The UK is suffering from a critical absence of expertise and understanding about China, an independent report has concluded, warning that most pupils learn nothing about the world's most populous country during their entire education.
The report by think tank the Higher Education Policy Institute (HIPA) found that in the last 25 years as China as risen to become the world's second biggest economy, the number of university undergraduates taking a course on China studies in the UK has not increased.
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Three key areas for improvement were identified in the report:
• Improving the level of knowledge of China among the general population
• Increasing the number of Chinese speakers in Britain
• Developing understanding of China among professionals and decision-makers
Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese History and Politics at the University of Oxford said a lack of expertise on China was hurting Britain's interests:
"Knowledge about this vast and influential state is still far too shallow among those who have to make complex judgements about its significance for the UK."
'Swift and superficial'
In areas such as finance, higher education, global health and climate change, the UK has strong incentives to work closely with China while it also needs to make security decisions founded on understanding of the issues, Mitter said.
"There will be varied views in the British public sphere on how to deal with China. Those views will often be robustly expressed, as is only right in a free society. But those conversations and debates can no longer afford to take in a swift and superficial view of China." he added in a foreword to HIPA's report.
The report cited 11 previous studies highlighting the knowledge gap. Study of China in the British education system is almost exclusively language-based with almost no inclusion in subjects such as history or geography, its author, Michael Natzler, wrote.
"Chinese British people are widely under-represented in UK life and often omitted entirely from British history," he said.
Furthermore, students are often discouraged from taking Mandarin because it is assessed on the same basis as European languages which are fundamentally less complicated for British speakers to learn, he noted.
There is a wide discrepancy between understanding of the UK in China, where hundreds of millions of people are gaining proficiency in English, and the reverse with only a few hundred people learning Chinese to an advanced level in British institutions.
This divide persists throughout society:
"[Chinese president] Xi Jinping has spoken about Western ideas in a way few Western leaders would be able to talk about Chinese culture," Natzler wrote.
The consequences of the education gap can be seen in costly policy reversals such as the decision to ban Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei from British next generation mobile networks as well as in anti-Asian discrimination, according to the report.