US expert on mission to help restore academic exchanges

A leading China expert with a Washington-based think tank has been meeting official and business contacts in China, in a rare in-person exchange between two countries mired in geopolitical tensions and pandemic complications.

Scott Kennedy, an expert on Chinese business and economics with the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is visiting Shanghai and Beijing during a month-long trip in China.

He met vice-foreign minister Xie Feng on Saturday, making him one of the few US academics to be received in person by senior Chinese officials in Beijing since the start of the pandemic.

Kennedy said his trip was aimed at punching through official narratives to create new lines of communication in both countries, and called for the restoration of more in-person scholarly exchanges.

“My trip in China is meant to open up a crack in their echo chamber, let some air in, see what people think here, and then help open the echo chamber door back in the US, and see if that generates some new thoughts,” Kennedy said in a speech at the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China in Beijing.

“My sense is that there’s a lot of reasonable anxieties in both countries, while some of the narratives on both sides may have exacerbated anxieties. Both need to know that and have a conversation to lower the volume. And I also hope China can take steps to restore face-to-face dialogue for more foreign scholars and businesspeople.”

According to a Chinese statement, Xie called for more visits by academics to improve bilateral ties. The two also discussed bilateral issues, it added.

Kennedy arrived in Beijing in mid-September, before undergoing the mandatory 10-day quarantine, according to an article he wrote for Foreign Policy magazine last month.

During a panel discussion at Peking University on September 30, he said travel restrictions had added to stereotypes and misunderstanding from both sides, the university said in a statement.

Kennedy, who has studied China’s trade relations, industrial policy and technological innovation for more than 30 years, said the tensions in US-China relations could not be solved through official interactions alone.

Kennedy’s trip comes at a sensitive time for Beijing, with the Communist Party set to start its national congress on Sunday and confirm President Xi Jinping for an expected third term as the party’s leader.

Academic exchanges between the two countries have been hindered as rising geopolitical tensions have slowed academic visa processing on both sides. China’s stringent zero-Covid travel restrictions have also stalled inbound travel.

As part of the exchange, Wang Jisi, a top US expert with Peking University, spent a month in the US earlier this year. Kennedy also visited Peking University in late September.

Wang is among a small number of Chinese scholars to have visited the US in the past two years. In June, a group from the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, led by its president Wang Huiyao, also visited the United States.

My sense is that there’s a lot of reasonable anxieties in both countries

SCOTT KENNEDY, CSIS EXPERT