scare’ in Washington
Wednesday, 09 Sep 2020
THE “Red Scare” seems to be spreading fast in the United States after US President Donald Trump said last month that if he is not re-elected in November,”you’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese”.
But wouldn’t that be a good thing? The more people across the world speak each other’s mother language, the better an understanding they will develop.
I am proud that about 300 million Chinese, almost the size of the entire US population, are learning English. Many others are learning French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic.
One of my former colleagues was the envy of our group, partly because he spoke Swahili and was later posted to Nairobi, Kenya.
I still remember a chilly early morning in March 2013, two months after I shifted from New York City to Washington, DC, when I went to the Rock Creek Park to cover a 5km race to raise funds for Washington Latin Public Charter School students who were planning a 10-day trip to China during the spring break. READ MORE