About the Authors
 

Ruixue Jia is Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego.

Hongbin Li is Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.

Claire Cousineau is a writer and former researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, she is currently pursuing her MBA at Duke University.

Availability

The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China is available now for purchase from Amazon and elsewhere.  

Upcoming Book Event

Join us on Tuesday, October 21 at 4 PM (Pacific) for a fireside chat with co-authors Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li. The fireside chat will be held in-person in the Bechtel Conference Center and livestreamed for virtual attendees. Learn More & Register
 

As the U.S.-China competition unfolds in areas ranging from trade to technology to the military, the rival-making discourse surrounding this great power competition was the focus of the conference Beyond a New Cold War, organized and hosted by the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL).

Held on August 14, 2025, the event showcased SNAPL research illuminating how U.S. political leaders and the media shape narratives concerning China and how citizens in young democracies perceive these narratives. Serving as discussants were experts from Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Hoover Institution (represented by a former National Security Affairs Fellow), and the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

The studies presented and discussed at the conference are part of SNAPL’s U.S.-Asia Relations research track, one of four research streams the lab pursues. Housed at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and founded by sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the lab aims to generate evidence-based policy recommendations and promote transnational collaboration with academic and policy institutions to advance the future prosperity of Asia and U.S.-Asia relations.

“This conference provided an excellent opportunity to engage the policy community with our research findings,” says Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and the director of APARC and the Korea Program. “The lab will continue to foster ongoing dialogue between academic and policy circles.” 

The conference builds on previous SNAPL forums and meetings with policy and academic communities in Washington, D.C., held in September 2024. These policy engagement activities are made possible thanks to a grant from FSI. 

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Dynamics of American Elite Discourse on China

At the first conference panel, Research Fellow Xinru Ma shared a study that unravels who leads elite discourse on U.S.-China relations – whether Congress, the White House, or the media. While prior research suggests that each of these actors could have distinct agenda-setting capacities, their relative influence and its directionality in foreign policy discourse remain empirically underexamined.

The study addresses this question by investigating China-focused discourse and framing by the U.S. legislative and executive branches as well as the media. Using computational and causal inference methods, the study analyzes social media data from the legislative and executive branches alongside major U.S. media outlets across two periods: the 116th Congress (January 3, 2019 – January 3, 2021) and the 118th Congress (January 3, 2023 – January 3, 2025).

The analysis reveals that, both in terms of issue attention and framing, the media tends to follow the lead of Congress and the President. The findings also indicate that Republican lawmakers exert greater influence on setting the China agenda in the media. In contrast, Democratic lawmakers are stronger predictors of how the media frames the issues at stake. Moreover, the findings suggest that presidential influence on China discourse weakened sharply in the 118th Congress, and that there is an overall shift toward party-driven, rather than institutionally mediated, communication among elites. 

Policy Implications
 

• Media Weakness: The reliance of media outlets on partisan cues from political elites on foreign policy issues increases the risk of incomplete or skewed public understanding of China and U.S.-China relations. The risk is especially disconcerting as U.S. reporters face limited access to China.
• Partisan Echo Chambers: Communication flows primarily within partisan networks rather than across institutions, with the separation of powers becoming less effective as a system of checks and balances. The splintering of political discourse into parallel echo chambers risks eroding opportunities for cross-party dialogue and democratic deliberation on complex foreign policy issues.
• Fragmented Messaging: Divergent partisan messaging on China signals inconsistency to both domestic and international audiences who might draw contradictory conclusions about U.S. intentions. This dynamic gives rise to strategic miscalculations abroad and a fragmented public understanding of China policy at home.
• Declining  Institutional Voices: The decline of institutional power over shaping U.S. discourse on China has created a growing vulnerability. As individual political figures gain sway, personalized narratives often prioritize short-term visibility over a coherent, long-term strategy.

Democracy vs. Autocracy: A View from Young Democracies

Despite their deep divisions on most issues, there is one topic Republicans and Democrats converge on: China. Both parties increasingly frame the intensifying U.S.-China tensions as a strategic competition between democracy and autocracy. But is the value diplomacy this approach begets effective in promoting liberal values in young democracies?

At the second conference panel, Visiting Scholar Gidong Kim presented a study that addresses this question. “This study challenges the effectiveness of the value-laden U.S. diplomacy in young democracies and presents a more nuanced explanation of democracy's role in forming public opinion on foreign policy,” says Kim, formerly a postdoctoral fellow with SNAPL and currently an assistant professor of political science at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS).

The study hypothesizes that in young democracies, where democratic histories are relatively short and legacies of authoritarian rule endure, citizens tend to understand democracy in terms of electoral institutions rather than liberal values. Similarly, in the context of the U.S.-China competition, citizens in these countries tend to perceive China’s threats to electoral institutions more seriously than its threats to liberal values.

To test this proposition, the study uses a country-level, cross-national analysis and an original survey experiment in South Korea. The findings support the hypothesis.

Policy Implications
 

• Context Matters: U.S. policymakers must acknowledge the limits of value-driven diplomacy. Washington should diversify its foreign policy toolkit and adapt it to regional contexts: in Western Europe, liberal values rhetoric can reinforce alliances, but in young democracies, the design and strength of electoral institutions carry greater weight.
• A Crisis of Credibility: For China, there is an equally clear lesson about the need to rethink its approach to diplomacy. Without addressing suspicions of election interference in democratic countries, Beijing will struggle to gain traction with the publics in young Asian democracies and dissipate anti-China sentiments in those countries, even if it increases its soft power through liberalization policies.

SNAPL’s studies presented at the conference underscore the crucial role that narratives and public perceptions play in international relations. They suggest that great power competition is not just about power. Rather, it is also about persuasion, which, in turn, depends on how different audiences — at home and abroad — perceive the story.

So how did the meeting in Anchorage actually play out?

In commentary on social media, FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul summarized the talks in the context of the Yalta Conference, an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union made in the waning months of WWII that quickly fell apart when Joseph Stalin broke promises made to Western leaders to maintain and support democratic elections in Eastern Europe.

Speaking on NPR’s Morning Edition, McFaul elaborated on his concerns: 

“What I think the worst outcome would be is if President Trump starts negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians without the Ukrainians in the room. Trump needs something tangible, and I hope that doesn't make him too anxious to start negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians because that would be a disaster. If he jams President Zelenskyy with something he can't accept, that would be the worst of all outcomes.”

Pifer echoed his relief about the lack of discussion over particulars about Ukraine between the two leaders, but also pointed out that the broadest goal of the meeting also hadn’t been met.

“The good news is, President Trump didn’t give away the store. I was concerned he might get into bargaining on details about Ukraine without the Ukrainians there, which would be to their detriment. But it seems Mr. Trump failed in his stated goal to achieve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine,” said Pifer. 

But even without a concrete policy outcome, Pifer says the Alaska meeting was an optical victory for Russia: 

“The significance for Vladimir Putin is that the meeting happened in the first place. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine back in 2022, there’s been a boycott by Western leaders of any kind of face-to-face meeting with Putin. And by hosting him in Alaska, Trump broke that boycott. That is being played up in Moscow as a huge victory that Putin has been legitimized again.”

On Monday, August 18, President Zelenskyy and a cadre of other European leaders met with President Trump at the White House to discuss the Friday meeting and reinforce Europe’s positions and redlines against capitulation to Russian demands.

In analysis for Foreign Policy, Pifer outlined the stakes of this follow-up meeting for the European delegation:

“Zelenskyy and his European colleagues face a tricky challenge. They have to diplomatically offer suggestions to walk Trump back from a position that he does not appear to understand would be bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe, and bad for American interests. And they have to do so without setting off an explosion that could disrupt U.S.-Ukrainian and U.S.-European relations.”

McFaul is also cautious about the tone and tack of the discussions moving forward:

“I think it’s a good thing [the Europeans and Trump] are talking about security guarantees,“ he told Alex Witt on MSNBC. “But the devil is in the details. We keep hearing something about ‘NATO-like security guarantees.’ Why not just NATO security guarantees?"

The argument for building a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine based on NATO membership is a proposal McFaul has long supported.

“This notion that these guarantees are going to be something like NATO but less than NATO . . . if I were the Ukrainians, that would make me nervous. They had guarantees like that in 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum, and it meant nothing. It didn’t stop Putin from invading in 2014, and it didn’t stop him from launching a full-scale war in 2022,” McFaul reminded viewers.

“To me,” he argues, “it has to be NATO, not NATO-lite. The only way to do real, credible security guarantees for Ukraine is membership in NATO.”

In assessing the White House meeting with President Zelenskyy and European leadership, Rose Gottemoeller, the William J. Perry lecturer at CISAC and former deputy secretary of NATO, is cautiously optimistic. 

“This was a major step along the road, and it was vital that the Europeans were there as well as Ukraine,” she told the CBC.

A seasoned negotiator with direct experience working on high-level diplomacy with Russia, Gottemoeller is no stranger to the long process of dealmaking with the Kremlin.

“There are many steps to get through. We are not there yet. As much as Trump would like to walk out of the Oval Office and say, ‘We got the deal done,’ I think there will be many more hoops to jump through before that is possible.”

Additional insights from our scholars on the Trump-Putin summit and White House meeting with Zelenskyy and other European leaders can be found at the following links:

Russia, Ukraine, and Trump on Katie Couric
Trump Meets with Putin: Experts React in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
There Are No Participation Trophies in High-Stakes Diplomacy on Substack

I have always wished to learn more about Korea. Since I am only half Korean, my grandparents’ stories of Seoul made up the extent of my knowledge for much of my childhood. As I grew up and began to slot together my identity in a patchwork of personality and truths, my Korean identity simply did not fit. I could barely stomach the spice of bibimmyeon, my mother’s favorite Korean noodle dish. Wearing hanboks, the traditional Korean dress, never gave me the elegance my cousins seemed to embody. Speaking Korean didn’t come to me as easily as it did for my sister. What I did have were my grandparents’ firsthand stories, with rich history peeking through childhood anecdotes and accounts of war. Korean history always felt quite accessible to me, even if it didn’t make me feel Korean enough.

Accordingly, getting to participate in the Sejong Korea Scholars Program was a dream come true for me. I sensed that it would be a unique and incredible opportunity, and that perception was immediately confirmed by the first introductory meeting on Zoom. If anything, the online format made the focus of the program even clearer, and each virtual classroom felt just as grounded as any in-person class I’ve experienced.

It was especially exciting to be surrounded by 18 other like-minded and talented peers. We were all in pursuit of the same learning, the same deep dive into Korean history—and many were in the program for reasons similar to mine. There was a deep affinity for culture in the group, and not just for Korean culture. With so many Korean Americans in the group, it was fun to post or comment about our connections to Korea, and just as exciting to learn about Korean Americans from esteemed Professor Kyeyoung Park, who graciously answered all of our questions. I also must commend the students who weren’t Korean and simply were excited about Korean history; their passion was always quite inspiring.

Above all, what made SKSP so special was the historiography, which had long been a personal area of interest. Dr. HyoJung Jang, our extraordinary instructor, curated a diverse assortment of sources each week, ranging from U.S. government documents to articles to contemporary qualitative experiments. In between each virtual classroom, I pored over several sources, and reflected on the way they interacted with each other. As I worked on our biweekly writing assignment, I found myself making multiple connections for each source and forming my own mini arguments in the paragraphs. By the time we got to each lecture, I had stewed on my ideas long enough to get quite excited about the questions I wanted to ask.

Each lecturer gave a spectacular presentation and was quite generous with their time. In particular, I’ll highlight Professor Gi-Wook Shin and Professor Nancy Abelmann, who taught us about different facets of contemporary Korean society: nationalism and the education system, respectively. Their talks were grounded in Korean norms of filial piety, respect, and also patriarchal systems, a topic I intended to write my paper about.

At the time, however, my paper topic was, quite frankly, a mess. I knew I wanted to involve pop culture somehow into my discussion of ingrained misogyny in Korean society, but had written some incredibly vague topic proposal about sexist dating norms present in music and TV shows. Luckily, Dr. Jang gave some much-needed feedback about the large scope of my proposal. In the process of reading through academic papers around sexism, I came across digital feminist movements, and decided that the accessibility and weaponization of the internet was going to be my new focus. Of all the incredible experiences in the program, I think I’ll always remember writing my paper, how Dr. Jang was an especially important personal mentor, and the overwhelming feeling (as I was writing) that I was connected to my culture, somehow.

When I think back to the way I worried over my lack of a connection to Korea at the beginning of the year, I find my concerns a bit silly now. I now know that I have always been connected to my heritage through my history. Even if that didn’t feel like it was enough before, my scholarship and pursuit of Korean history through SKSP have now proven that to me. I will forever remember this program as a place where my writing became true to myself, and went beyond what I ever could have imagined. To all interested students, I urge you to apply without inhibition. You will surely find something you didn’t know you needed—whether it’s a reassurance about your culture, a reignited passion, or simply growth—in the Sejong Korea Scholars Program. 

SKSP is one of several online courses offered by SPICE.

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The fifth year of the Stanford/SPICE East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawaiʻi (“Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i”) was launched in April 2025 and included four online seminars that featured Stanford-affiliated scholars—Professor Ethan Segal, Professor Andrew Walder, PhD candidate Zoë Gioja, and Ambassador Scot Marciel—and culminated in a three-day in-person summer institute that took place from July 12 to 14, 2025 at the Hawai‘i Imin International Conference Center at Jefferson Hall, East-West Center. This year’s cohort included 19 public and private high school teachers—Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows—from across Hawai‘i. Below are the names of the 2025 Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows, their schools, and the islands where their schools are located:

Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i Manager Rylan Sekiguchi invited scholars from Hawai‘i as well as curriculum writers and facilitators of teacher professional development to offer presentations over the course of the institute. They are listed below as well as the titles of their presentations. The presentation topics were selected to support Hawai‘i State Department of Education standards such as “U.S. History and Government Theme 1 (Immigration and Migration, 1880–1930), Anchor Standard 16 (Global Interconnections and Changing Spatial Patterns): Cause and Effects of Migration.”

• Shana Brown, Associate Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “U.S.–China Relations: Problems and Potential”
• Douglas D. L. Chong, President of the Hawaii Chinese History Center, “The Chinese Diaspora in Hawai‘i”
• Jonas Edman, Instructional Designer, SPICE, “SPICE Curricula on Chinese American History”
• Naomi Funahashi, Manager, Reischauer Scholars Program and Teacher Professional Development, SPICE, “Teaching Contemporary Korea with SPICE”
• Merle Grybowski, Director of Teacher Training, Pacific and Asian Affairs Council, “East-West Center Walkabout”
• Patricia Halagao, Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “Teaching Filipino Identity, History, and Resistance”
• Ken K. Ito, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “Nakashima Naoto’s ‘Waiawa Station’ (1934) as Diasporic Fiction”
• C. Harrison Kim, Associate Professor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “Korea in the 20th Century: Colonialism, North/South Division, Futures”
• Jonathan Okamura, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “East Asians and Southeast Asians in Unequal Hawai‘i”
• Rylan Sekiguchi, Manager of Curriculum and Instructional Design, SPICE, “Divided Memories: Comparing History Textbooks”
   

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Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i is made possible by a generous grant from the Freeman Foundation. President Graeme Freeman (photo above) spoke during the summer institute about the Freeman Foundation’s mission of helping to enhance the teaching of East Asia through programs such as the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia and Stanford SEAS Hawaiʻi and expressed his gratitude to the Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows for the tremendous impact their learning has on their students. Graeme was joined by Vice President Shereen Goto, Executive Assistant Sandra Lee, and Foundation Assistant Kellie Matsudaira of the Freeman Foundation. Additional support for the summer institute was kindly provided by Stanford Global Studies and the Stanford Center for East Asian Studies through the U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center funding under the auspices of Title VI, Section 602(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

As I observed the lectures, curriculum demonstrations, and listened to the Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows’ comments, questions, and resource sharing, I reflected on ways that SPICE has continued to serve as a bridge between Stanford University scholars and teachers in Hawai‘i since 1988 when SPICE founding director Dr. David Grossman established the Consortium for Teaching Asia and the Pacific in the Schools (CTAPS) at the East-West Center. During the institute, I shared thoughts on three Stanford scholars. Stanford scholar Lee Shulman is someone whom I mentioned to teachers at the second CTAPS summer institute that was held in 1989. Shulman is known for developing the concept of pedagogical content knowledge or PCK, which emphasizes that teachers need not only subject matter expertise but also pedagogical content knowledge. While listening to the Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows, their unique blend of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge really shined. Second, during the institute, I could really feel the fellows’ embrace of the diversity of their students, the people in Hawai‘i, and beyond. I spoke about Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki, who has noted that empathy is an umbrella term that captures at least three ways that we connect with one another’s emotions. One is emotional empathy, which is vicariously sharing somebody else’s feelings. Cognitive empathy is one’s attempt to understand what someone else is feeling and why. And empathic concern or compassion is one’s motivation to improve others’ well-being. Third, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu is a psychologist formerly with the University of Tokyo who now teaches at Stanford. His scholarship on heartfulness—elucidated in his book, From Mindfulness to Heartfulness: Transforming Self and Society with Compassion—notes that heartfulness is a way of living with mindfulness, compassion, and responsibility that enhances well-being and transformation. Sekiguchi noted that he certainly felt this heartfulness while interacting with the Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows since April of this year.

In the month following the institute’s conclusion, each Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellow will create an original lesson plan that incorporates content that was introduced during Stanford SEAS Hawaiʻi. Sekiguchi awaits in anticipation of seeing how content from the seminar will reach hundreds of secondary school students throughout Hawai‘i.

Sekiguchi and Sabrina Ishimatsu, SPICE Event Coordinator, who organized the institute, and I are grateful to the East-West Center for allowing SPICE to host the Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i summer institute at its beautiful venue.

Most importantly, everyone at SPICE is immensely grateful to President Graeme Freeman, Vice President Shereen Goto, and the Freeman Foundation for its generosity in making Stanford SEAS Hawai‘i possible and providing us the opportunity to engage Stanford/Freeman SEAS Hawai‘i Fellows with scholars from Stanford University, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and beyond.

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