Opinion | To fix US-China relations, we must centre the lives of ordinary people
- Travelling to China helps American students appreciate the country’s complexity and share moments of joy with Chinese people
- In-person interactions between Americans and Chinese must be preserved, even and especially as relations between their governments become more tense
In Shanghai, our tour guide had hosted only one other US school group, and she expected to have only one more this year – a marked decline from the 30-plus she booked each year prior to the pandemic. In Guilin, where the iconic mountains, a Unesco World Heritage site, had previously been among the most visited places on Earth, we were allegedly the first American group to visit since the beginning of 2020. Only two more are expected this year.
One hopes these are low estimates and that more have and will come. But there is no denying that the number of Americans travelling to China, which plummeted during the pandemic, has been slow to recover.
With most of the news coverage in both countries focused on macroeconomic and geopolitical issues, little attention is paid to the lives and perspectives of ordinary people. Opportunities to generate empathy are scarce, and the results are increasingly apparent. In US opinion polls, only 15 per cent of respondents viewed China favourably in 2023, down from 53 per cent in 2018, and from 72 per cent in 1989.
