Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

Eleanor M. Albert: Today we are joined by Jingyi Jiang, Veronica Dickson La Rotta (G’24), Zach Slotkin (G’25), and Ashutosh Kumar, four students who were part of our 2023-2024 cohort of Georgetown University’s student dialogue program with University of California San Diego, Peking University, and Fudan University.

Now, you were participants in this student-to-student dialogue program that we hosted at Georgetown, and I wanted to know why you were initially interested in this type of programming?

Zach Slotkin: When I first learned about the student-to-student Dialogue, I was instantly interested and knew that I wanted to apply. First of all, I studied abroad when I was in undergrad in Beijing, so I had some experience in mainland China. But I thought it would be a really cool opportunity to visit Hong Kong and also to meet Chinese students who were around my age because my program was
only Americans.

Secondly, the topic of the dialogue was really interesting to me, which was U.S.-China cooperation for the benefit of developing countries or the Global South. Also having the experience of living in a developing country myself as a Peace Corps volunteer, I gained a really close perspective at the importance of global cooperation because the United States and China as the two biggest economies in the world need to have meaningful cooperation for a lot of the necessary work that needs to be done. So I thought this opportunity would be a really cool way to delve more into the mechanics of how cooperation could work and to put it into practice by cooperating with my Chinese counterparts.

Veronica Dickson La Rotta: I was interested because this kind of programming is few and far between these days as a result of COVID and I think some lingering anxieties on behalf of universities and larger educational exchange institutions to invest in U.S.-China student exchange. I have had the opportunity to do these kinds of exchanges in the past and they've completely formed my perspective on how to think about China, have enabled me to make relationships and have friendships with Chinese people my own age. They've just been so important and so when I saw that this opportunity came up, I thought, "I don't know how often these come around, I have to jump on it." I think both camps—the UCSD and Georgetown Camp and the Fudan and Beida—were equally as eager to participate, equally as willing to make it work and make it be for the students and I hope that other organizations take notice. 

Jingyi Jiang: First of all, I would say my interest in U.S.-China relations. I think this dialogue provides a great opportunity to hear from leading professors and practitioners, and also to exchange with U.S. and China next gen.    

Second, I would also say this unique topic of focusing on the Global South and development, as two great powers, how U.S. and China get along does just not only hold significance for themself, but also for the rest of the world. And I'm happy that we are not solely discussing U.S. and China in this program, but also looking at the bigger picture of development. We are exploring where U.S. and China can cooperate to contribute to international development.

And also, from my personal experience, even since high school, I have had some exchanges with U.S. students in person. We are small individuals, but there [are] some parts that we could play in terms of people-to-people exchanges among young students especially. Even though we are doing the small things, but I think that matters.

Ashutosh Kumar: The very first factor is U.S.-China itself, a topic which [the] whole world is discussing from last one decade.

Secondly, I can say a student dialogue is a great opportunity to learn from each other and how students think and their perspective about different topics. We discuss on the development, we discuss on environment, we discuss on the security, health. So these are two factors.

Thirdly, one of my professors, Professor Wu Xinbo, said when I met with him, he said, "If you talk about the U.S.-China relation, everybody's talking about only strategy, competition, hegemony. Nobody's talking about the cooperation, how U.S.-China should cooperate and be the responsibility of the world, especially for the Global South."

These are the factors really put the interest to join this program.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's great. I want to talk a little bit about the meat of what you were doing throughout the program and there was both a virtual component as well as the in-person study tour component. I wanted to pick your brain a little bit first about the virtual, the fall and the spring semester meetings, and just reflect on it a little bit and think back to what might've been the most surprising takeaway or two from those Zoom sessions?

Ashutosh Kumar: I found two things. One, students are very positively discussing what they know, know about the condition, know about the situation. Whatever they know, they express themselves through given nodes and other factors. But secondly, I found it there's a gap between the reality on the ground and what we are discussing, especially in terms of when we are discussing about the environmental issue. I found students are not having a reality check about a particular situation for the sake of a binary, a division between a developed and a developing country.

Zach Slotkin: The most surprising takeaway from the virtual component of the program was the differing levels of optimism between American students and Chinese students on prospects for U.S.-China cooperation. I found that Chinese students tended to be more optimistic than American students. And I'm not entirely sure why, but I think there's been a lot of Sinophobia in politics, in government, and in the media.

I especially noticed this when we were talking about climate change. A lot of the American students were expressing extreme pessimism. And it was the Chinese students who noted, “Well, there have been instances in the past, there was meetings between Xi and Obama that led to the success of the Paris Climate Agreement.” And it was the students from China who expressed that they felt it was likely for the United States and China to come to agreement and forget about their longstanding differences.  

Veronica Dickson La Rotta: I think one thing that really helped the Zoom sessions was knowing that we were going to meet in person afterwards. It was really these priming opportunities to get to know each other a little bit, start to get comfortable, but with the knowledge that everything was really going to change when we met.

The topic that we focused on was China's relationship to the Global South. What was interesting was understanding where everyone's point of view came from. I know China has a very different relationship to international NGOs than the U.S. does, and so I was really interested in unpacking some of that with students and one of the things that stuck out to me was a lot of the Chinese students had actually had some work or internship experience in international NGOs. It crystallized to me these are the kinds of things that you only really find out when you're talking to people.  

Jingyi Jiang: Surprising takeaway. I guess I could say the profound commonalities shared by students from both the U.S. and China side, despite our different cultural backgrounds and upbringing.

I realized that we actually have similar concerns and hopes for the future, particularly regarding the very topic that we are talking about is regarding the global issues, global challenges like climate change, public health, and development.

I was also struck by the depth of insights and innovative ideas that we contributed throughout our conversations. We have students of really diverse backgrounds, so we have students [who] study environmental science, mathematics and economics. They're really giving very specialized insights.

I think when given the platform to communicate openly that we young people from diverse backgrounds can collaboratively develop meaningful conversations and potential solutions to complex global challenges, that would be my biggest gain from this virtual dialogue.

Ashutosh Kumar: One thing I learned in the student dialogue, people have their understanding about particular situations. But we all play a dual role when we talk in the dialogues. But in the private conversations, we really changed our thinking. That's really, how to say, a good learning [experience] for me because when people from the lower ladder come in [to] this kind of environment and when they live in that kind of situation and back to their country, they think like everybody, like people are talking in this kind of thing, very honest and everything is very good. The system is very different, which we assume while seeing online and, on the media.

Secondly, of course, very good field experience. What about Hong Kong then Shenzhen? It's how in one country, two systems is working. Also give a larger perspective if you see in the terms of economic system or in the terms of political system while seeing the conditions of the two different cities. That's a very good learning for me for this dialogue.

Eleanor M. Albert: I want to fast forward you to the study tour and in-person portion, and ask you to share what some of the two biggest highlights might've been for you?

Veronica Dickson La Rotta: The two highlights come pretty easily. The whole trip was so great, so interesting and great exposure to different people. But it was really exciting to go to the BYD showroom, especially at this time in trade and thinking around EVs, no more interesting time to be in a position to look at what BYD is producing, how they're framing it.

For some of the American students I was surprised by how much they potentially wished BYD were able to sell in the U.S. That surprised me. I think being based out of DC,  sometimes it can be hard to get a statement out of someone that so opposes existing trade orthodoxy, but we're there, we're talking about it and a lot of the American students are like, "The way I see it, this could really benefit adoption of EVs. This could really change in a material level the way that we use our cars and have charging infrastructure...” So, that was interesting.

Then the other thing that was interesting was we're asking Chinese students why BYD is so may have, why Tesla is not so popular in China. It's not just so much that Chinese people want to buy Chinese cars, but Tesla's are a minimalist kind of design and BYD has all these bells and whistles. So much customization, and that really speaks to Chinese tastes and preferences. Again, that spoke to me so much. 

Eleanor M. Albert: So BYD is the number one highlight. Do you have another one from the trip?

Veronica Dickson La Rotta: Yeah, I made really good friends with Hao Tong from Beida. She is a first year graduate student studying international affairs and politics and we were in the same group, which really helped us get to know each other ahead of time. Then when we met, it was exciting to see her in person, but she's just so lovely and we were able to talk about all sorts of issues. We really got to, I think, some pretty politically interesting topics by around the middle of the program. Then once we started covered interesting political discourse and we  got into our personal lives and talking about how we think about our friendships, our family, our hometowns, dating, that level of candor was so special. I feel like she will be someone that I'll have my network for a while because we just have really aligned views on a lot of things so that a friendship can emerge after a week and a half is a really nice thing.

Jingyi Jiang: It's really a tough question because there are so many highlights. And if I can only say two, I would probably talk about two small moments, but I think it's really meaningful.

The first one is the icebreaking session. When Professor [Dennis] Wilder asked us to reflect on the significant life events that happened to us and also our grandparents, decades ago. I think it got us to know each other's backgrounds and better, the socio-economic background, and also got us to realize that we are indeed living in a time of change as Gen Z. But it also provided a good opportunity to realize what are the commonalities that we share and what are the differences we had experienced and will experience in the future.

The second one is probably a little more personal. It's the ping-pong deja vu that we had. During of our [free] time, a bunch of us found a ping-pong room and started to play. There were both the U.S. and Chinese students. So in that moment, I felt as though we are reliving modern day U.S. and China ping-pong diplomacy.

It made me realize that we, young people, really shoulder the responsibility for the future of U.S. and China relations, and we should ask ourselves what we can do to foster better understanding and cooperation between those two great powers.

Eleanor M. Albert: Did you have a favorite site visit? And if so, why?

Jingyi Jiang: There are so many! Probably visiting the Hong Kong [Chief Executive’s] Policy Unit and talking with the government officials there, I think, because it's my first time to Hong Kong as well, and being able to be there and talk to someone who work at the front line, I think it's really a great opportunity for me to know the city's dynamics and its past, its present, and its future.

Zach Slotkin: The highlight for me was the visit to the BYD Global Design Center. I have been studying the energy transition and electric vehicles for a while. So visiting BYD was the kind of experience that I wouldn't have gotten without this program. It came right after President Biden had increased President Trump's tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 25% to 100%. I had that in the back of my mind, the entire visit, looking at all of these cars that I may never get to purchase. But it was really interesting to learn about everything China has been doing to incentivize electric vehicle manufacturing and production, and also incentivizing consumers to buy EVs, especially first-time car owners. And I think the United States has a lot that it can learn in its attempts to balance meeting its climate goals, but also protecting auto workers and the American auto industry.

The second highlight for me was the visit to the South China Morning Post. I had known about the South China Morning Post for a long time, but never really delved into its content a lot. But it was inspiring to hear from journalists who have been covering Hong Kong politics through some really tumultuous times. I learned a lot about Hong Kong politics through that visit.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's fantastic. My concluding question, from your perspective, why are these student dialogues and exchanges so important and what role do they play both in your academic trajectories but also, within the context of the more geopolitical dynamic at play?

Ashutosh Kumar: I can say from my point of view, it's very, very important to have these kinds of student dialogue. The very first thing, students should understand the situations, the hands-on experience. So they can understand the situations, they can understand the perspective. These student dialogues give a very hand-on experience to learn from each other, to have a perspective, to learn the perspective from each other, how they're thinking. It's a beautiful thing to learn from all the 360-degree kind of thing.

Veronica Dickson La Rotta: I think a humanistic perspective is really important one to take when you're thinking about any kind of foreign policy. At the basic level, we make career decisions because we had an emotional attachment to this topic when we were young, when we were in school. It can be so formative, and it can be really alienating to be working in foreign policy and to only hear rhetoric about a country and to never go, and this is on both sides, right?

Then, you have the weight of an institution behind you. It sets a precedent. I think it's important and special that Georgetown and obviously, the influence of Professor [Dennis] Wilder, is one of “let's invest in these relationships even though it's hard”. You just really never know who it's going to affect and how that's going to inform their policy views in the future, if they want to become a policymaker.

Zach Slotkin: People-to-people exchanges are extremely important. I had friends in the United States who grew up in China and were studying as international students here in the U.S. But to go to a different country is a whole other experience. And I think I came to this realization when I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. I was the first ever volunteer to be at my site in The Gambia. Most of the people who were living there had never spoken to an American before. I felt like an ambassador of my country and my culture. And I realized how influential that was in shaping people's opinions of Americans and the United States because they had no previous experience interacting with Americans.

I think soft power is a really important way to gain international legitimacy and to further a country's foreign policy agenda. People-to-people exchanges, like the one I participated in, allows for mutual understanding of American and Chinese culture, American and Chinese politics, and it allows us to break away from the stereotypes that we are exposed to.

 Jingyi Jiang: First, student dialogue is about students, right? They represent a future and future leadership. So next gens [generations] will be the pillars of the society one day, and really soon for Gen Zs. I think how we understand each other and how we perceive each other will have implications in our future career, whether it's in the private or the public sector. This kind of dialogue really helps shape, inform empathetic leaders who are well-equipped to handle complex international issues in the future.

Also, it's a great platform to cultivate global citizenship. Student dialogues are there for creating a more interconnected and cooperative world by engaging with students from different backgrounds. We learn to appreciate diverse cultural perspectives and to develop a sense of shared responsibility for global challenges.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast
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