Then came the pandemic. China sealed itself off from the world, slamming the door on academic fieldwork in the country by foreign scholars as well as in-person exchanges with Chinese officials and other contacts. The Covid restrictions were finally lifted, but the landscape for scholars had been transformed: There were fewer commercial flights to China, new restrictions on access to archives and interview subjects, heightened difficulties researching sensitive topics such as the pandemic and the slowing Chinese economy, and a generally more closed-off environment.
Beijing’s jealous guarding and systematic manipulation of sensitive data, which has only increased under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, compounds the challenge. The Chinese government hasn’t published a white paper on its defense strategy — which used to be issued every two or three years — since 2019, has restricted a range of key data including information that might offer clues into how many Chinese lives were taken by the pandemic, and in 2023 began restricting international access to a critical database of Chinese academic papers, statistics and other information.
Unlike during the Cold War, when the United States preserved scholarly exchanges with Moscow, academic and other engagement with China has fallen out of favor owing to geopolitical and national security concerns. The Fulbright academic exchange program in China, which sent thousands of American and Chinese students between the two countries over a span of decades until President Trump suspended it in his first term, remains inactive, and American universities are scaling back partnerships with China. Only around 1,100 American college students are studying in China these days, compared to 15,000 a decade ago. The resulting information fog forces China scholars in the West to rely on remote analysis and open sources, such as official Chinese media and social media, the very methods that proved inadequate in anticipating the change in Covid policy in late 2022.
Under this climate, researchers are forced to cite one another’s work heavily, which adds little new insight. Some are retreating to historical topics for which archival materials remain available. The frustrating shortage of information can lead to sharp disputes among scholars, as when a recent report by the RAND Corporation triggered heavy criticism from other China experts for concluding that the Chinese military was not yet ready to wage war. Some researchers are simply avoiding sensitive topics due to the limited data available on them or out of concern that they could be denied future access to China if their findings are unflattering to the Chinese government. When I submitted a grant proposal last year for research in China, one of the project’s reviewers, citing safety concerns, suggested I redirect my study to Hong Kong instead — a throwback to the Cold War, when China watchers had to piece together an inadequate understanding of the country from the relative safety of Hong Kong.
Leaders in Washington should recognize that in-depth scholarly understanding of China is a strategic necessity for the United States, arguably rivaling even military preparation or intelligence gathering in importance. Yet our window on China is clouding up. Miscalculations are inevitable: Just before leaving office, President Joe Biden made the sweeping declaration that China’s economic strength “will never surpass us. Period.” Two weeks later, the unexpected revelation of the Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence breakthrough shattered assumptions about U.S. technological supremacy and caused a global rout in tech stocks. Yet the Trump administration is further obscuring America’s view of China: Its suspension of foreign aid threatens the work of nonprofits that track a wide range of developments in China including business trends, human rights and social unrest, as well as Chinese cybersecurity threats and other potentially malicious activities overseas.
