More influential US families focus on learning Chinese

Billionaires in the United States are encouraging their children to learn Chinese as China's influence grows on the world stage, language experts said.

The country's elite, including the world's richest person, Elon Musk, as well as US President Donald Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, are reportedly eager for their offspring to learn Mandarin, according to multiple reports and their own admissions.

Musk, 55, tweeted in Chinese on May 14: "My son is currently learning Mandarin."

He posted the tweet after he was asked by a commentator on social media platform X why he had taken his 6-year-old son on a trip to China for Trump and President Xi Jinping's summit in Beijing in May.

Musk accompanied Trump on the trip, along with former Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other US businesspeople.

During the visit, Musk's son was seen wearing a neo-Chinese style embroidered top and carrying a traditional tiger-head bag at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Experts suggested that US elites want their children to learn Chinese due to the links and opportunities connected to the world's second-largest economy.

"My guess is many people think that being able to speak Mandarin will lead to more job opportunities in the future," Seth Wiener, an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, told China Daily.

"Learning Mandarin, or any new language, has many benefits. These include increased professional and social opportunities, access to new culture and media, and a broader perspective on the world," he said.

Mandarin is the official language of China, while Cantonese is widely spoken in southern China, mostly in Guangdong province.

As for Trump's grandchildren, two have already demonstrated their Mandarin skills.

During the April 2017 visit by Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to Mara-Lago in the US state of Florida, Trump's 5-year-old granddaughter Arabella Kushner and her younger brother Joseph sang the traditional Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower in Chinese, and recited the Three-Character Classic, a traditional text from the 13th century. Arabella also recited Tang Dynasty (618-907) poetry by Li Bai.

"Very proud of Arabella and Joseph for their performance in honor of President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan's official visit to the US!" the children's mother, Ivanka Trump, tweeted on April 7, 2017. Arabella's Mandarin language skills were also on display during Chinese New Year in February 2017, when Ivanka Trump shared a video on social media of Arabella singing a Happy New Year song in Mandarin.

Trump showed Xi a video of Arabella singing and reciting Mandarin poetry during their afternoon tea at the Forbidden City and later at a banquet at the Great Hall of the People in November 2017, the Associated Press reported.

According to US tech media outlet Business Insider, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have three children and have reportedly hired a Mandarin-speaking nanny to help the children learn the language on a daily basis.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 62, the world's fourth-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $224 billion, according to Forbes magazine, and his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, 56, have four children.

In a 2013 interview with Vogue magazine, Scott said that they had tried homeschooling their children at one point.

Scott, a philanthropist with an estimated net worth of $27.8 billion, told Vogue: "We tried all sorts of things … including Mandarin lessons, the Singapore math program, and lots of clubs and sports with other neighborhood kids."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 42, the fifth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $222 billion according to Forbes, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have also ensured that their children are bilingual.

Chan, the daughter of ethnic Chinese refugees who left Vietnam, speaks fluent Cantonese.

Their daughter, Max, was seen in a video uploaded by her father on Facebook in 2016, practicing Mandarin with the help of an artificial intelligence assistant.

Zuckerberg has demonstrated his own Mandarin skills by conducting a 30-minute question-and-answer session in the language.

A growing number of people from Western countries are eager to learn Mandarin on TikTok and other social media sites.

However, experts said that many find it complicated at first, as it differs substantially from English.

"I suspect it is a more difficult language (to learn), as Americans are not as familiar with tones," Gregory H. Patton, a professor of clinical management communication at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and an expert in communication and leadership effectiveness, told China Daily.

Wiener from Carnegie Mellon University agreed, adding that "two of the most prominent differences are the speech sounds and the writing system". But he said it is easier for children to learn languages more quickly than adults, giving the elite's children a head start.