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U.S. & China: Official Relations Hot and Cold, but Warmer Person-to-Person.



By Michelle Phipps-Evans


Above: (L-R) Former Gonzaga College High School students, Nicholas Evans and Alexander Zelloe, pose with their classmate Jordan Wallace at Dulles Airport after they returned from their first visit to Beijing, China, in 2010.

Average Chinese and American citizens seem much friendlier toward each other than do government and political leaders of both nations. That’s the news coming from a survey released by the Committee of 100, the New York City-based nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of prominent Chinese Americans.

So just what is the state of official relations between the United States and China? Complicated, yes. Schizophrenic, yes. Good one day, frosty the next. Meanwhile, political leaders in both Washington and Beijing get significant mileage out of criticizing each other’s nation.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney charges China is “a cheater” on the world economy, making it a major part of his campaign as he hopes it will resonate with American voters. President Obama’s campaign has attacked Romney for supposedly outsourcing jobs to China, and the president announced a World Trade Organization case against China's subsidies on auto parts exports. Visiting China in September, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a serious snub when Vice President Xi Jinping, about to take over from President Hu Jintao, cancelled a meeting without notice.

Newspapers are filled with stories about trade antagonisms. Increasingly, China and the U.S. find themselves on opposite sides of critical situations in world hotspots, including Iran and Syria. And China has bluntly warned America to stay out of its escalating clash with other Asian nations over control of the seas in the region.

It’s not all bad, though. For example, U.S Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping both stated during the Secretary’s recent visit to Beijing that plans are underway to increase cooperation between the two nations’ militaries.

Now a survey from Committee of 100 suggests familiarity may, in the case of these two cultures, breed cordiality in a person-to-person context. It seems, the report concludes, that the citizens with the warmest, most positive views of the other country are those who have actually visited it and met its people.

“Interaction between the two peoples creates a better relationship,” said Charlie Woo, a member of Committee of 100. “For those [Americans] who have visited China, their impression is overwhelmingly more favorable, and for Chinese who come here, most have favorable opinions.”

The Committee’s 2012 U.S.-China Public Opinion Perceptions Survey shows that 55 percent of the general American public views China favorably, a three percent increase from 2007, the last time the survey was done. About 59 percent of Chinese people view America favorably.

There seems to be a disconnect between what average people think, however, and what American government and business leaders think the public believes. Business leaders and policymakers were polled separately on how the U.S. views China, and the results show that people in business or government have skewed views of the publics’ attitudes. Business leaders think only 20 percent of the U.S. public holds a favorable view of China. Policymakers say 17 percent. Both are substantially low estimations.

Perhaps those business and policy folks should talk with Nicholas Evans and Alexander Zelloe.

In 2010,as Gonzaga College High School juniors in Washington, D.C., Evans and Zelloe were part of a group of students from the Catholic school who visited Beijing. It was part of a Chinese Bridge Summer Language Camp, hosted by the Confucius Institute at George Mason University in Virginia. The two local students traveled with over 200 students from across the U.S. who were learning Chinese in high school. Neither Evans nor Zelloe has Chinese ancestry.

“I can say my view on Chinese people as a whole definitely changed,” said Evans, 19, now a sophomore at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. “Before, I thought all the structure made them all kind of stiff and no fun, but they do the things that people in America enjoy too.”

The students visited the Beijing Zoo, the Olympic Village, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Shaolin Vocational-Technical College in the Henan province. For many, this was a first visit.

“The perspective and perceptions I have about the people and the culture are completely different than those who have never experienced the Eastern culture,” Zelloe said. “The way the Chinese think is something that one must get accustomed to, and the only way one will understand this is by traveling and experiencing their culture and lifestyle firsthand.”

Zelloe, now a sophomore at Virginia Technical University, has returned to China twice since that initial visit. The experience of these young men underscores the findings of the Committee of 100 survey.

The Committee’s Charlie Woo said on The Tavis Smiley Show that political and business circles may be supporting false perceptions for domestic political expediency, underestimating the true nature of relations between China and the United States.

“Only five percent of Americans think of China when we mentioned the word, ‘trade deficit,’” said Woo, also a co-founder and chief executive of Megatoys, a toy manufacturer in California and Hong Kong. “There are lots of good feelings in the U.S-China relationship.”

As a “mirror,” the survey also measures Chinese attitudes toward America on key issues in U.S.-China relations, as well as major domestic issues in both countries. People who participated in the survey in both countries were from the general public and from the ranks opinion leaders, while business leaders were also sampled in the U.S.

Other findings from American and Chinese respondents confirm the perception that China is emerging as a global superpower with expanding influence in the global economy. The Chinese public has growing confidence about China’s status, but the American public and policymakers have strong concerns and suspicions regarding China’s future economic and military roles.

The two countries are almost evenly divided on the level of trust toward each other. But they hold differing views and values on a range of complex issues, from the pursuit of personal goals to national policy. Compared to 2007, an increasing proportion of the American public accepts China as a rising power and wants a collaborative relationship. However, a growing percentage of the Chinese public believes the United States is trying to prevent China from becoming a great power.

Citizens on both sides of the Pacific are skeptical about their own governments’ handling of the bilateral relationship. Both sides also harbor doubts about their national media regarding the reliability of reporting about each other’s country.

Jobs and the economy are top U.S, concerns, followed by the budget deficit, campaign finance and political gridlock. The Chinese public’s top domestic concern is corruption. Chinese business leaders cite HIV and communicable diseases as a challenge, and Chinese opinion leaders identify morality issues and relations with Taiwan as major concerns.

Formed in the early 1990s, the Committee of 100 was created to encourage constructive relations between the people of the United States and Greater China, and to promote the full participation of Chinese Americans in all fields of American life.

The Confucius Institute at Mason is a partnership among the university, Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) and Beijing Language and Culture University, which offers educational programs about Chinese language and culture.

 

More information on the survey can be found at http://survey.committee100.org/



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