China’s Changing Views of America: Insights and Obstacles

Crucial to a constructive U.S.-China relationship is an accurate accounting of how the two countries perceive one another. Over the past 30 years China’s America-watching community has grown in size and sophistication. Their evolving studies of the United States continually help to shape the Chinese public’s understanding of America.

On November 9, the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings and the U.S.-China Education Trust co-hosted a discussion on China’s changing views of America. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tsinghua University’s Center for U.S.-China Relations, commissioned by the U.S.-China Education Trust (USCET), recently released two studies, both of which reveal great strides in understanding as well as lingering misapprehension within the field. This panel brought together prominent scholars from the PRC, Hong Kong and the United States to discuss the political dimension of Chinese perceptions of the United States.