US and China must bring back constructive people-to-people exchanges
- Amid US-China tensions, as intercultural exchanges and academic exchanges drop off, constructive dialogue between the two peoples is needed more than ever
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Relations between these two most powerful nations in the world are at a recent low. In the last six years, anti-China rhetoric rooted in American political fevers has left many peace-loving Chinese-Americans facing scorn, even violence, from fellow Americans.
One of the strongest advocates of building international respect through academic interrelationships was the devout Christian scholar Ernest Boyer. A former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr Boyer felt he could promote peace by working against suspicions through respectful academic exchanges.
As US-Chinese diplomatic relations continued to normalise, then-president George Bush took a long-term, hopeful approach by sending a “special envoy” to China after the pro-democracy movement ended in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Later, president Bill Clinton declared the US and China strategic partners, and promoted global academic and educational exchanges. These helped many Americans and Chinese learn more about each other.
We know this because one of us (van Gorder) spent nine years as a professor of American history and literature at Yunnan University between 1989 and 1998, living in Kunming – which is home to one of the brightest moments of American-Chinese partnership, when the American “Flying Tigers” led by Texas pilot Claire Chennault fought alongside Chinese pilots against Japanese fascist imperialism.
Global educational and academic exchanges are precious. We are grateful for and have benefited from the academic exchange agreements between the US and China. Unfortunately, recent political diatribes have brought most of these partnerships to a close.
America and China need to return to the promotion of people-to-people exchanges.
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Xenophobic politicians may find a ready audience when they scapegoat China and promote the notion that Chinese workers are the enemies of American workers. But most of the jobs lost in America’s rust-belt regions – such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – were the result of neo-liberal policies of economic globalisation, which led to the erosion of our industrial infrastructure.
But it is much easier to just blame China for all our problems. Ironically, the US was fine when China concentrated on labour-intensive, low-end manufacturing, and only became concerned when China turned to state-sponsored economic policies focusing on hi-tech developments.
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Of course, American geopolitical issues must always protect the needs and objectives of Americans. But none of us benefit when fearmongers predict a war between our nations. American military leaders must not be naive and must prepare for any and all possibilities – but there’s no place for a brinkmanship that relishes the inevitability of such a war.
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Clearly, China and the US have very distinct views about human rights based on historically variant social and cultural values. The public shaming and blaming of a China framed as a backward civilisation in terms of moral rectitude only invites it to look at how America has oppressed our citizens of colour, women and Native Americans, across the complex march of our national development.
Dr Xin Wang is an associate professor of China Studies, director of Asian and African languages, and director of Asian Studies in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Baylor University in Texas, US
A. Christian van Gorder is an associate professor of world religions and Islamic studies in Baylor University’s Religion Department
