In December 2022, China’s government abruptly ditched its strict Covid-19 pandemic controls after thousands of citizens protested against the social and economic pain they were causing. It was a complete surprise: Despite closely tracking the situation from afar, I and many other China watchers had failed to anticipate this sudden and major shift in government policy which deeply affected life in China and the country’s openness to the rest of the world.
Anticipating what China’s government will do has gotten even more difficult since then, as relations with the United States have deteriorated and as Beijing treats information that was once readily available like state secrets. This means that significant decisions on U.S. policy are being made based on diminishing insight into China’s internal dynamics, raising the risk of miscalculations.
It’s a dangerous time to be flying blind. Misinterpreting China’s technological capabilities could endanger America’s competitive edge. Misreading Chinese domestic social pressures leaves us unprepared for major policy changes such as the sudden end of the Covid restrictions, and miscalculating Beijing’s intentions on Taiwan could inadvertently lead to a major global conflict.
For Western scholars of China, the era before the pandemic now feels like a distant golden age. Despite always tight Chinese information controls and opaque policymaking, academics could still visit the country, navigate archives, cultivate relationships with their Chinese counterparts and pursue research. The resulting academic findings were good for America: For decades, U.S. government agencies regularly called on scholars — and still do — to provide briefings and testimony and to mine their research for insights that were vital to informing American policy decisions.
Then came the pandemic. China sealed itself off from the world, slamming the door on academic fieldwork in the country by foreign scholars as well as in-person exchanges with Chinese officials and other contacts. The Covid restrictions were finally lifted, but the landscape for scholars had been transformed: There were fewer commercial flights to China, new restrictions on access to archives and interview subjects, heightened difficulties researching sensitive topics such as the pandemic and the slowing Chinese economy, and a generally more closed-off environment.
Beijing’s jealous guarding and systematic manipulation of sensitive data, which has only increased under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, compounds the challenge. The Chinese government hasn’t published a white paper on its defense strategy — which used to be issued every two or three years — since 2019, has restricted a range of key data including information that might offer clues into how many Chinese lives were taken by the pandemic, and in 2023 began restricting international access to a critical database of Chinese academic papers, statistics and other information.
Unlike during the Cold War, when the United States preserved scholarly exchanges with Moscow, academic and other engagement with China has fallen out of favor owing to geopolitical and national security concerns. The Fulbright academic exchange program in China, which sent thousands of American and Chinese students between the two countries over a span of decades until President Trump suspended it in his first term, remains inactive, and American universities are scaling back partnerships with China. Only around 1,100 American college students are studying in China these days, compared to 15,000 a decade ago. The resulting information fog forces China scholars in the West to rely on remote analysis and open sources, such as official Chinese media and social media, the very methods that proved inadequate in anticipating the change in Covid policy in late 2022.
Under this climate, researchers are forced to cite one another’s work heavily, which adds little new insight. Some are retreating to historical topics for which archival materials remain available. The frustrating shortage of information can lead to sharp disputes among scholars, as when a recent report by the RAND Corporation triggered heavy criticism from other China experts for concluding that the Chinese military was not yet ready to wage war. Some researchers are simply avoiding sensitive topics due to the limited data available on them or out of concern that they could be denied future access to China if their findings are unflattering to the Chinese government. When I submitted a grant proposal last year for research in China, one of the project’s reviewers, citing safety concerns, suggested I redirect my study to Hong Kong instead — a throwback to the Cold War, when China watchers had to piece together an inadequate understanding of the country from the relative safety of Hong Kong.
Leaders in Washington should recognize that in-depth scholarly understanding of China is a strategic necessity for the United States, arguably rivaling even military preparation or intelligence gathering in importance. Yet our window on China is clouding up. Miscalculations are inevitable: Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden made the sweeping declaration that China’s economic strength “will never surpass us. Period.” Two weeks later, the unexpected revelation of the Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence breakthrough shattered assumptions about U.S. technological supremacy and caused a global rout in tech stocks. Yet the Trump administration is further obscuring America’s view of China: Its suspension of foreign aid threatens the work of nonprofits that track a wide range of developments in China including business trends, human rights and social unrest, as well as Chinese cybersecurity threats and other potentially malicious activities overseas.
There are important steps the United States can take. Besides preserving the information sources that already exist, it should launch major new China-focused research initiatives. One good example already exists in the Soviet Interview Project, a cooperative effort between U.S. academia and government that interviewed Soviet émigrés in the early 1980s and added to our understanding of life in the Soviet Union at the time. Similar information could be gleaned from the record numbers of Chinese immigrants entering the United States in recent years and made accessible to all scholars. China researchers also need to develop new ways of working with the often patchy information at their disposal, such as through artificial intelligence tools, an effort that would require concerted support from research foundations and, ideally, government funding.
It is also more imperative than ever for the United States to rebuild American interest in China studies and the institutional bridges on which it depends. At minimum, this must include a resumption of the Fulbright program in China and similar initiatives while securing robust Chinese government commitments to protect authorized academic research and the scholars carrying it out.
But Washington should go even further by seeking a wider diplomatic agreement on cultural, educational and technical exchanges similar to one that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union and which was widely credited with building the mutual trust that helped hasten the Cold War’s end. China already has signaled interest in more academic exchange: Mr. Xi pledged in late 2023 to host 50,000 American students over the ensuing five years, but safety concerns and the tense climate have so far limited the U.S. response.
In “The Art of War,” the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu famously counseled that if you know your enemy and yourself, you’ll be victorious in 100 battles. That ancient wisdom has never been more relevant for the United States than it is today.
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