Wang Wen, the Executive Director of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, wrote a revealing article on how Chinese opinion had shifted from a relatively positive view of the United States up until the 1990s until today, where reactions are generally negative. He relates how he, like other Chinese students in the ‘90s, was eager to learn from the United States and to take lessons from those aspects that were seen positively. He indicates a turning-point with the Iraq war and the accidental [sic!] U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War and EP-3 spy plane incident two years later.
Wang also notes that the increasing war-fighting from the Iraq War during the following decades and the increasing arms shipments to Taiwan led to a shift in Chinese defense spending, knowing that they were dealing with a different animal than they had previously observed.
“In 2008, China had to defend itself against the consequences of American greed,” Wang writes, “when the U.S. subprime lending fiasco touched off the global financial crisis. China was forced to create a huge stimulus package, but our economy still suffered great damage. Millions of Chinese lost their jobs.” This was followed by Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and Trump’s tariffs. Biden continued with the trade war policy and then you had the Pelosi visit, which China clearly saw as a violation of the one-China policy. “China’s critics in the United States need to realize that American actions such as these are causing outcomes in China that even the United States doesn’t want,” Wang writes.
