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

It had been five years since I’d last been in China, and I felt I was in dire need of some “country feeling.” It’s the pedestrian flavor you simply can’t get from reading newsletters or clicking on the Asia Pacific tab of the Financial Times. And yet, many of us who are interested in China have been relegated to the role of sideline sinologists, unable to travel or reside in China without staring down the many-headed hydra of COVID-19 restrictions, rejected visas, and political uncertainty. I’ve been fortunate to have spent many years of my life living in, or at least orbiting, China. I moved to Hong Kong when I was 11 years old and have spent many of my adult years returning to the region for study or work. At times I have felt paralyzed by expectations to make uniquely keen observations informed by my experiences, internalizing this sentiment from Kaiser Kuo, “How do you say meaningful, insightful things about Chinese thought or behavior without spouting essentialist nonsense?” Country feeling does a lot of heavy lifting when I’m short on keen observation.

In May 2024, I joined the Georgetown delegation of the U.S.-China Student-to-Student Dialogue on a 10-day trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We formed part of the American contingent alongside students from University of California San Diego, and came together with our Chinese counterparts from Peking University in Beijing, Fudan University in Shanghai, and our hosts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This kind of initiative is rare these days, with the dwindling number of U.S.-China exchange students making a splash in the folds of the New York Times just last year. The privilege was not lost on us; while initial attempts at inter-university chit-chat were naturally a bit stilted, by the time we filtered out of the Hong Kong Consulate or the Chief Executive’s Policy Unit, conversation flowed. Perhaps it was the candor displayed by the many people we heard from—there was an obvious yearning to define a post-COVID-19 Hong Kong and region at large—but there was a frankness to the questions we asked each other, and a good-faith attempt to debate our geopolitics without drifting into one-dimensional tropes. This was facilitated by our being in Hong Kong, a place that is distinctly, despite the events of the last few years, still not-China. Country feeling comes as murmurs about the U.S. election and Taiwan from a newfound friend, both of us leaning into the movements of the Hong Kong subway. It is stepping inside a USD$30,000 electric vehicle in the BYD showroom in Shenzhen, poking around in the backseat and toggling the buttons on the massage chairs, opening up the minifridge, queuing some karaoke for the passengers.

We shared eclectic academic backgrounds: among us were students of Chinese political economy, of global development and human rights, of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in national defense. I remember looking up in pleasant amazement as my conversational partner from Peking University referenced a paper on AI governance I had read just weeks prior, bringing me to the realization that our intellectual baseline is so much closer than I could have guessed. We shared plates of vegetarian dim sum in the cool blast of the restaurant, watching the espresso drip of commuters make their way through labyrinthine Causeway Bay.

Veronica Dickson La Rotta (G'24) is a second-year graduate student studying global human development at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.