I got about six weeks of Mandarin in middle school. Not enough teachers are available to offer it in most high schools. If you wanted to really learn a second language before university, it was either French or Spanish. Like a chump, I chose French, because the teacher was reputed to give out less homework than the Spanish teacher. I've never even been to Quebec or Haiti. Quelle dommage; ce n'est pas trop utile pour moi. Tant pis. I can't even remember all the conjugations and tenses for etre.

You make Mandarin mandatory in the US, and you'll just end up with a bunch of people who wasted their time learning a language they will never use. And maybe some who will try using it at a Chinese-American restaurant only to learn that everyone there speaks Cantonese, or a lesser-used Chinese dialect.

True if it's not used it will be a waste. But the thing that worries me is the resource contention between the countries. So maybe we should have a preemptive "war on division" to try to integrate the cultures before our differences come to a violent head.

Actual 2010 census said 3.8M Chinese-Americans in the US, or 1.2% of the population. 2016 interim projection was 4.9M, or 1.5%. Granted, they are largely concentrated in California, Washington, New York, and Illinois. But it's still a significant population, and they can be found nearly everywhere [that is worth emigrating to]. A large fraction of students at US universities are Chinese nationals.

There are 100k Americans living in China (2/5 of them in Hong Kong), and a trace quantity of naturalized American-Chinese, because the only practical way for a white immigrant to gain Chinese citizenship is to marry a native. Applicants without obvious Asian ancestry aren't likely to ever get accepted, even if they do manage to get legally naturalized.

So which culture should be expending greater efforts?

True. My theory on that is that it is due to racism inherent in the culture. But hopefully it may not be quite as bad in the current generation. Anyway to improve that aspect of their culture to me it is a similar problem of trying to integrate the cultures -- we can't just force them to accept our ideas without an exchange or understanding theirs. Unless you believe in the traditional approach of war which to me is clearly a very stupid and self-destructive path.

My response, informed by the ~very realistic~ simulation called Civilization, would be to send in missionaries and spies, to promote my culture, and send in the diplomats to bribe them with the very technologies that made their wonders and city improvements obsolete.