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

Garry Piepenbrock, an economics and political science student, said that “seeing the variety of companies in China” was his favorite part of the program. He added, “there are a lot of big tech firms that we've had the privilege to visit, but also some of my favorite visits were the smaller manufacturers that had really interesting human stories behind them. The people working there and also the people running them. It's a difficult business. It's very competitive. And seeing that side of the Chinese economy was really cool.” 

Throughout the program AI emerged as a hot topic and focal area for China’s technological and economic advancement goals. Zane Sabbagh, a computer science and symbolic systems student, shared his insights on AI development in China, “given China's lag in the AI race, their model is to let one Chinese company win by open sourcing a lot of their models and then hosting other companies' models on their platform. So for example, Tencent’s chatbot and Alibaba chatbot both host DeepSeek’s models on their own app, which is super weird because ChatGPT would never host Anthropic or xAI on its own native iPhone app. That’s something I found super interesting.” 

Students also had the opportunity to compare their own academic experience through visits to multiple academic institutions in China. At the University of Hong Kong, students participated in a lecture given by Professor Zhiwu Chen on understanding Hong Kong’s history. At Peking University, students engaged with Vice Dean Li-An Zhou who gave a brief introduction on China’s economy. In addition to university exchanges, students also visited a migrant school in Beijing where they learned about the education system and connected with the young migrant students. Nazli Dakad, an earth systems student, reflected on the program and shared that, “one of my favorite parts of the trip was the migrant school. I thought that was super eye opening and contrasting to the tech focus that we've had, because it gave me a little more insight into the education system in China.”

Throughout the program students had the opportunity to engage with locals in various settings, from top executives, to factory workers, to locals out and about conducting their daily routines. Students also met with Stanford alumni based in China and learned about their career trajectories after graduation. Several students shared that building connections with people in China has been a highlight for them. Biology major Eva Shen shared, “being Chinese I feel like I've been very disconnected from China in the US, so being able to talk to all these people here [in Chinese] has been the best part for me…getting to hear their perspective, and actually getting to know them as people, has been my favorite part. When we did our interviews in the market back in Shenzhen, and we got to talk to older ladies, they reminded me of my own grandma.”

Cultural immersion was also woven throughout the journey. Students tried their hand at traditional arts such as paper cutting, brush calligraphy, and tea pan-frying; dressed in historical attire for an opera performance in Yiwu and a palace banquet in Hangzhou; and learned crafts like umbrella-making and handmade paper production. These activities provided a tangible connection to China’s long cultural heritage alongside its modern economic dynamism.

By the end of the program, participants had gained a multifaceted perspective on China—its economic drivers, its cultural traditions, and its evolving role on the world stage. “This program was about more than just observation—it was about engagement,” said SCCEI Co-director Hongbin Li. “Our students came away with firsthand experiences and conversations that will shape how they think about China for years to come.”

Discover more on our program page including student reflection videos, program photos, and more.