During his 2005 presidential visit to China, George W. Bush, an enthusiastic mountain biker, cycled with members of the country’s national team.
When China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, toured the United States in 2015, he received a football jersey from high schoolers in Tacoma, Wash., and promised to encourage more tourism between the countries.
There seem to be few such displays of bilateral bonhomie in store for this week’s summit between Mr. Xi and President Trump in Beijing.
That reflects a grim reality of U.S.-China relations: As geopolitical and economic tensions have grown, softer ties — which previously had persisted despite other disputes — have weakened, too. Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi are expected to discuss contentious issues such as trade, Taiwan and the war in Iran.
For decades, displays of fellowship between the countries’ leaders and ordinary people were staples of high-level, bilateral meetings. Though highly choreographed, they reflected genuine ties. Hundreds of thousands of students traveled between the United States and China each year. American athletes and musicians toured China to rapturous crowds. Chinese and American scientists worked closely together to fuel breakthroughs in clean energy, particle physics and cancer research.
But now, student exchanges between the two countries are declining. Foreign performers have had gigs abruptly canceled by the Chinese authorities. And scientific collaboration has been chilled by concerns from both governments about sharing sensitive research.
Today, there are fewer than 2,000 American students in China — compared with 11,000 in 2019, according to the U.S.-China Education Trust, a nonprofit group in Washington. Near Peking University in Beijing — which sits on the site of a former university built by American missionaries — bars that used to be hot spots for American students now cater to a largely Chinese clientele.
“There is no place where the Americans hang out at Peking,” said Domenic Caturello, a 26-year-old master’s student of international relations from Massachusetts. “Because there are so few of us.”
Chinese enrollment in American universities is falling, too. For years, China was the biggest source of international students to the United States. But now, many prospective Chinese students have been driven away by fears of visa denials and anti-Chinese hostility. In the 2023-24 school year, India overtook China as the top country of origin.
Mr. Caturello said that he also faced skepticism at home about studying in China. An acquaintance asked him why he was going to the country of “the enemy.”
But Mr. Caturello said he had never been treated poorly in China because of his nationality. And getting to hear Chinese perspectives on international relations was invaluable, especially given the American strategic rivalry with the country, he added.
“It would be really shooting ourselves in the foot as a nation, if we were to willingly blind ourselves to the reality of things in the other country,” he said.
Other forms of cultural exchange have also suffered. The Philadelphia Orchestra first traveled to Beijing in 1973, becoming the first American ensemble to perform in Communist-led China. It has visited 15 more times, including a trip by a small delegation last year. But if the group did not have such a long history in the country, organizing visits today would be “extraordinarily difficult,” said Ryan Fleur, the orchestra’s president.
“In the particular climate of the times, if you don’t already have an open door, it’s hard to open one,” he said.
American government support for cultural exchange has waned, too. Even as relations with China reached perhaps their lowest point in decades under President Joseph R. Biden, the administration emphasized cultural diplomacy, including backing a trip to China by the Philadelphia Orchestra. But the Trump administration has threatened to revoke the visas of Chinese students and slashed funding for international exchange programs.
There are recent signs that cultural ties could begin to strengthen once again. Polls show that attitudes toward China in the United States are improving, though still largely negative. Younger Americans in particular see China more favorably, partly influenced by social media trends that highlight the country’s economic advances.
China, for its part, has loosened visa requirements for many foreign tourists. Last month, the government invited American athletes to Beijing for an event celebrating the 55th anniversary of “ping pong diplomacy” — the visit of American ping pong players to China before diplomatic ties were restored under Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.
Lines of Chinese applicants seeking visas to study in and travel to the United States still form outside of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
But even those applicants may cast a warier eye on the United States. Xue Jun, a visa consultant in the city of Nanjing, said that many of his customers these days were driven by a desire to escape China’s economic downturn, rather than fondness for the United States.
“People don’t look at the United States with the same sense of mystique or infatuation as in the ’90s, or even just a few years ago,” Mr. Xue said. “I don’t think we’ll see an upward trend ahead.”
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people.
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