Next, we focus on another potential flash point: Taiwan. The issue features a full video of a panel discussion at Spelman College in Atlanta on Nov. 16 titled “Taiwan as a factor in U.S.-China relations.” The three panelists — Mao Lin from Georgia Southern University, John Wagner Givens from Spelman College, and Yawei Liu from The Carter Center — also provided short summaries of their arguments. Dr. Mao warns against the U.S. drift toward “strategic clarity” regarding Taiwan. Dr. Givens argues that Taiwan, despite its powerful economic and technological successes, is still invisible on the world stage. Dr. Liu writes about the difficulty in maintaining peace and stability between Taiwan and China. He argues that the U.S. should re-emphasize Washington’s long-held position that the U.S. doesn’t support Taiwan independence and that the Taiwan issue should be settled peacefully between China and Taiwan.

John Garver turns to another flashpoint: China-India relations. In an interview with his spouse, our Managing Editor Penelope Prime, he discusses the causes and prospects for India-China relations. And finally, Mary Brown Bullock, the former president of Agnes Scott College and member of the China Research Center’s Advisory Board, introduces her memoir, which chronicles her family’s long engagement with China and “how an American family was affected by China’s civil war, the Korean War, Nixon’s opening, rapprochement, collaboration, and competition.”

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Wu worries about the future of the bilateral relationship, and about his status as a Chinese American at a time when it may not be safe to be one. He hopes for the best but prepares for the worst. He has a plan. In fact, he has three plans – A, B, and C – just in case. These plans consist of staying in the United States, creating different businesses that don’t involve China, or moving his family to a third country that is more open to trade and is friendlier to Chinese Americans.

The rabbit metaphor suggests adaptability, flexibility, persistence, and pragmatism – characteristics that Wu and thousands of Americans display in their dealings in and with China. These smaller businesses may not form the backbone of the commercial relationship, 51 years after President Nixon’s dramatic visit. But they arguably comprise key vertebrae that now support several million jobs in the United States and helped maintain a half-century of now-tenuous peace between nuclear-armed superpowers.

Our Smart Rabbits are not emotionally neutral about current tensions between the United States and China, which include a trade war, bellicose rhetoric, accusations about the origin of the COVID pandemic, alleged slave labor in Xinjiang, many pieces of U.S. legislation seeking to restrain and punish China, “blacklists” of sanctioned people and companies, growing nationalism in China, spy balloons, China’s relations with Russia, moves to force the popular TikTok social media channel to sell to American buyers or shut down in the United States, even threats of war over Taiwan.

These businesspeople overwhelmingly oppose decoupling, or significantly reducing trade between the world’s largest economies. Their solution is to increase trade and people-to-people exchanges with due respect to matters of national security. They want to keep working the trade channels and people-to-people connections while governments work harder on other problems bedeviling the relationship – and there are plenty of them.

These business owners speak of a middle way that deliberately avoids extreme positions: loving China whatever it does, or treating it like an existential adversary, closing national borders and minds to keep goods and people out. Rather, they engage with Chinese customers and suppliers as Americans who follow America’s laws and support American values. They earnestly believe that their engagement with Chinese counterparts improves worker rights and human rights generally by the way they treat their own employees and, if they have them, their Chinese employees. They rightly bristle when referred to as naïve or unpatriotic.

These businesses see two parallel realities. One is that China is uniformly bad and needs to be opposed and separated from. The other is that China is an important trading partner, generator of American jobs, profit center, muse of global competitiveness for American corporations, and indispensable partner for dealing with existential threats facing the world. Today, the dominant narrative is that China is a menace and an implacable adversary. The businesses see this perspective as detrimental to their companies and their desire to see better bilateral relations, or less bad than they are today.

“Bad China” was the target of former President Trump’s tariffs cum trade war and President Biden’s continuation of them despite substantial evidence they do not work as promoted. President Biden admitted as much during the election that put him in the White House. But as of this writing, the tariffs are still on despite reports that they have cost U.S. businesses and consumers $125 billion and counting over three years and increasing by $3 billion each month. Smaller businesses have suffered from the added tariffs more than larger corporations, which have much deeper pockets and myriad ways of making money.

A U.S.-China Middle Way for Smart Rabbits and Their Elected Representatives

The businesspeople who contributed personal reflections for this article share six common perspectives on the need to find a middle ground between the opposites of “Bad China” and “Good China.” 

First is the belief that trade with China is important and that a headlong rush to decouple will damage the economies of both countries and the world. 

Robert Fisch, a business consultant with offices in Florida and Shanghai, said: “A major rupture between these two great powers would be very destabilizing for the world. One of the major concerns is not COVID-19 or trade policy, but rather the war of words, which does not help either side.”

Fisch added: “Look, I’ve lived there for decades. I feel part Chinese. I don’t want bad things to happen.”

George Wang owns a contract manufacturing business based in Oregon and is a native of China. He said: “The U.S. is worried about China’s influence around the world, which in time could change how the influence game is played. I don’t want to see confrontation take place in my lifetime. Mutual understanding should be sought through increased collaboration and communication.” 

Inna Prikhodko, who owns a South Carolina business that helps Chinese hospitals source pharmaceuticals from the United States, said: “I think about this problem all the time. Every year I am still open for business, I am grateful. If President Biden decides not to trade with China, we’ll have to find something else to do.” 

Second is the belief that trade can and must be conducted even amid disagreements about other issues, such as human rights or who has the better political and economic system. A “middle way” is needed that avoids being reflexively for or against the people and leaders of the other country.  

Kimberly Kirkendall, who operates a consultancy in Ohio with clients in China, said: “The labels are extreme. Either you are a pro-China mouthpiece of the Communist Party, or you hate China. The truth is usually in the middle, but it is getting harder to walk the middle. I try.”

Part of trying involves speaking to college students, Kirkendall said. “I want people to think critically. I tell students that the policy of the U.S. government has been to contain China. I ask students to flip that. If China or Russia were saying their goal is to contain the U.S., how would you feel? It’s important to understand the other side of any argument. Challenging our own perspective is largely missing from official discourse, and I’m constantly amazed by the fuzzy thinking I confront.”

Other contributors, including David Mathison, owner of a furniture cover manufacturer in North Carolina, agree about the fuzzy thinking. He said: “There is no way [the U.S. government] could make a case that making leather in China using U.S. materials undercuts the industry in the United States. There is no leather-making industry in the United States. We sell upper-end products, and we can only do that by working in China.” 

Third is a belief that business is a force for good because it strengthens individual relations, improves mutual understanding, and creates broad economic benefits by transacting with others. 

Chinese American business owner Jeff Ji of Philadelphia with clients in China said: “You have to have the fixer, the matchmaker, the cultural translator. Keep trying to build strong relationships. Many of our politicians have never had to make a payroll. They don’t get it. Americans and Chinese have built many useful relationships. It will be a disaster for all of us if they are systematically broken.” 

Fourth is frustration with governments who are overly antagonistic toward each other and largely dismissive or ignorant of the economic and informal diplomatic roles played by smaller companies and their support systems.

Longtime China entrepreneur Mitch Thompson of California is one of the few Americans we talked to who is planning to give up on China after years of working there, learning the language, and marrying a Chinese woman. He said: “In China, the role of the foreigner is not useful anymore. It’s shocking how closed China is right now. It’s much more than COVID. COVID is an excuse.”

Mathison, the furniture covering manufacturer, is one of the few small businesspeople who have testified before Congress. He was dismayed by the experience. “I was totally shocked. The members weren’t really interested in what the answers were. They requested a statement in advance of the hearing, but instead of discussing the points outlined in that statement, they requested it just be read. I was disappointed and disgusted to have to sit through that as an open hearing.”

Fifth is the sense of disappointment bordering on sadness that many of these entrepreneurs feel as they contemplate decades of work learning languages, traveling back and forth — all coming to naught because of geopolitics and extreme attitudes.  

Dan Digree is a loudspeaker maker whose products are now more expensive than foreign competitors because of the Trump-era tariffs. He said: “I’m very disappointed that the Biden administration hasn’t taken time to look at the China trade policy from the perspective of small business. With all the supply chain disruption happening, I’m very angry that the government hasn’t dealt with it or provided any help. The dangerous state of U.S.-China relations is an existential threat to many small businesses.”

Utah businessman Dan Stephenson, a Chinese speaker who wants Utah school kids to study the language, said: “We need a politician who will stand up and say: ‘China has the biggest middle class in the world, and they are ready to buy stuff from our state.’ If state legislators understood more about how China works and could distinguish legitimate concerns from fear-mongering rhetoric, it would be a real boost for both sides.”

Paul Swenson is Asia director for Wisconsin-based AMSOIL Industrial, a maker of lubricants for wind turbines. He said: “The relationship has long periods where things are good followed by periods when they’re not; it is like being married. The current bad patch may be part of this pattern, but it could also signal a change in direction. China is my second home and I’m deeply worried that one day it might not be as welcoming for foreign companies. 

“I believe we Americans must keep a strong hand on what is right and wrong and what our values are. But does it make sense to end our business relationships after we’ve invested so much? Does it make sense to throw money down the drain on tariffs? There must be a better way.” 

Jeanne DeMund, founder of Seattle-based Echo Products, has done business with China for several decades. She observed: “Caving in to China’s demands will not get us anywhere. But we need a calm, reasonable series of interactions to lower the temperature as much as possible. Draw on old relationships that do exist: the NGO relationships, the universities, the diplomatic relationships, the people-to-people relationships. We really need to work this out because it’s in our best interests.” 

Last is a sense of guarded optimism that common sense will prevail, and the two countries will arrive at a place where important areas of bilateral cooperation can coexist with profound disagreements. Should this not be the case, additional homes will be needed for our Smart Rabbits. 

Jacob Cluver, founder of a custom-bred pig company in Illinois, said: “China is at the point where they need to develop outside the big cities and coasts. Rising incomes mean higher demand for better quality food and other goods. It would be foolish for the U.S. to quit China now.” 

David Halm, a project manager for Georgia-based Project Success, said: “I hope to be doing business in China 10 years from now if the governments can figure out how to coexist. I’m optimistic about a change, but it will require strong leadership to find a solution that is best for the American worker and consumer. It has to be more than just a masquerade.” 

Added Robert Fisch, the Florida and Shanghai business consultant: “Things in China tend to happen in waves. China will open, then crack down a bit, then open and then crack down. I’m hopeful that the opening part of the cycle is not too far off in the future. While there is much saber rattling and posturing, I’m still bringing on new clients, including a large online and brick and mortar company for different verticals that just got $400 million of funding.” 

Thomas Biju Isaac, founder of Oregon-based Allied Technologies, said: “I’m an optimist. Things will get better. But we will pivot, doing more automated design and production in the U.S. We expect China and India to grow, even faster than the U.S. – and we’ll be there, too.” 

Jimmy Robinson is a founder of New York-based PingPong Digital, which helps American universities recruit Chinese students. He said: “The instability in the relationship we’re seeing now is likely to be short-lived, as China will likely start to return to more stabilizing policies prioritizing trade and business. They have a lot of optimism and hope. And so do I.

“A major rupture between these two great powers would be very destabilizing for the world. We need more and more, rather than less and less, communication. Active dialogue and engagement rather than just propaganda going back and forth.”  

Robinson added: “A country that is the second largest economy in the world, we will always have a business relationship with China.  I don’t think you can have a complete decoupling. It doesn’t make sense in the board rooms or the legislatures anywhere in the world.” 

Other business owners see the glass as half empty: Business relations will continue at some level, major improvement will not be possible without major changes in both counties. Mitch Thompson, the entrepreneur from California, said: “The magnitude of trade will be enough to hold things together for my business and for many other Americans. But culturally we’ve never been further apart, and I’ve been going there for many years. About the relationship improving, I’m about as hopeful as I am about us having elections in the future without significant violence and chaos. Little hope for improvement with the current regime there, politics here. Very sad.” 

The discovery of a middle way for policymakers is necessary to achieve progress on the diplomatic front. A first step is to realize that radical uncoupling is not desirable or even feasible, then identify and ring-fence those areas where cooperation can flourish. The stories collected for this article include ample examples of poorly conceived policy, especially tariffs, producing poor results.

Recommendations to Help Smart Rabbits

Weeks have passed since Presidents Biden and Xi last talked. Meanwhile, bad blood between the two countries continues to flow. There are steps that should be taken now to ensure that trade and people-to-people relations can continue while larger geopolitical issues play out. Nothing can be taken for granted as the constituencies for even modestly resetting the bilateral relationship remain in the minority.

Direct support for small business

• Lift the tariffs set in place by President Trump. If for some reason the tariffs can’t be lifted, the U.S. should expand the tariff exemption program and make it easier for smaller companies to apply. If an application is denied, the reason should be shared with the business along with advice on how to become eligible. Tariffs disproportionately harm small businesses and lower income people.
• Redouble efforts to boost sales of U.S. products, especially from smaller and minority-owned companies, through China’s $3 trillion per year e-commerce marketplaces.
• Increase support for government programs that help U.S. companies export to China. Encourage the Chinese government to appreciate the role played by U.S. small businesses and their supporting ecosystem in building the bilateral commercial relationship.

Federal policy

• Take small business into account when making trade policy. Carefully listening to their concerns will help avoid polices such as tariffs that inadvertently harm U.S. business. As David Mathison, the North Carolina furniture cover manufacturer said: “Why does the U.S. tariff leather from China when there’s no leather industry in the U.S. to protect?”

-U.S. and Chinese leaders should meet frequently and talk face-to-face about differences. Issuing press statements is no substitute for diplomacy.

• Push China to complete its purchase of U.S. goods under the Phase One Agreement and shift immediately to negotiating a Phase Two involving the removal of structural barriers to trade.

• Create a rapid dispute resolution process that both countries can use. This was envisioned in the Phase One Agreement but never fully implemented.

• Resume and increase people-to-people exchanges as soon possible. Continue to welcome students from China to our college campuses. Many Chinese students contemplating study in the U.S. say they no longer feel welcome and have accepted placements in the UK, Canada, and Australia. The Chinese side needs to reduce ad hominem criticisms of the United States and American culture, realizing that students populate an important bridge between cultures and set the stage for future cooperation.

State policy

• Continue to support small and midsize businesses to do lawful business with China.
• Avoid harmful legislation such as prohibiting the sale of agricultural land to Chinese nationals just because they are Chinese nationals.
• Welcome Chinese students to private and public universities. Resume outward and inward trade missions as soon as possible. Continue to sponsor state trade delegations and welcome Chinese investment that creates jobs.

-Hold regular conversations with Congressional representatives in order to promote balanced and reasonable trade policy with China.

Overcome negative perceptions

• Expand programs for workers and families who have suffered disproportionately from job losses regardless of cause. Improve and expand job training and retraining, which was proposed by the Biden Administration in 2022 but stalled in Congress.
• Make trade and global competitiveness a national priority again instead of a subject to be downplayed or avoided. Work to improve economic literacy in schools so that Americans have an informed foundational knowledge of how the national and world economies work. Critical thinking skills are needed to prevent the pernicious effects of groupthink and the seductive untruths magnified by social media.
• Support immigration reform so that STEM workers can more readily enter the United States. The need for this expertise is widespread and includes many smaller companies that make products to sell to global customers. Congress has kicked this can down the road for years. Now the government wants to provide support for the semiconductor industry but finds we do not have the skilled labor.

• Acknowledge the need for more and smarter diplomacy going forward. Key supply chains involving solar panels and electric vehicles, among other technologies, are controlled by Chinese companies, which have leads of many years. It will not be possible, perhaps for decades, for the United States to become exclusive producers of these components and finished products. California will ban internal combustion car engines by 2035, and China will be needed to provide batteries for replacement vehicles. This requires trade agreements, which would be difficult to negotiate in the diplomatic climate that exists today.
• Continue to push China to level the playing field for foreign businesses by improving market access and limiting distortive industrial policies.

• Narrow the scope of national security issues – on both sides – to avoid unintended consequences to trade and investment. Both governments should also look for areas of cooperation around global public goods such as climate and public health.

Long Night’s Journey into Day

The United States needs to remain engaged with China. In large part, this involves people-to-people contact and the satisfaction that comes from connecting with people different from yourself. Commerce is one way to develop and sustain connections. The exchange of things is an activity that has occupied humans since dim antiquity. Even today, in the most remote corners of the world, people gather at dusty roadsides to buy, sell, and socialize, having figured out systems to weigh, measure, and price. As humans, it’s harder to kill those you do business with, although the old notion that “when goods cross borders armies don’t” has been repeatedly disproved.

Our Smart Rabbits – and their counterparts in China – face challenges everywhere they look. Where will their next metaphorical home be? How will they get there and what will they need to make the journey safely? They have been working on the U.S.-China relationship for half a century, and both countries have been lucky for it. It wasn’t only big government and big American corporations that did the trail-blazing. Thousands of Americans made this journey. Many Chinese have also made their own journeys, navigating a different culture, values, and political system. It is in the interests of both countries to ensure that they do not end up in a dead end.

The post Smart Rabbits: American Small Businesspeople, Trade Wars, and the Future of U.S.- China Relations appeared first on China Research Center.

Washington’s general policy toward the U.S.-China-Taiwan triangle is often called “strategic ambiguity.” By refusing to spell out whether and how America would intervene in a war between China and Taiwan, the U.S. was attempting to deter military conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and protect America from being dragged into a war not on Washington’s own terms. With the rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, the increasingly bipartisan consensus to end U.S.-China engagement, and China becoming more assertive both in its rhetoric and actions toward Taiwan, Washington has seen a growing call to replace strategic ambiguity with strategic clarity. Critics of the former argue that strategic ambiguity can no longer deter China from taking Taiwan by force, and America must clearly make a commitment to defend Taiwan if the island is attacked by mainland China. Unsurprisingly, the proposed shift to strategic clarity has immediately become controversial, as it does not fully explain how this shift can be made considering the long and complicated U.S.-China-Taiwan triangular relations. While strategic clarity has yet to replace strategic ambiguity as Washington’s official stance — notice how the White House tried to assure China that there was no change in America’s Taiwan policy after President Joe Biden’s 2021 statement that America would defend Taiwan should China launch a military attack²—America has increased its support for Taiwan short of supporting the island’s de jure independence through high-profile visits, trade agreements, arms sales, and naval patrols of the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. With Beijing being angered by those moves, policy makers and analysts are rightly concerned that the Taiwan Strait may become a military flashpoint between two nuclear powers. 

The current call for strategic clarity, however, suffers from two flaws. First, critics of strategic ambiguity more or less ignore the historical context of that policy and underestimate its usefulness in maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait. After all, there has been no war between America and China over Taiwan in the past decades despite multiple Taiwan Strait crises. Second, supporters for strategic clarity focus too narrowly on defending Taiwan against a possible Chinese military attack and fail to address the security of Taiwan in the broader context. In other words, the future of Taiwan does not rely exclusively on the military balance across the Taiwan Strait. Rather, it involves complicated historical and political issues, many of which are beyond American control. 

Strategic ambiguity has its origins in the historical context shaped by the Korean War, the two Taiwan Strait Crises in the 1950s, and the Cold War confrontation between America and China. As the historian Nancy Bernkopf Tucker has put it, strategic ambiguity functioned as “an excellent tool of triple deterrence. It protected the United States against demands from and miscalculation by Taiwan and China. China would not seek to capture Taiwan or the offshore islands because it could not know what the United States would do, and Taiwan would not take provocative actions since it could not be certain of U.S. support.”³ Indeed, strategic ambiguity was largely successful in preventing multiple Taiwan Strait crises from escalating into shooting wars between America and China. 

To argue that strategic ambiguity was successful is not to ignore the changed historical context since the 1990s. The rise of China as a major economic and military power certainly has changed the strategic environment of the Taiwan Strait, and critics of strategic ambiguity rightly point out that with China becoming stronger, strategic ambiguity might be understood in Beijing as strategic weakness and thus encourage Beijing to launch a war against Taiwan. This leads us to the second flaw of strategic clarity, that is, America’s policy toward Taiwan must be viewed in the context of broader U.S.-China relations and not purely as a military issue. 

The root problem of the Taiwan issue is the legal status of Taiwan, which is mainly expressed via the so-called One China principle despite the different interpretations of that principle held by Beijing, Washington, and Taipei. Beijing’s stance has been consistent since 1949: Taiwan is part of China and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should be the sole legitimate government of China. Taiwan under the Nationalist rule accepted the One China principle but insisted that the Republic of China was the sole legitimate government. While the call for a de jure independent Taiwan became louder after Taiwan became a democracy, the majority of Taiwanese still prefer maintaining the status quo.⁴ The Nixon administration “acknowledged” the One China principle, although Washington has never accepted that the PRC should be the sole legitimate government of China. While America’s understanding of the One China principle is subject to various interpretations, Washington has been consistent on two points. On the one hand, America has never claimed itself to be the ultimate arbitrator of the Taiwan issue. On the other hand, successive American administrations have insisted that the problem of Taiwan must be solved peacefully. The effectiveness of strategic ambiguity, which continued after the U.S.-China rapprochement, should be measured against this context. A good policy should align means with ends. The goal of America’s Taiwan policy had been deterring a war across the Taiwan Strait, and strategic ambiguity was a sufficient means to achieve that end. Washington has never officially pursued the goal of making Beijing abandon the One China principle, which both sides understand is out of the question. The current call for strategic clarity, if not properly managed, could be constructed as America’s de-recognition of the One China principle. In fact, the recent Taiwan White Paper issued by Beijing already suggested that China now believes America is doing so.⁵

The effectiveness of strategic ambiguity, furthermore, was embedded within the larger U.S.-China relations. History has proven that Beijing and Washington were willing to downplay or postpone the Taiwan issue when the two shared larger common strategic interests. During the U.S.-China rapprochement negotiations, for example, both sides downplayed the Taiwan issue to pursue an anti-Soviet alliance. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai told Henry Kissinger that China did not want to use force to reunite Taiwan with the mainland, although China did not want to see “two Chinas” in the world. Kissinger told Zhou that the Nixon administration was “prepared to begin reducing our other forces on Taiwan as our relations improve” and America would “not [advocate] a ‘two Chinas’ solution or a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ solution.”⁶ The Chinese stance, which did not insist on immediately terminating diplomatic relations between Washington and Taipei and setting a firm timetable for withdrawing American forces from Taiwan, made it possible for the two sides to negotiate a joint communiqué for the anticipated Nixon visit. When Nixon told Zhou that the two sides should refrain from making Taiwan “a big issue” in the next two or three years, Zhou agreed that “we would rather let the question of Taiwan wait for a little while.”⁷ During the normalization negotiations under the Carter administration, Deng Xiaoping told Leonard Woodcock, head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, that “we hope the U.S. will be very cautious and prudent in tackling your relations with Taiwan and will not prevent China from finding a rational and peaceful solution with Taiwan.” Woodcock ensured Deng that America would not try to “fulfill the defense treaty in a different form” by arms sales. Deng agreed that “we can continue to discuss this question later on without affecting the issuance of the [joint] communiqué [on normalization].” Deng hoped that if the issue of arms sale was raised by the American media, “the President will be very vague and ambiguous in answering this question so that no problem will be raised.” He also agreed that China would not contradict American statements that the Taiwan issue would be solved peacefully.⁸ While the anti-Soviet rationale disappeared after the Cold War, both sides continued to believe that the overall relationship was too important to be destroyed by the Taiwan issue. That’s why Beijing and Washington tried to repair relations after each crisis, including Lee Teng-hui’s visit to America, the NATO bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chen Shui-bian’s visit to America, and the mid-air collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet. The George W. Bush administration’s War on Terror provided another rationale to downplay the Taiwan issue in exchange for China’s cooperation. 

America’s strategy to deter a cross-strait war, therefore, worked best when China believed that the overall relationship was on a constructive track. The push toward strategic clarity, especially in the context of the death of engagement, may backfire and force Beijing to accept war as the only option to take Taiwan. Strategic clarity implicitly assumes that China’s use of force against Taiwan is inevitable, unless checked by America. This assumption, however, needs to be further analyzed. Beijing, despite its harsh rhetoric, is fully aware of the domestic and international implications if a war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait. A recent study even suggested that domestic support in China for a war against Taiwan is much lower than the official propaganda assumes.⁹ While it’s difficult to know Beijing’s exact intention, the Chinese perception that America will defend Taiwan and delay unification may force China to risk a war, given the central role of Taiwan in the Chinese nationalism. Moreover, strategic clarity can encourage Taipei to take increasingly provocative actions, thus making war a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of focusing solely on beefing up Taiwan’s defense, therefore, America should continue to engage China to build up constructive relations and shape China’s strategic behavior. Some strategic clarity is needed after all: America should make it clear that America will not be the ultimate arbitrator of the Taiwan issue and it’s not in China’s interests to use force against Taiwan. 

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Taiwan faces a more imminent and credible threat to its existence than almost any country. It may well need both U.S. military support and general global backing to survive. Wars in Ukraine and Israel demonstrate how powerful Western, and especially U.S., assistance can be, and how staunchly the Unites States may support those it deems allies. In any potential conflict with China, Taiwan may have some branding advantage: 65% of respondents had favorable views of Taiwan in an August 2023 Pew Research Center poll. This line of thinking reinforces a common complaint by Taiwanese, that the U.S. only pays attention to Taiwan in terms of its relationship with China. Still, this compares well with other Pew polls which show 83% of Americans with unfavorable views of China. Yet, 91% of Americans view Russia unfavorably and the ongoing example of Ukraine shows that this may have its limits. On diplomatic, cultural, and economic fronts, Taiwan has advantages it can and should press.

Partially, Taiwan’s invisibility comes from the profound disadvantage of not generally being recognized as a country or even a self-governing entity, forcing the expenditure of soft power and resources simply to gain recognition. Some rankings of soft power do not even include Taiwan, which is, in some sense, the ultimate condemnation of its soft power. The Soft Power 30, a report by Portland, a strategic communications consultancy, and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy ranks Taiwan fifth in its Asia Soft Power 10, behind China, Japan, Korea, and even tiny Singapore. The Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index ranks Taiwan 22nd out of 26 in Asia for diplomatic power, arguing its lack of “participation and influence in multilateral forums and organizations” is the low point that drags it down. Yet even in diplomatic matters where Taiwan is at its biggest disadvantage, there are opportunities. With impressions of China having become quickly and dramatically unfavorable in many democracies, Taiwan has a unique opportunity to step into the gap. Confucius Institutes, once common on U.S. campuses as educational and cultural promotion programs, have declined from almost 100 to five as of November 2023. These closures “reduced opportunities for Chinese language learning and China-related cultural and academic programming.” Leveraging its Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices, Taiwan should be doing more to facilitate education and cultural exchange, providing Chinese teachers, support for cultural events, and making itself an alternative destination for study abroad as China has become less popular. Taiwan has strong cultural assets and good timing on its side. This is not the same as getting a seat at the UN or WHO, but it is still an opportunity for Taiwan to expand its soft power and thereby global support.

The Lowy Institute ranks Taiwan 13^th out of 26 on its cultural power, below countries like Russia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This shows how Taiwan has been unable to capitalize on what should be a substantial cultural impact. Taiwanese beef noodle soup and guabao cannot compete in popularity with ramen or tacos, but the global market for bubble tea is worth billions with more than 3,000 bubble tea shops in the U.S. alone. This easily makes it Taiwan’s most popular and profitable cultural export, yet many people in the United States do not associate it with Taiwan. K-Pop devotees can speak at length about their idols’ connections to South Korea, yet even regular consumers are often unaware of the Taiwanese origins of bubble tea.

The Taiwan Creative Content Agency was established in June 2019 and is supervised by the Ministry of Culture. In this respect it lagged the creation of the Korea Creative Content Agency by just over four decades. Taiwan and Taiwanese Americans have had a meaningful impact. Director Ang Lee, Taiwanese American basketball player Jeremy Lin, and singer Jay Chou are all prominent in their fields. Taiwan cannot come close to competing, however, with the dominant trio of East Asia cultural products: Korean pop-music (K-pop), Korean television (K-drama), and Japanese animation, comics, and video games (anime). 

Taiwan’s economy has continued to enjoy relatively rapid and steady growth over the past four decades and its GDP is essentially level with South Korea and Japan on a per capita basis. Yet, the Lowy Institute ranks Taiwan 12th out of 26 in economic relationships. Its score is lowered by a lack of free trade agreements, another result of its difficult diplomatic status. Despite its very real economic success and importance in global trade, Taiwan lacks the hyper-modern glitzy veneer that K-pop, K-drama, and anime have provided Korea and Japan, or the wide brand recognition of their biggest companies.

By market capitalization Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) is larger than any non-American company bar Saudi-Aramco, making it bigger than China’s Tencent, South Korea’s Samsung, or Japan’s Toyota. Yet, it has nothing like the brand or name recognition of these companies. In part, this is due to a low-profile business model focused on making chips for other better-known brands. People recognize the name Samsung on their phone and associate it with Korea. They might recognize that the chip inside is branded as Qualcomm, a San Diego based chip designer, but they are unlikely to know that it was made by TSMC in Taiwan. Initially, this was part of Taiwan and TSMC’s strategy to make themselves indispensable as the manufacturer for chip designers — especially American — rather than competitors to them. Similarly, the Taiwanese company Foxconn produces 70% of iPhone shipments for Apple, but their name is hardly recognized. The founders of TSMC and Foxxcon, Morris Chang and Terry Guo, are well known in Taiwan, but are hardly global household names on par with Zuckerberg, Gates, Musk, Jobs, or Bezos.

 This vital but business-to-business focused economy means that the average global citizen does not see Taiwan in the devices and brands they so strongly identify with. According to Theodora Ting Chau and other scholars, another part of the low profile of Taiwanese brands may be associated with the Chinese practice of dividing assets between heirs (coparcenary). Historically, this led to a lack of emphasis on developing a valuable brand which could not be easily split. By contrast, the style of inheritance practiced in Japan and Korea (primogeniture) led to an emphasis on the value and continuity of a brand. This is why so many of the world’s oldest companies today are famously Japanese. It also helps explain why even though the economies and exports of greater China (comprising the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) are much larger, far more Japanese and Korean brands are global household names: Sony, Uniqlo, Seiko, Hitachi, Canon, Asics, Nissan, Toshiba, Panasonic, Yamaha, Subaru, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, and LG.

Despite tremendous economic success and substantial cultural offerings, Taiwan remains the almost invisible almost country.  This seems to be partly by design, as with TSMC, and partly due lack of emphasis, for example a lack of government backing for Taiwanese cultural exports. There is, however, no time like the present. If relations between China and the world’s democracies continue to sour, there will be a China-sized hole to be filled, from manufacturing to Chinese language and culture. Film, TV, music, and education could all offer opportunities for Taiwan to highlight its open and democratic values and respect for human rights. In a neat illustration of this conundrum, Taiwan’s government claims it ranked seventh in the world and first in Asia according to the U.N.’s Gender Inequality Index. Yet, the claim and underlying data are provided directly by Taiwan’s government because the U.N. cannot include Taiwan. If Taiwan can enhance its global reach, it has a compelling story to tell.

The expansion of soft power will not immediately secure a seat at the U.N. or WHO, but it can increase global awareness and support for Taiwan’s unique position on the world stage. Taiwan’s successes — from democracy to bubble tea to semiconductors — indicate potential pathways for it to assert its identity. By weaving these threads together, Taiwan can enhance its global narrative and become more visible in a way that would not only help it claim its place in the international community but continue to exist.

The post Taiwan Symposium: Taiwan, the Almost Invisible Not Quite Country appeared first on China Research Center.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel. The U.S. has been providing military support to Tel Aviv for decades and is an unwavering supporter for Israel’s current war to uproot Hamas in Gaza Strip. The U.S. has deployed aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf and bombed a few targets in Syria that are supported by Iran. 

While American leaders are busy dealing with wars that may engulf regional peace and prosperity, they have a bigger concern over the likelihood of another war: a war with China over Taiwan in the coming years. If China decides to use force to stop Taiwan from becoming independent, in the words of President Biden, the U.S. will intervene militarily. And if this is the case, the world will see destruction of lives and property, ruin of the economy and disintegration of the international institutions on an unprecedented scale.

For China, Taiwan is the final missing piece of its glorious rise

Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Qing Court after it was defeated by the Japanese in 1895. It was returned to the Republic of China (ROC) at the end of World War II. However, Chiang Kai-shek quickly lost his control of the mainland and the ROC moved to Taiwan in 1949. At the time, Mao Zedong and his lieutenants thought seizing Taiwan was going to be easy. Shortly after declaring the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao ordered his People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to cross the ocean and seize one of the offshore islands, Jinmen. To the shock of Mao, Chiang’s troops managed to annihilate the landing PLA forces. At the time, this seemed to be a temporary setback. The PLA nursed its wounds and trained for a bigger attack on Taiwan.

The outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, led to the deployment of the U.S. 7^th Fleet in the Taiwan Strait and the timetable of “liberating” Taiwan had to change. Mao tried in 1955 to seize the offshore islands to test U.S. resolve in defending Taiwan. Not only did President Eisenhower secure a Taiwan Resolution from Congress, but the U.S. eventually signed a Mutual Defense Treaty with ROC. After a massive bombardment of Jinmen in 1958, Mao never again attempted to seize Taiwan. China had to deal with more pressing domestic and international challenges.

When the U.S. was bogged down in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, President Nixon came up with the idea of using China to facilitate the American withdrawal and countering Moscow at the same time. China was happy to play along but had one demand. The U.S. had to acknowledge Taiwan was part of China. Americans reluctantly met this demand:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.        

This position was repeated in the following Normalization Communiqué and the August 17 Communiqué. The U.S. abolished its defense treaty with the ROC and withdrew all its forces but continued to sell arms to Taiwan. The American obligation to the ROC was also codified in The Taiwan Relations Act.

Since Mao died in 1976, his successors, from Hua Guofeng to Hu Jintao, all vowed to resolve the Taiwan issue while in office, but none was able to. Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 and like all his predecessors, he declared that the resolution of the Taiwan issue cannot be dragged on forever. He might have won support for extending his leadership beyond two terms by promising to resolve the Taiwan issue during his tenure. On August 22, 2022, the PRC issued a white paper entitled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.” It declares:  

Over its 5,000-year history, China has created a splendid culture that has shone throughout the world from past times to present, and has made an enormous contribution to human society. After a century of suffering and hardship, the nation has overcome humiliation, emerged from backwardness, and embraced boundless development opportunities. Now, it is striding towards the goal of national rejuvenation. The journey ahead cannot be all smooth sailing. However, as long as we Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits devote our ingenuity and energy to the same goal, let there be no doubt — we will tolerate no foreign interference in Taiwan, we will thwart any attempt to divide our country, and we will combine as a mighty force for national reunification and rejuvenation. The historic goal of reuniting our motherland must be realized and will be realized.

For the U.S., Taiwan is a killer weapon to contain China

U.S. policy toward Taiwan has evolved over the years. In the years of the Chinese civil war, Washington decided not to intervene but had provided large quantities of weaponry to the Nationalist (KMT) forces. Seeing the CCP was poised to win, President Truman opted for the “dust to settle” approach. The Korean War militarized the American position in Asia and Taiwan eventually became an ally just like Japan. The 1955 and 1958 offshore island crises hardened the U.S. will to defend Taiwan until President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972.

While both the Shanghai and Normalization Communiqués highlighted American “interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves,” President Reagan circulated a six assurances memo that was recently declassified. These six assurances are:

1. The United States would not set a date for termination of arms sales to Taiwan.
2. The United States would not alter the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act.
3. The United States would not consult with China in advance before making decisions about United States arms sales to Taiwan.
4. The United States would not mediate between Taiwan and China.
5. The United States would not alter its position about the sovereignty of Taiwan which was, that the question was one to be decided peacefully by the Chinese themselves, and would not pressure Taiwan to enter into negotiations with China.
6. The United States would not formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.     

President Bill Clinton sent two aircraft carrier groups into the Taiwan Strait during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996 when China launched missiles into waters very close to Taiwan after Lee Teng-hui visited Cornell University. However, during his visit to China in 1998, Clinton issued the so-called “three no’s” policy on Taiwan, i.e. the U.S. would not support Taiwan independence; it would not support one China, one Taiwan; and it would not support Taiwan representation in international organizations where statehood is a requirement. 

President George W. Bush began his tenure by violating the taboo of strategic ambiguity on how the U.S. would react if China used force against Taiwan. In an interview at the Rose Garden, he said the United States would do “whatever it took” to defend the island if it were ever attacked by China.  When he was asked if the United States has an obligation to defend Taiwan, he replied, “Yes, we do, and the Chinese must understand that.” This ominous change was interrupted by the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign after the 9/11 attacks. 

Despite regular complaints over U.S. sales of arms to Taiwan, the U.S. largely stayed within the boundary of the one-China policy until Donald Trump came along. Even before he was inaugurated, Trump took a call from ROC President Tsai Ing-wen. From 2017 through 2021, Congress and the executive branch of the U.S. government worked separately to erode the essence of the one-China policy. 

The Biden administration has not stemmed the erosion of the one-China policy. He sent a high-level delegation of former senior government officials and former members of Congress to Taipei to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act. He publicly declared that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China used force against Taiwan. He did not try to stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from visiting Taipei. His top military commanders keep testifying and saying that China would launch a war against Taiwan as early as 2025. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s refusal to condemn it have created pressure on the administration to officially drop the strategy of ambiguity and to provide more support to Taiwan to deter Beijing from going to war to absorb Taiwan. U.S. naval ships have resumed crossing the Taiwan Strait. President Tsai Ing-wen was allowed to visit multiple U.S. cities and met with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. While this is yet to be Washington’s official policy, more and more American elites are pushing for the U.S. to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. A new consensus seems to be emerging in the American decision-making circles: Taiwan is a democracy, a high-tech hub, and a military asset and it has to be defended at all costs. Its loss to China would enable China to edge the U.S. out of the Western Pacific.

How to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait and stop a war between the U.S. and China

At the summit outside San Francisco on November 15, 2023, President Xi told President Biden that the Taiwan issue is the most vital and sensitive issue in U.S.-China relations. Washington should turn its non-support of Taiwan independence into concrete actions by not arming Taiwan and being supportive of China’s quest for peaceful unification.

In response, President Biden said America’s “one China policy has not changed.”  He reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, that U.S. expects cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.  

Maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is a tall task because each of the three sides defines the status quo differently and does different things to maintain it. Furthermore, each side believes in its own righteousness and blames others for any mishaps. Nonetheless, all sides should do everything politically possible to prevent the Taiwan issue from dragging them into a war that will end decades of economic growth and prosperity and plunge all sides into an abyss of destruction.

There is no doubt that Xi Jinping wants to resolve the Taiwan issue during his tenure, with no foreseeable end. It could be 2035, which is 12 years from now. But he also knows the following: 

1. The Chinese military is not ready, and there is no certainty it can win such a war in a very short time. 
2. The Chinese people may not support a long and costly war on Taiwan. 
3. The U.S. and its allies will not remain idle when China decides to use force. 
4. All economic gains of the past 45 years would evaporate as soon as he orders the PLA to seize Taiwan. 
5. The best way to resolve the Taiwan issue is for Taiwan and its proud people to voluntarily submit to one China, and it will take time to accomplish this.

But Xi Jinping will not tolerate Taiwan becoming independent under his watch. He will risk war if that happens, and he may be able to rally the nation at least for a short period of time. He can afford severe losses in both lives and property on the mainland, but Taiwan will become a ruin, and the U.S. and some of its allies may also suffer tremendous losses. Therefore, neither Taiwan nor the U.S. should give Xi Jinping an excuse to go war.

It is easy for Taiwan not to give Xi such an excuse. Taiwan has managed to do that for more than four decades by exchanging national sovereignty for peace, prosperity, and global respect.

It is much harder for the U.S. to do this. First, the U.S. will never stop selling arms to Taiwan. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American leaders feel that it is even more urgent to continue arming Taiwan. Second, the U.S. has promised not to mediate between Taipei and Beijing. Third, given the current fierce rivalry between the U.S. and China, it is almost unthinkable for the U.S. to encourage Taiwan to negotiate with the mainland. Fourth, there are growing numbers of American elites who believe provoking China to go to war on Taiwan serves American national interests for obvious reasons. 

Taiwan is a trump card that Washington can play effectively in its effort to win the race against China, but is it worth going to war with China over an island so far away? At the time of confronting two regional wars that require tremendous American moral and material investment, is the U.S. ready to provoke China into opening a much larger and dangerous front? If the answer is no, what could the U.S. do?

Easy and simple: President Biden and his successors can emphasize to President Xi Jinping and his successors that Washington does not support Taiwan independence and that the Taiwan issue requires Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to resolve it peacefully. What the U.S. opposes is unilateral and violent change of status quo in the Taiwan Strait.  Furthermore, the U.S. will not abandon strategic ambiguity nor endorse the idea that Taiwan is an unsinkable aircraft carrier. In other words, Taiwan is not Ukraine. The American messaging before the crucial 2024 Taiwan election should be: the U.S. does not have a favorite candidate, but it supports a candidate who is best equipped to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Xi Jinping told Biden during the San Francisco summit that China will be unified, and unification of China is inevitable (中国终将统一，也必然统一). Well, the American response to this inevitability claim should be: Washington supports the glorious goal of eventual unification but it will and must police the process. 

Chinese people on both sides of the Strait would be forever grateful for the U.S. to take this firm stand. 

The post Taiwan Symposium: The Road to Peacefully Resolving the Taiwan Issue appeared first on China Research Center.

PP:  What are the main causes of poor relations between China and India?

India and China have profoundly different views of history. China views the vast Tibetan region as “part of China.”  The Mongol Yuan Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty that ruled China from 1279–1368 and 1644-1911 respectively, adopted Tibetan Buddhism as their state religion and dispatched priests to guide and instruct China’s emperor and imperial state. Thus, Tibet’s relations with imperial China were in some ways closer than China’s relations with other mere tributary states like Korea, Vietnam, or Thailand.  

In contrast, India views Tibet as part of a deeply rooted Indian sphere of influence, seized by China with great violence and cruelty after 1949. India is very aware of the cruelty of Chinese post-1950 rule in Tibet. Jawaharlal Nehru accepted Beijing’s proposition in 1954 that Tibet was part of China but expected that Beijing would reciprocate this Indian concession by ceding a more generous position on the border issue. This turned out to be a serious miscalculation. Even while negotiating the normalization of India-China relations, China was building a motor road across the Aksai Chin plateau on the India-Tibet border claimed by China. China’s 1962 month-long but powerful war, or “lesson,” with India, reinforced the Indian view that China was a duplicitous power that repaid generosity with aggression.  

PP: What is behind the India-China border dispute? Why is the border a source of conflict?

JG: First, there is no clearly defined and mutually agreed upon border between China and India. Since 1960, China has resolved territorial disputes with all its neighbors other than India and Bhutan. Between China and India, however, eight decades of negotiations have yet to resolve the issue.  

Second, in the eastern section of the India-China border east of Bhutan, China claims that the traditional and legal boundary between China and India lies along the southern foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, nearly to the Brahmaputra River and encompassing virtually the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. India, for its part, claims that the traditional boundary in this sector corresponds to the watershed crestline of the Himalayan Mountains.

Third, west of Arunachal Pradesh is a narrow southern pointing salient of Chinese-controlled territory terminating near Yadong. From Yadong, it is only a short distance to the wide flatlands of north India. Siliguri, in West Bengal, constitutes the major transport corridor in this area, and this route offers the shortest passage through the entire Himalayan range. In wartime, Chinese forces advancing south from Tawang east of Bhutan and from Yadong west of Bhutan could cut off northeastern India from the Indian heartland. 

PP:  Do you see any progress toward resolution of this China-India conflict?

JG: Unfortunately, I do not. Under Xi Jinping, China’s foreign policy has been inspired by the idea that the United States is a declining hegemonic power that will be replaced by China, which is quickly reestablishing itself in its historical and well-deserved position as the dominant power in Asia. This vision of a Chinese-engineered new world order is linked to the growth of Chinese influence all around India, to the north, south, east, and west.   

In addition, China’s mastery of modern transportation technology overcame the tyranny of difficult terrain and great distance that for millennia had rendered almost impassable large-scale movement of people and goods over the Tibet-Himalaya massif. Over the past several decades, in both Pakistan and Myanmar, China has designed, financed and built ever more robust networks of modern ports connecting Indian Ocean ports to Chinese industrial centers. 

This package of transport technology includes: high-speed limited-access highways, railways including relatively straight alignment of rail lines and roads made possible by frequent use of bridges and tunnels, pipelines that carry petroleum from foreign oil fields to refineries in China, and deep and commodious harbors on global seas with containerized cargo. Also important was the development of techniques for constructing stable rail lines over permafrost soil that softened in summer in Tibet if not in Myanmar or Pakistan. Critical technology in overcoming permafrost came from Canada in the 1970s. Modifications in the design of internal combustion engines for operation at oxygen-thin high altitudes were also important and were learned from Canada and Russia. 

PP:   How does China’s growing role in the Indian Ocean relate to this?

JG:  For most of the last thousand years, China was ruled by non-Chinese horse-riding ethnicities (Kitan, Jurchen, Mongol, and Manchu) from the steppes of inner Asia and for whom the world’s oceans were alien. Nevertheless, even during those periods, Chinese junks with Chinese officers and crews carried on a large and valuable trade with lands to the west along what is now often called “maritime silk roads.” However, with a few exceptions, China’s navy did not venture beyond China’s East Asian coastal waters. Even when Japanese pirates raided China’s coastal areas during the Ming-Qing interregnum, China’s naval forces did not venture too far to sea to challenge those Japanese marauders.  

Coastal defense was the preferred Chinese strategy, even to the extent of relocating the Chinese population inland, making them less tempting and vulnerable to pirate raids. Even when European warships and globe-traveling merchant vessels pressed in on China in the 19^th century, China’s Manchu rulers deemed those maritime barbarians less dangerous than the more familiar inner Asian potential marauders. Granting such barbarians some jurisdiction over foreign trade in clearly defined extraterritorial zones was well within China’s traditional barbarian-handling techniques.

That strategy backfired when applied to British, French, or American navies. During the two Opium Wars of the mid-19^th century, British cannon and ship design were vastly superior to Chinese warships. Only very late in the 19^th century did China begin efforts to develop modern naval power. Japanese, American, or Soviet Russian navies dominated the Western Pacific during the long period of China’s “national humiliation.” It was only in 1985 that Chinese warships (a squadron of two destroyers and a supply ship) entered the Indian Ocean. The last previous Chinese warships to enter the Indian Ocean had been in 1432.

Today, there are dozens of Chinese warships and submarines in the Indian Ocean and beyond. China now rivals the U.S. in naval power and boasts of the world’s largest navy.

PP: How do you think these issues will play out going forward?

JG: Russia was an important supporter of India during the Cold War. Today, during the post-cold War era, India does not want to see Russia join China in trampling on Indian interests. However, that is what is happening, especially with Russian support of China’s rise as a naval power. 

The world has changed dramatically from the Indian perspective, and not in a good way. With Russia tightly connected with China, India’s options are limited. 

The post China-India Relations: An Interview with Dr. John Garver appeared first on China Research Center.

Childhood diaries, letters, personal memories, and historical documents animate this account. I begin with the late l940s Huaihai battle and my paternal grandfather’s last time in China. As he wrote, “It was a night to be remembered, for it was old Suchow’s last night of freedom.” Suchow, today Xuzhou, becomes a metaphor for old and new China. Although I grew up – in Japan and Korea – with tales of Xuzhou I never dreamed that I would eventually go there or reprise my grandmother’s educational work when, in 2012, I became vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in the same Chinese province.

The role of education and the changing roles of Chinese and American intellectuals are at the heart of this narrative. In the mid-1970s, Chinese were just reemerging from isolation and were eager to learn from Western colleagues. I remember my first Chinese natural scientist, Ku Kung-shu of the Institute of Geophysics, answering a Mayflower Hotel waitress’s dessert query on his first night back in the United States, “Apple pie, apple pie à la mode. I have waited decades for a piece of American apple pie.” Ku then proceeded to spend a month showing his younger colleagues American advances in earthquake prediction.

Chinese scholars were so excited to be in America. Every aspect – from growing corn to extracting oil to manufacturing high technology — was to be studied for how China could adopt the American way. I was, nonetheless, surprised when Chinese students – at first by the thousands and even today by the hundreds of thousands – sought out freedom, sought out American universities. They also saw the downsides of our society even as many elected to become part of our community.

Americans were also eager to learn what Chinese archives, society, and polity would show about the world’s largest developing country. American sinologists – John Fairbank, Doak Barnett, Frederic Wakeman, Michael Oksenberg, and Ezra Vogel, naming just a few who have now passed on – were all involved in the first decades of re-establishing ties with China. From them, I learned how much we did not know and how to make sure future generations – their students – were never again in the dark.

I write about the extended trajectory of America’s diplomatic, economic, and strategic role in China. Through it all, cultural relations were seen as drawing the two societies together. But political obstacles still intruded, nothing more destabilizing than that of Taiwan’s status. Early on, in 1974, the Chinese seismology delegation walked out of a Denny’s restaurant in protest of a Taiwanese flag on the menu masthead. Taiwan was always brought up in Chinese briefings and I have never known a Chinese citizen who has not agreed with the government’s dictum that Taiwan is a part of China. I realize the power of the Taiwan issue to China and the conundrum it presents to American policy makers. This is but one area in which the values of the two societies functioned differently. As this account makes clear, the difficulties between the two societies were present from the very beginning.

The changing role of Chinese intellectuals, about which I write a lot, is an interest which dates back to graduate school papers on the May 4th revolution. I had no idea then that the quintessential wealthy Rockefeller family would become so important to my understanding of education, Chinese intellectuals, and philanthropy. From early in the 20^th century, Rockefeller and the Rockefeller Foundation believed that Chinese scientists were to be citizens of the world, and they never forgot. In this case, following American medicine in China was to follow Chinese education and intellectuals through the thick and thin times of this era. Chinese intellectuals who wrestled with the complexities of American influence became my guides to China itself. I began by studying their articles in the l970s and continued with personal interviews in the l980s and ever since. The journey that I traveled with them, across many regions of China, led to the surprising discovery that the American influence was enduring. This is an essential part of my world outlook today.

As a university leader – at Agnes Scott College, Emory University, and Duke Kunshan University – I had the opportunity to see how China’s education system is always changing. For example, faculty autonomy and academic freedom are discussed but are understood quite differently than in the United States. At Duke Kunshan I did discover how difficult it was to join the missions of three very different sponsors – an American university, a Chinese city, and a Chinese university. One example will suffice – from the world of branding no less. How do you create a new identity for a joint-venture American and Chinese university? My young Chinese staff finally came up with a color-coded solution: Duke was bright blue, Kunshan was light green, and Wuhan was dark green. But even the colors never merged.

Throughout the decades since Nixon “opened” China, American organizations – from the Ford Foundation to Yale-China to the China Medical Board and many others – wanted to return to China. I say “return” because so many had a previous mission in China. I was on the boards of these organizations and write about how much they struggled to reenter China and then to stay involved. But today both countries have changed and perhaps seek to go their own way. U.S.-China relations will persist but look different in the future.

I am grateful that the China Research Center has included my book in its series on China-related memoirs and that Hanchao Lu, its director, has contributed a preface.

This book is available both from the publisher, Xlibris, or Amazon.

The post China on My Mind: A Memoir appeared first on China Research Center.