On June 21, Schwarzman Scholars Maya Guzdar, Samantha Kiernan, Jasper Boers, and Herbert Crowther visited the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) of Tsinghua University, and exchanged views with the CISS Fellow Sun Chenghao and Shi Yan, young scholar representatives from Tsinghua University, University of International Relations, Nanyang Technological University, The University of Sydney, University of Washington, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and CISS Youth on topics of China-U.S. people-to-people exchanges, “decoupling”, and “de-risking”.

The Schwarzman Scholars shared their initial thoughts on studying in China and their life experience in China. Based on their personal experience, they concluded that people-to-people exchanges were essential for promoting mutual understanding between China and the U.S., and the two countries could further promote the exchanges by measures such as facilitating visa applications, providing more Chinese language teaching programs for U.S. high school students and more host families, and optimizing the internationalization of the Chinese mobile applications in the future. The Schwarzman Scholars pointed out that China and the U.S. should enhance mutual trust and cooperation in global public goods in the areas of health, science, and technology, and that the two countries should not apply competition to every area.

Later, the two sides exchanged views on the topics of “decoupling” and “de-risking”. The young representatives who attended the meeting actively shared their interpretations of the two terms. The Schwarzman Scholars generally believed that there was no fundamental difference between the two terms, “decoupling” and “de-risking”, but some scholars pointed out that such policy discourse originating from Europe and the U.S. not only reflected the U.S. and European relations with China, but also affected the perceptions of the countries and regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America towards China.

The CISS youth representatives include Cai Hongyu, a Ph.D. student of the Department of International Relations of Tsinghua University; Zhang Ding, a Master of Nanyang Technological University; Zhang Yancheng, an undergraduate student of The University of Sydney; Tan Yannan, a Master of the University of International Relations; Lin Yueqi, a Master of the University of Washington; and Wang Jiaqi, a Ph.D. student in Political Science of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.