musing on a departure

evolution of Sino-U.S. distrust

Yoko Kubota published a cautionary article in the Wall Street Journal as she concluded several years of reporting in China. I highlight this piece from 5 May because it aligns with the evolution I saw over the past generation during Xi Jinping’s era.

It’s not a modern heartwarmer, but an indication of a country closing its doors to foreigners.

It’s also a reminder of a society that is dubious of the rest of the world.

It’s also merely one of many countries, least we forget, doing the same thing, even if that offends our self-image.

Caution is always reasonable, but does it have long-term costs?

As I have commented repeatedly, China is hardly the only country more distrustful of foreigners. Still, it’s the one for reflecting global changes impossible to ignore, no matter how hard we try.

A Japanese-born journalist on the beat for a major American newspaper in the Middle Kingdom. Ms. Juboto experienced the steady growth in distrust, if not outright hostility, of foreigners in the Middle Kingdom, particularly when they had any association with the United States.

I remember taxis unwilling to pick up several of my students on a spring 2012 study trip, obviously predating Xi Jinping’s ascension to power that November. The attaché in training who escorted us said this was a growing phenomenon, registering some irritation as empty taxis whizzed by the “round eyes,” even though no other fares were in sight. This fellow said that a sensational murder in the Beijing district near our small, Japanese-owned accommodation seemed to spur fear on the part of the drivers in early 2012, but what Kubota is describing is a much more profound attitude in China.

I really noticed it for the first time when I was on a delegation four years later. A young woman we encountered at a business organization did a brief interview with the head of our delegation to move stateside. I was surprised by her strong Mandarin, and she was at that age when I had seen so many young people flock to Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Beijing in the 2000s for both financial opportunities and adventure.

She told me she had become disillusioned by ever more negative attitudes among Chinese co-workers and the Beijing “vibe” as a whole. “I won’t say I am not safe”, she mused, “but I definitely feel less welcomed than when I arrived”. She decamped from Beijing later that year.

Xi Jinping began beating the drum on the evils of foreigners roughly at the same time, downplaying any advantages to studying at Western institutions or to embracing Western philosophy. In particular, the CCP leader argued that the indoctrination would lead to “color revolutions”, code for overthrowing the existing regimes, in Eastern Europe and the Middle East over the prior fifteen years. The Chinese leader equated these activities to belittling, humiliating, and subjugating the culture that the CCP alone returned to its traditional magnificence and power.

Because of the Xi or for other reasons, such as internal recalibration as the vast country confronted the end of its “modernization period”, China has increasingly turned inwards over recent years. Kubota’s experience of a nation citing “national security” as a relatively blanket excuse for some of its behaviors is fairly common, if not worrisome. Such a vague term too often becomes a catch-all for responding to questions, if not criticisms, about government actions, especially when foreigners are involved.

As this attitude spread across China, leading to fewer interactions with those who might become opponents in some manner, Western societies suffered similar doubts about the Middle Kingdom’s potential. Fears of China exploiting its trade relationships to undermine societies across the globe, whether through the Belt & Road Initiative (another Xi creation, of course), entrapping populations in massive debt, or exploiting technological seams to steal intellectual capital from developed economies through state-sponsored spying, led to serious reconsideration of ties. China’s unwillingness to budge on some of its demands as an ever-greater power only heightened anxiety, especially given the ongoing military modernization on which Beijing has spent huge sums.

As China modernized, questions about its intentions towards the United States rose steadily, particularly from the Clinton administration onward, as China assumed a more active and arguably stronger (as a result of policies we had encouraged across partisan administrations for twenty-five years) role as an international player. Congress had members who sounded a clarion call to prevent China’s rise to a position that we found threatening. Still, broader societal anxiety about its different cultural and political norms steadily grew. We seemed surprised that our assumed benevolence wasn’t sufficient to show them why to abandon their evil ways.

Did it never occur to either side that interaction did not automatically mean the other side would surrender its beliefs in favor of the other country’s?

In short, the action-reaction cycle of distrust spiraling into further negative activity accelerated within and around China. Kubota’s eight years were only the latest period as the strains of objectionable, “menacing” foreign activities, whether in alliances, education, religion, human rights, trade, or overall culture, appeared ever more frequently in the CCP leader’s concerns. His willingness to strengthen ties with similarly outlier regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang exacerbated the isolation in the service of “protecting his nation”. At the same time, China’s own actions led individuals from other nations to wonder whether the threats had been misunderstood by Nixon and the stream of foreigners who came to China over the past half-century.

The trips by political figures from various parts of the world opened the door to incursions by government spies and nefarious activities, but also greatly enhanced scientific, educational, and religious relationships over the decades.

Every action has consequences, some most welcome but others terrifying.

There are still Chinese who yearn to come to this country or to other democracies, wishing their own country mirrored our sometimes flawed system.

At the same time, rather than hope in person-to-person links, trade opportunities, or other engagements that encourage positive impressions, we live in a world all the more willing to default to the worst-case, dubious that anyone seeks anything other than to destroy those who are different.

How do we prioritize these things? Do we even need do so?

All of this will be on full display as the POTUS receives his “big fat hug” from his Chinese host, as POTUS predicted earlier this week. Both countries are wary, at best, of each other, reinforcing the sentiment I heard from the Carnegie Endowment’s Robert Kagan at a D.C. event last night: it will be impossible to return to the old normal. Everyone and everything is figuring out the depth of the change we are experiencing, but it’s a slow, disorienting process.

I have noted more than once in this column that Americans too often focus on heads of state as if singular figures alone constitute the world, but they are, of course, inevitably part of a system. No individual, including Putin or Kim, much less Trump, Xi, or Gustavo Petro of Colombia, can rule or govern without at least tacit support from those around him. Many who rule with odious behavior actually have a fair amount of support: remember how surprised many outsiders were that Orban lost his prime ministership in elections last month? The political system in which deeply popular government leaders win election is obviously deeply linked to the whole they represent, but surprisingly few utterly kinglike figures exist. The systems of countries are thus important, but neither the individuals nor narrow numbers of supporters explain the whole of global interaction.

While state-to-state relations are the heart of the Westphalian or United Nations system, people-to-people views are more fundamental and potentially more enduring. Yoko Kubota’s recounting of changed attitudes among individuals does not bode well for the future in a world where doubts about motives, the proliferation of weapons, and overall competition are more readily embraced than the relatively cooperative spirit that has been pervasive throughout much of the past 80 years.

Her observations about distrust among Chinese taxi drivers could well accompany a piece on the dramatic decline in Western students studying Mandarin. The point is that the contemporary period, as Kagan argued last night, is one of radical transformation that affects humans at various levels. Trump expects to get on well with Mr. Xi; we will hear evaluations of those expectations when the visit concludes this weekend. But the evidence of deep skepticism on both sides of the Pacific is real in Jinzhou or Bozeman, Dunblaine or Cairo, Jerusalem or Jeddah.

What will be the long-term consequences of that skepticism? Can it be reversed? Will the current doubts make individuals or their countries stronger? Will it undermine global improvements of the past decades, heralding a return to hair-trigger conflict anxiety? Or, is there something about this new state-of-affairs from which we garner positive effects?

I welcome your thoughts on this question or anything else about the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing. I don’t have all of the answers, but I am confident that exploring questions we all have is a worthy use of this column and our time.

Thank you for reading Actions today or any other day. I am especially grateful to the subscribers whose financial support advances the opportunity to read so much more widely. An annual subscription is $55 while a month-by-month $8 subscription is equally welcome.

Spa Creek is warming this week, a testimony to the yachts and catamarans moored on our wee Wells Cove entrance.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Yoko Kubota, “I’m Leaving China after 8 Years. Suspicions of Outsiders is Rising”, WSJ.com, 5 May 2026, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/china/im-leaving-china-after-8-years-suspicion-of-outsiders-is-rising-5b70d7a2?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Sylvia Ma and Kandy Wong, “After nearly 9 years, Trump is landing in a totally different China. Is he ready?”, SCMP.com, 13 May 2026, retrieved at https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3353264/after-nearly-9-years-trump-landing-totally-different-china-he-ready?tpcc=GME-O-enlz-uv&utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20260513_US_China_Relations_FW_RU_3&utm_campaign=GME-O-enlz-uv&UUID=a9998aef516fcb8723731b43c4e618d8&CMCampaignID=fa8bc30a8e04defa9e0784520743cd28

Will Weissert, “Iran war could make Trump’s trip to China a bit chillier than first-time visit“, APNews.com, 11 May 2026, retrieved at https://apnews.com/article/trump-visit-china-xi-iran-trade-diplomacy-75a27d595cfa5882b1e5bef917385309

Phoebe Zhang, “Xi Jinping speech was call to action against foreign forces ‘westernizing’ Chinese youth”, SCMP.org, 2 September 2024, retrieved at https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3276875/xi-jinping-speech-was-call-action-against-foreign-forces-westernising-chinese-youth