美中全球议题对话项目

Through the course of the zoom dialogues with our Tsinghua counterparts, I have gained new perspectives and an appreciation for the need for communication and dialogue in the modern U.S.-China relationship.

Every semester, I fill my schedule with coursework that relates back to China. From Chinese language to early Chinese history, I have spent majority of my Georgetown career learning about China. However, trapped in the Georgetown bubble, what my classes truly provide is the American perspective on China. As amazing as the classes I have taken have been, what they fail to provide, and what the dialogues have demonstrated a clear need for, is dialogue and exchange that provides the Chinese perspective.

In our zoom discussions, I was able to meet various Tsinghua students and discuss topics as trivial as our favorite fast-food restaurants to as world changing as nuclear security. Many times in the dialogue, we had the opportunity to discuss events in real time. One of the best examples is the war in Iran and the development of Anthropic’s Mythos platform. These were both extremely important developments that came about during the program. As such, we had the opportunity to ask the Tsinghua students what their views on the attacks on Iran were, or what they believed the implication of technology like Mythos would be on international relations.

I was particularly surprised to learn that many had not heard of the new platform, which was being wildly discussed in the U.S., including being incorporated into class curriculum. In fact, our perspectives on “the AI race” were completely different in a way that was new to me. The students in my group did not believe that China was nearly as close to the United States in artificial intelligence innovation as we believed China to be. Nor did they hold the same views on technology competition that we believed them to hold.

While I learned many things throughout the course of the dialogue, my biggest takeaway is the importance of dialogue itself. Before the program, many of U.S. students had not heard the perspective of a student in China on many of these topics. Yet, we were continuously learning about the Chinese view/perspective on the topic without avenues to confirm or verify the truth. While it may seem obvious, what I learned most during the program was that the assumptions we base our views and actions on are what will have the largest consequences on the policies we impact in the future. As such, it’s important that we have open dialogue and discussion to ensure we understand each other correctly and precisely. This is true not only for current leaders and nations but also for us students who are the future of the U.S.-China relationship.

Ewa Tryniszewski (SFS'28) is a student at Georgetown University studying international politics with minors in Chinese and economics.