Over a Billion Served.(students studying Mandarin)(Cover story)

Byline: Stephen Noerper (Noerper is an international-relations specialist and Asia scholar and the president of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral Academy.)

This past academic year, 146 New York City kids 4 to 14 dutifully attended Rosalyn Chao's Mandarin class at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral Academy. Many of the students were first-generation Americans; for several, Mandarin would be their third language, after English and Spanish.

Get used to this picture; around the world, more adults and kids are learning Chinese. Beijing is pouring money into new Confucius Institutes (Chinese language and culture centers), and two U.S. senators recently proposed spending $1.3 billion on Chinese-language programs over the next five years. From Ulan Bator to Chicago, it sometimes seems as if everyone is trying to learn the language now spoken by a fifth of the world's population.

Their reasoning is easy to understand. China is booming, and citizens around the globe want a piece of the action. Speaking Mandarin can facilitate communication with newly wealthy Chinese tourists or smooth bilateral trade relations. In a form of intense cultural diplomacy, Beijing is also promoting its films, music, art and language as never before. Front and center are the Confucius Institutes, modeled on the British Council, Germany's Goethe Institutes or the Alliance Francaise. China's Ministry of Education plans to have some 150 branches up and running in 100 countries by 2010. It is also sending thousands of language instructors to foreign programs and inviting foreign students from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to study in its universities.

As a result, Beijing predicts that 100 million individuals will be ...