The now ceased-China Initiative ushered in the resurgence of questioning the loyalty of foreign scientists and scholars. And similar to past outcomes, the U.S. has lost many brilliant minds that were working to contribute to the global good at our companies and universities.

U.S. and Chinese officials have grown accustomed to barbed exchanges in the public forum. It would seem that the minds of the two nations are diverging to opposing extremes. While a U.S.-China schism is undeniable, the world of academia is operating at a different wavelength than their government counterparts.

Not all conflict can be avoided through better understanding, but promoting cultural exchange is a great place to start mending relations. And as China-U.S. relations spiral, promoting study abroad opportunities, many seeking to return to normal after the pandemic, is perhaps more important than ever before.

Given the credibility problem of colonial powers, allegations about Chinese “genocide” in boarding school education are not worth a dime. The central government deserves praise, not slander, for ensuring the right to education in rural areas of Tibet and elsewhere.

The news of Shinzo Abe’s assassination rocked the world for a brief moment, and opened the doors for some unseemly reactions from China’s public, but within the context of Sino-Japanese history one may have expected worse.

A great deal of America’s public diplomacy can be traced back to the government, so why is there such a stigma about Confucius Institutes?

Twenty-five years on from Hong Kong’s handover to China, the special administrative region undoubtedly still has a role to play still in mediating Sino-American relations.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken should have followed the example of the UN’s top official for human rights by making a visit of his own, instead of blindly repeating the slanders and hype of his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. That would have built Blinken’s image as a responsible diplomat.

The changing demographics of China may seem like an internal issue, but in today’s globalized world, a struggling China would mean the entire planet would suffer.

Antony Blinken may have coined the term “asymmetric decoupling” in his recent speech on the Biden administration’s China policy. The formerly abstract term seems to be the perfect way to describe China’s goal of becoming independent from the West while increasing the West’s dependence on China, a strategy that dates back to Emperor Qianlong’s time.