Team members of the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) recently presented findings from several of the lab’s research projects at forums and meetings with policy and academic communities in Washington, D.C. Their activities included a joint symposium with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a presentation at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and meetings with think tanks and Congress members. These policy engagements are supported by a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies grant.

SNAPL, which is housed at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), is led by sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, a senior fellow at FSI, and the director of APARC and the Korea Program. SNAPL is committed to generating evidence-based policy recommendations and promoting transnational collaboration with academic and policy institutions to advance the future prosperity of Asia and U.S.-Asia relations.

On September 16, 2024, SNAPL and CSIS co-hosted the symposium “A New Cold War?: Congressional Rhetoric and Regional Reactions to the U.S.-China Rivalry.” At this event, SNAPL team members presented fresh perspectives on the U.S.-China relationship, grounded in two original studies that challenge the application of the “new Cold War” narrative to frame the competition between the two powers. Both studies are part of SNAPL’s U.S.-Asia Relations research track.

Research Fellow Xinru Ma shared the first study, “A New Cold War? An Analysis of Congressional Discourse on U.S. Rivalries with the USSR, Japan, and China.” Discussant Evan Medeiros, Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and the Cling Family Senior Fellow in US-China Relations at Georgetown University, commented on the study. In a following session, Postdoctoral Fellow Gidong Kim presented a second study, “The U.S. Alliance and Public Attitudes toward China: Evidence from the Asia-Pacific Region.” Discussant Matthew Kroenig, professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, offered feedback on the research.

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Moving Beyond Cold War Comparisons

Ma’s study, which analyzes over 41,000 Congressional speeches, upends the notion that today’s U.S.-China tensions mirror Cold War dynamics. The research shows that Cold War debates historically focused on two primary themes — ideological expansion and military aggression — with the former as the dominant concern. By contrast, current concerns about China center on human rights issues more than outward ideological expansion, while military concerns focus on budgetary issues rather than the kind of direct confrontations that defined the Cold War.

Ma’s findings also reveal that the current U.S.-China rivalry bears more resemblance to the U.S.-Japan economic competition of the 1980s, where economic concerns and domestic priorities took center stage rather than ideological or military threats. With these findings, the study establishes an empirical baseline for defining the current state of the U.S.-China relationship, illuminating the risks of framing it by the misleading “new Cold War” label.

Risks of the Cold War Analogy: Policy Implications

Ma’s study highlights that Cold War-era strategies are ill-suited for addressing the challenges posed by China today. Clinging to a Cold War analogy presents several risks:

• Misguided Focus: Framing China as a Cold War-like rival risks overemphasizing military buildup and ideological competition globally, overlooking the true nature of today’s competition, which is primarily economic and technological.
• Paranoia and Isolationism: The new Cold War analogy could foster a climate of paranoia and isolation, undermining the principles of open engagement and collaboration that have historically supported American leadership. Maintaining open dialogue and people-to-people exchanges that promote democratic values and human rights is more effective for preserving U.S. leadership in addressing ideological differences with China than confrontational ideological warfare.

The study has even further implications for U.S. domestic debates:
 

• Impacts on the American Workforce: At a bilateral level, the economic tensions that constitute the backbone of today's challenges with China, such as concerns over the loss of American jobs, were virtually missing from the dynamics of the Cold War era. Addressing these tensions requires new strategies and measures such as reinforcing free trade practices, upgrading infrastructure, upskilling the workforce, and fostering technological innovation.
• Overlooked U.S. Domestic Challenges: The Cold War analogy can also lead to ignorance about challenges rooted in pressing U.S. domestic issues — such as education inequality, the opioid crisis, and political polarization — which could be more consequential to American global leadership than the challenges China poses.

Public Perceptions of China in U.S. Allies

Kim’s study examines how geopolitical contexts such as the U.S.-China tensions and alliance relationships shape public attitudes toward China among citizens of U.S. allies. It analyzes data from the Gallup World Poll (2006-2022) covering 22 Asia-Pacific countries and the Asian Barometer Survey (2010-2021) from 14 countries.

The study shows that U.S. alliances and the U.S.-China rivalry influence public attitudes toward China. It finds that, as U.S.-China tensions escalate, citizens in U.S. allied countries — unlike those in non-allied nations — are more likely to develop unfavorable views of China. Additionally, public opinions of China and the United States tend to move in opposite directions as the great power competition intensifies because U.S. alliance relationships help strengthen a sense of shared identity during times of geopolitical crisis.

Shapers of Anti-China Sentiments: Policy Implications
 

• Strengthening Alliances Amid U.S.-China Tensions: The United States should understand that alliance relationships increasingly matter as U.S.-China tensions intensify. Strengthening these ties can be particularly effective in managing escalating tensions with China.
• Alliance Diplomacy vs. Traditional Value Diplomacy: During periods of geopolitical rivalry, U.S. alliances may have a greater impact than traditional diplomacy based on democratic values. In such times, alliances serve as critical frameworks for shared identity and mutual defense.
• Understanding Anti-China Sentiment: U.S. allies should recognize that rising anti-China sentiments among citizens are closely related to broader geopolitical dynamics. While anti-Japan or anti-America sentiments in countries like South Korea and the Philippines were historically bilateral issues, today's anti-China views are more structural issues and unlikely to diminish unless U.S.-China relations improve.
• China’s Need for a Shift in Strategy: China should consider the geopolitical factors contributing to rising anti-China sentiment in U.S.-allied nations. China’s public diplomacy efforts to strengthen its soft power through financial and non-financial measures may be ineffective when applied to U.S. allies. The Chinese government should therefore prioritize improving its relationship with the United States to mitigate anti-China sentiments in U.S. allies.
   

National Understandings of Race and Racism in Asia

On September 17, 2024, Postdoctoral Fellow Junki Nakahara shared findings from a SNAPL project that is part of another Lab research track, Nationalism and Racism, at a discussion titled Deconstructing Racism “Denial” in Asia, hosted by George Washington University’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

Nakahara’s study examines how nationalism and racism intersect to create exclusion and marginalization across Asia. By analyzing state reports from 16 Asian countries submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the research investigates how these official reports conceptualize race and racism, uncovering pervasive patterns of their denial — literal, interpretive, and ideological. Nakahara thus offers a comparative view of how these perspectives by Asian nations align with or deviate from global norms. Her analysis also illustrates how historical identities and dominant social, political, and religious values shape national attitudes toward race in Asia.

Following Nakahara’s presentation, discussants Hiromi Ishizawa, associate professor of sociology at George Washington University, and Erin Aeran Chung, the Charles D. Miller Professor of East Asian Politics and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, provided insightful commentary. They emphasized the importance of studying race and racism in the Asia-Pacific region and their implications for marginalized communities. The event also sparked an engaging dialogue with the audience, addressing how racism in Asia remains a “blind spot” overlooked in policy, media, and public discourse.

See the coverage of the event in George Washington’s student newspaper >

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The Shorenstein Journalism Award honors Buckley for his many years of exemplary reporting on China, and now also Taiwan. The Award Judging Committee notes that his body of work reflects “truly unparalleled knowledge and understanding of China” and vividly unveils the country’s political and social transformations under Xi Jinping’s rule.

Following Buckley’s keynote remarks, the award ceremony featured a conversation about key issues that put China in the news. Buckley was joined by two China scholars: Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) whose work focuses on Chinese military and security policy, and Xuegunag Zhou, the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology, and a senior fellow at FSI. William Dobson, the coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, chaired the discussion. Dobson, who also serves on the judging committee for the Shorenstein Award, is an award-winning journalist in his own right with a long career in international reporting.

The Power of History in China Under Xi

Buckley’s reporting has shed light on China's rise through deeply nuanced stories, capturing complexities and key developments across a wide range of issues. These include the country’s extraordinary economic growth and contradictions, such as the emergence of a bold consumer culture under a Communist Party that upholds Marxist ideology; the struggles of rural migrants moving into towns and cities; the Chinese government’s use of high-tech surveillance to suppress and control Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other ethnic groups; the modernization of China’s military; Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and in the South China Sea; and, notably, the unfolding of COVID-19. Buckley spent 76 days in Wuhan during the lockdown there, covering the early onset and coverup of the pandemic — a story for which he and his team won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

“Chris has been one of the most perceptive and sensitive chroniclers of modern China,” Dobson noted as he introduced Buckley at the award ceremony.

Above all, Buckley’s stories have illuminated the rise and thinking of Xi Jinping. In contrast to expectations that Xi would be a pragmatist focused on economic growth, “what we’ve seen instead is a leader who has made priorities of political security and ideological revival,” said Buckley. “A leader who sees himself as presiding over a historic transformation.”

Under Xi, the Chinese Communist Party has reinforced control over Chinese society, the economy, and China’s claimed territories. Even more so, Buckley underscored, Xi and the Party have also been reasserting control over history, extending and exercising power by shaping collective memories. In China under Xi, he said, memories of war, revolution, famine, massacre, and extraordinary change are erased, rewritten, and fought over.

He described how, under this drive, publications that question the official version of past events have been shut down, religious sites in Xinjiang demolished, access to sensitive sites like a cemetery for Red Guards restricted, and the Party’s accounts of its past retold through television shows, newly built museums, and other public displays.

Buckley recalled a 2019 reporting trip to Xinyang — a rural part of Henan province, a base of the Communist revolution, and one of the worst hit areas during the Great Leap Forward famine of the late 1950s. Speaking to elderly farmers carrying the memories of their family members who died in the famine, he kept witnessing a reverence for Mao that extended to the Party and Xi.

“I was struck that even in this part of the Chinese countryside where peasants endured the greatest suffering, so many embraced the Party’s version of the past. And I think that means they also tend to embrace the Party’s story of China’s present and the future.”

According to Buckley, Xi and his generation harbor concerns about the Communist Party’s drifting away from its roots as it moves further from the founding generation. To counter this process, the Party reinforces its founding myths and narratives as vital sources of authority and legitimacy, ensuring continuity with the past.

From Master Narratives to Geopolitics

Buckley also pointed out a deeper layer of China's efforts to shape history and memory under Xi’s leadership. He noted how the Politburo and Xi have shown a keen interest in studying and retelling China’s ancient history, with official efforts to shape the discussion of history reaching back thousands of years. These actions, he said, demonstrate efforts to construct “a narrative of unbroken Chinese nationhood and values,” creating continuity from China's distant past to the present.

Furthermore, at a time when neither the master narrative of Maoist Marxism nor the image of China as a modernized, respected member of the family of great powers seems to resonate fully, Xi and the Party are “reviving narratives of civilizational greatness and destiny,” he argued.

He emphasized that the Party’s aggressive efforts to shape historical memory do not mean Chinese people accept these accounts without question, and there are individuals and groups who, often at great personal risk, continue to challenge and push back against the official version of history. Yet overall, Xi and the Chinese Communist Party have successfully embedded history in political and social structures, creating a framework that defines China’s policies and foreign policy behavior.

The looming power of and contestation over history is one reason why Buckley hopes others will feel encouraged to study China even in an age of shrinking access. Otherwise, he cautioned, at a time when China matters so much to the world, “the accumulated cost could be a loss of our pooled understanding, and the fresh voices that we need for healthy debate, decision-making, and reporting.”

Now living and working in Taiwan, Buckley observes the importance of history and memory from the lens of the complexity of Taiwanese domestic currents.

“The divisions between Beijing and Taiwan are a territorial dispute, but they are founded in vastly different understandings of Taiwan’s history and identity,” he noted.

The themes of cross-strait tensions and the centralization of power under Xi were the focus of the discussion with Buckley, Mastro, and Zhou.

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, recognizes accomplished journalists who have significantly contributed to a greater understanding of Asia throughout their careers based on their knowledge of Asian societies and the ability to draw upon it to communicate insights to audiences worldwide. To learn more, visit the Award page.