US lawmaker Adam Schiff urges hiring of Mandarin speakers to keep up with China challenge

The chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee and frequent critic of President Donald Trump called on the government to hire more Mandarin speakers to help counter a China that has become “economically dynamic and politically regressive”.

Speaking virtually at a Brookings Institution event, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, echoed assessments of many within the Trump administration that more needs to be done to reorient an intelligence community that has been focused on counterterrorism towards a better understanding of how the Chinese government works.

“Now more than ever, it is evident that we must challenge ourselves to ensure our national security apparatus is right-sized to focus on the areas of competition that will define the 2020s and beyond,” Schiff said. “For the intelligence community, this means taking a hard look at how it conducts its China mission.”

“It is obvious we need to hire more Mandarin Chinese linguists and people with technical backgrounds, but it’s more complex than that,” he added. “You need people who both understand challenging functional and technical questions and can simultaneously relate these to China’s unique political context.

“That’s why we need to do a better job of making sure that all intelligence community employees – especially those that do not work full time on China – have a baseline familiarity with China 101.”

While Schiff, who led the House proceedings that led to Trump’s impeachment, has clashed with the administration more than many Democratic lawmakers, his hawkish message was more in line with recent messaging by administration officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.