������Ƶ

In March 2026, the��released a report explaining how the United States will face a critical shortage of China experts with on-the-ground experience within a decade. Every major pipeline (study abroad, language training, federal fellowships, scholarly exchange) feeding American understanding of a society that is simultaneously its largest trading partner and its most significant strategic competitor, as well as�� a civilization whose history, culture, and internal dynamics demand deep study on their own terms, has been severed or dramatically weakened, often by deliberate policy choices.

The numbers are stark.�� each year, down more than 90% from a peak of nearly 15,000 2011–12. The federal government�� (the backbone of area studies and critical language training since 1958) on the grounds that these programs “do not advance American interests or values.” The Fulbright Program in China, a 40-year pillar of scholarly exchange, has been�� with no restoration in sight. �ճ���� the same year. And�� has been in sustained decline, falling 14.3% between 2016 and 2021 alone, with enrollments in four-year institutions, which began dropping in 2013, down 12.5% and two-year institutions down 23.9%, in decline since 2009. Most alarming, graduate-level enrollment in Chinese fell 29.5%, from 1,266 to 892, dropping below 1,000 for the first time since 2002.

���� anticipated many of these trends. The report warned of an overconcentration of China expertise at a small number of elite institutions, with too few pathways for scholars at teaching-intensive universities, community colleges, and institutions serving underrepresented communities. That warning has now become reality. As former Ambassador Nicholas Burns��, restoring China expertise is “a national security imperative.” Michael Cerny, an affiliated researcher with the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis (CCA), and Princeton's Rory Truex�� and found that while a genuine diversity of views on China exists, roughly one-fourth reported professional pressure to voice more hawkish positions, a phenomenon one interview subject described as “hawkflation.” Many feared being perceived as naive or compromised by their ties to and experiences in China, with the result that more moderate perspectives were underrepresented in public discourse.

CSIS's Scott Kennedy��: “The U.S. really needs a new generation of China experts to understand China, whether friend or foe." Understanding is essential regardless of where the relationship heads.��

The irony is acute. At the precise moment when the U.S.–China relationship grows more complex and consequential, spanning trade,��, climate, public health, and security, America is blinding itself to a society it very much needs to understand.

The Infrastructure Is Here

Against this national backdrop of retreat, the University of Colorado Boulder has continued to show up. Faculty across departments, students from all corners of campus, and the Center for Asian Studies have sustained a depth of China expertise. They have done so largely through their own commitment and resourcefulness. But commitment alone is not a strategy. ������Ƶ's China studies infrastructure, built over decades, is more valuable than ever and more vulnerable than ever. Whether it endures and CU continues to be the leading institution for China studies in the Rocky Mountain West will depend on whether university leadership recognizes what it has and acts to protect it.����

������Ƶ's��Center for Asian Studies serves as connective tissue for China expertise across campus, linking faculty, students, and programs that span the humanities, social sciences, business, and the natural sciences, while also situating China scholarship within a broader conversation about Japan, Korea, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the wider Asian world. The Center coordinates an extraordinary depth of faculty knowledge. Affiliated scholars like Katherine Alexander (Asian Languages and Civilizations), Kwangmin Kim (History), Yingjie Li (Asian Languages and Civilizations), Tim Oakes (Geography), Runqing Qi (Asian Languages and Civilizations), Antje Richter (Asian Languages and Civilizations), Matthias Richter (Asian Languages and Civilizations), Jianmin Shao (Women and Gender Studies), Stephanie Su (Art and Art History), William Wei (History), Tim Weston (History), Emily Yeh (Geography), and Yu Zhang (ALC) represent a concentration of China expertise that few institutions in the western United States can match.��

�ճ����ALC Chinese Languages and Civilizations��program offers both a major and a minor, and the students who study Chinese at ������Ƶ come from remarkably diverse academic major areas of study,�� including engineering, integrative physiology, religious studies, international affairs, business, and beyond. These students are building the bilingual and cross-cultural competencies that the USCET report identifies as a critical national need. The demand is there. The students are there.

Since its establishment in 1989, the�� in the University Libraries has grown into a critical piece of campus infrastructure supporting Chinese studies and China‑focused research across disciplines. Today, the collection includes more than 80,000 physical volumes and access to over 10 major Chinese‑language databases, enabling robust engagement with both contemporary scholarship and historical materials. Primary sources—including rare books, photographs and cartographic materials—are preserved and made accessible through the�� and the��, supporting advanced and original research at any levels. The Chinese & Asian Studies Librarian works closely with faculty and with other subject librarians to strategically develop both Chinese‑language and English‑language collections for Chinese studies, while also prioritizing discovery, access, and scholarly visibility of these resources within CU Libraries and beyond. Together, these efforts ensure that library expertise and infrastructure actively sustain and amplify the university’s strengths in Chinese studies, even amid broader national challenges.

This breadth of interest from students reflects the kind of interdisciplinary, campus-wide approach to China studies that the Luce/ACLS report called for when it urged the field to “move beyond elite institutions” and reach students who might never attend a coastal research university. ������Ƶ is doing exactly that for students from Colorado, across the Rocky Mountain West, and from around the country and world who come to Boulder for this expertise. At the graduate level, CU’s ALC, Geography, Anthropology, and History departments have trained dozens of scholars who now teach about China at institutions throughout the country and around the world.

On-the-Ground Experience When It Matters Most

Perhaps nothing illustrates ������Ƶ's commitment more clearly than the��Tang Global Seminar Program, which has sent students to China and Taiwan nearly every year since 2010. When the USCET report warns of a “lost generation” of Americans with on-the-ground experience in China, that is not the case at ������Ƶ.

Since 2010, ������Ƶ has run 16 faculty-led Global Seminars to China and Taiwan, spanning history, sociology, journalism, comparative literature, Asian studies, geography, and management. These innovative study abroad programs continued, in adapted form, even through the pandemic, running virtually in 2021 and pivoting to Taiwan in 2023 when mainland China remained closed. In 2024, programs returned to mainland China. In summer 2026, two programs are heading to China: one on society and culture led by�� and one focused on organizational behavior and business, led by��.

This is exactly the kind of programming the USCET report calls essential and that is vanishing elsewhere. Faculty-led study abroad has emerged as one of the most resilient and institutionally viable forms of U.S.–China educational exchange. These programs are flexible, credit-bearing, and faculty-driven. But they only work when universities have the faculty expertise, institutional will, and administrative infrastructure to support them.��

Defunded but Not Deterred

������Ƶ's strength in China and pan-Asia area studies was recognized in 2006 and again in 2022 when it was��awarded Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) grants through a highly competitive federal process. The NRC designation validated what the campus community already knew, that ������Ƶ is a hub for Asian Studies scholarship, teaching, and outreach in a region with few comparable resources. That grant�� early as part of the across-the-board Title VI discontinuation in 2025. Nationwide, approximately 100 National Resource Centers lost funding. The academic year FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships that supported graduate students studying Mandarin and other critical languages, providing up to $18,000 in tuition and $20,000 in stipends, were eliminated overnight. The loss is real and it is felt. But the work continues because the mission is too important to abandon and student demand has not gone away.

������Ƶ is not just any institution doing China studies. It is the anchor institution for China expertise in the Rocky Mountain West, a region with deep and growing stakes in the U.S.–China relationship and almost no other academic infrastructure to study it. Montana's wheat exports were��. Wyoming's�� are at the center of global supply chain debates in which China is the dominant player. Colorado exported $758 million in goods to China in 2024, making it the state's. From energy to agriculture to technology to urban development, the Rocky Mountain West's economic and civic futures are entangled with China in ways that are immediate and local.

The national picture is grim. Federal funding has been stripped. Exchange programs have been suspended. Language enrollment is declining. Chinese students are increasingly choosing Britain and Hong Kong over the United States. And the generation of scholars who built their careers during the more open era of U.S.–China relations are retiring. But at ������Ƶ, the infrastructure is intact. The faculty expertise is deep. The study abroad programs are running. The students are enrolled. The Center for Asian Studies is coordinating, connecting, and building for the future.

Universities that maintain robust China studies programs, sustain Mandarin language instruction, and continue sending students to China and Taiwan are safeguarding a national strategic asset. The USCET report makes this case at the national level.��������Ƶ already has the infrastructure, the faculty, and the students to meet that challenge and keep doing so. That foundation is worth protecting and worth building on��

As the Luce/ACLS Advisory Group wrote in 2021: “China is much in the news, with many voices speaking without deep knowledge of Chinese society, language, culture, or history.” The institutions that hold the line on producing that deep knowledge will be indispensable when policymakers recognize what has been lost. ������Ƶ is staying the course.

A Small Sampling of Notable Recent ������Ƶ China Studies Alumni

The strongest case for any program is the people it produces. ������Ƶ China studies ecosystem has trained a generation of scholars who are now shaping the field at institutions across the country and around the world. Their work spans the political economy of China's energy systems, China-Africa geopolitics, digital governance, transnational religious networks, tourism and territorial politics, and the global implications of China's Belt and Road Initiative. They are doing exactly the work that the USCET report says America desperately needs and they learned to do it in Boulder. Below is a small sampling of some of these recent graduates ranging from undergraduate to PhD level training.

. National University of Singapore. PhD Geography, ������Ƶ. Winner of the AAG China Geography Specialty Group Best Student Paper Award. Research on digital governance, infrastructural power, healthcare systems, and everyday life in China.

Brendan Church.��4+1 MS/BS Finance & Political Science major with minors in Chinese, Business and Leadership, graduates from CU in Spring 2026. Completed a one-year exchange at Sichuan University with support from the Boettcher Foundation, focused on Chinese economics and language study. He was the first CU student to study at Sichuan since the program ended during COVID. He was awarded Summa Cum Laude for his research on emerging technology policy in China.

Elizabeth Craig.��Recent graduate of ������Ƶ (2025), with degrees in Political Science & History, with a minor in Asian Studies. She spent 2024-2025 in Taiwan as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. Following the conclusion of her Fulbright, she will be attending Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations pursuing a Master’s in International Relations in Fall 2026, spending her first year of graduate school at the Hopkins Nanjing Center in China.��

. Assistant Professor of Geography, University of South Carolina. PhD Geography, ������Ƶ. Winner of the Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award from the AAG Political Geography Specialty Group. President Emeritus, AAG Political Geography Specialty Group.

Camden Dempsey is ������Ƶ's third and most recent Schwarzman Scholar and will be starting at Tsinghua University in Fall 2026. A Boettcher Scholar��who also played long snapper on the CU football team (Coach Deion Sanders nicknamed him "The Governor"). He plans to work at the intersection of real estate, technology, global markets, and diplomacy.��

. Assistant Professor, University of Utah (Geography, Environmental Humanities, and Asian Studies). PhD Geography, ������Ƶ. Wilson Center China Fellow; Public Intellectual Program Fellow, National Committee on US-China Relations. Co-founder of the Second Cold War Observatory.

Ariel Feucht was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan for the 2024-2025 academic year. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and minors in business and Chinese and is beginning law school in Fall 2026.

. Assistant Professor of Practice in Environmental Studies and Associate Area Head of Social Sciences, NYU Shanghai. PhD Geography, ������Ƶ. NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Fulbright-Hays Fellow.

. Assistant Professor in the Chinese Language and Literature Programme of the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, PhD in Asian Languages and Civilizations, ������Ƶ.

John (Ames) Newman.��Biochemistry and Chinese double major. Graduated from CU in Spring 2026 and has been admitted to the Oklahoma University School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

.��Non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. ������Ƶ's first Schwarzman Scholar.��She double-majored in English and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.��She is a molecular biologist turned policy researcher, focused on the impact of emerging biotechnologies on the US-China technology competition.��

.�� Beginning PhD in Clinical Psychology, University of Wyoming, Fall 2026. Nowak plans to study ADHD treatment differences across sex/gender and race/ethnicity. BA Psychology, Chinese, and Asian Studies, ������Ƶ.

. Assistant Professor, Institute for Energy Studies and Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, Western Washington University. PhD Geography, ������Ƶ.��

. ������Ƶ's��second Schwarzman Scholar. Currently a graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School of Public Affairs. She graduated from the Leeds School of Business with a degree in Business Administration (Information Analytics and Leadership emphasis) and a minor in Biochemistry. Her interest in China was sparked by the Tang Family Foundation Scholarship and her faculty-led abroad program while at CU.��

. Lecturer in Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. PhD Geography, ������Ƶ. Former postdoctoral fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS.

. Assistant Professor of Chinese at Middlebury College. PhD in Asian Languages and Civilizations, ������Ƶ

The Center for Asian Studies is the home for Asia-related teaching advocacy, research, and public engagement at the University of Colorado Boulder. Learn more at��colorado.edu/cas.