I find it strange. Mexico is right next to USA but Spanish isn't a compulsory subject.
China is like all the way on the other side of the planet, but Mandarin is required o___o.
Poor neighbor.
Anyway, if you guys need help in Mandarin, you can always ask me. I'd be willing to help.
I dunno, why don't all Hong Kong folks speak Mandarin, or study Vietnamese? Value of a language is just like value for anything-- it's demand-driven.
For Americans, we speak English as our first language, the world's primary language for trade, science, academics, and even diplomacy. In a sense, Americans can just "fall back on English" at almost any stage in their lives. Inversely, America is a diverse country-- we may not be as ethnically or religiously diverse as China or India just in the number of minority groups, but we're very diverse in the sense of being "an immigrant nation" with people of backgrounds from all over the world-- and international trade ties just as diverse. Who is to say what tongue could be of greatest use for any 1 American youth-- which is why where possible, we'd rather provide choice.
China has the biggest population in the world, the second biggest economy, and the greatest economic growth. It's simple sense that these powerful market forces would motivate accelerated enrollment in classes and development of Chinese education programs. Spanish is also a highly useful language in my opinion-- but compared to Mandarin? :/
Of course the reality is that retention is very poor-- western student retention of Asian languages is very poor, but American retention of 2nd languages is ALSO poor in general. College students may sign up in bulk to take Chinese, but not be motivated enough to master it-- because it's difficult, and primarily because we still got that English to fall back on.
Japan is actually in a very similar boat. English is mandatory and has been for years, but Japan is one of the poorest English-speaking countries in Asia, despite being the wealthiest. More likely,
because it is the wealthiest. When you reach something like the wealth and economic scale of a US or Japan, it's hard to motivate the youth to learn language when most see themselves not needing it to get through life. Those who succeed in picking up a second language are usually driven by fun/interest rather than a sense of urgency.
Ironically, this lethargy is self-feeding. Because people of the 1st and 3rd largest economies in the world suck so hard at learning 2nd languages, the global demand for English and Japanese skills remains so solid. People elsewhere are driven to pick up English or Japanese because they want to do business with those countries-- which in turn makes it less necessary for Americans and Japanese to learn other languages.
Mandarin Chinese is of course, the other language of immense value. I think that the difficulty of acquisition of each of these languages along with the fact that they're all extremely unique from each other puts them on an even higher pedistol. (Japanese and Chinese share no linguistic roots-- the systems of these languages are totally different, and the only transferable skills are the shared Chinese characters, and Japanese having some Chinese loan words as a result).
Getting Chinese, English, and Japanese is a totally different project than adding on other western languages. The difficulty enforces scarcity and further drives demand.
As for myself, I am Fluent in Japanese for all intents and purposes. Despite being from a Japanese background, I'm proud of the fact that I'm self-taught, and that my second language was acquired. I also speak Mandarin Chinese at an intermediate level-- again, despite being of Chinese ancestry as well, it's self-acquired.
Ironically, intermediate Chinese is not all that useful in China when you are a Chinese American-- they look at you and say "Why is your Chinese so AWFUL--!"
(though Japanese people have no expectation for us Japanese Americans to speak Japanese(
BUT intermediate Chinese is pretty useful when you meet a Chinese person in Japan. "OMG 你说中文!!!" (OMG you speak Chinese!!)