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came to US universities had often achieved some degree of renown in their
field in China and expected to be received with an appropriate level of esteem
by their American institutional hosts—as would have been the case with a
Chinese university receiving an American “foreign guest.” When this did not
happen, as was often the case, Chinese scholars felt slighted. As these experi-
ences and associated feelings of resentment permeated back to China, they
inclined people to believe the worst about the United States. Returnees from
the United States often spoke with special authority because of their first-
hand experience. Of course the many Chinese scholars who did not return
to China were generally the ones who were more successful in adapting to
American ways.
By the mid-1990s, Chinese intellectuals were authoring popular books
with anti-US and anti-Western themes. This development was a function
of the commercialization of the publishing business in the 1990s. These
books were often sensationalistic, emotional, one-sided, and not academi-
cally sound. But they sold very well. Publishing companies printed large
quantities both to make a profit and to please CCP higher-ups who might
be watching. The state approved dissemination of these popular books—of
which there were hundreds—because they chimed with the patriotic educa-
tion campaign. Books challenging the official narrative, perhaps by arguing
that the United States actually and deliberately supported China’s emergence
as a rich and strong power, simply were not published. Xinhua wrote favor-
able reviews of many of these nationalist anti-US tracts, further encouraging
people to read them. By the mid-1990s, a culture of anti-US nationalism per-
meated China. Challenges to the official narrative of assertive nationalism
were not tolerated.
According to an authoritative summary of Chinese views of US intentions
in 2011, sinister interpretations of US intentions were pervasive.^14 According
to that report, it was “strongly” believed in China that the US objective was
to contain or abort China’s rise in order to maintain US global dominance
and hegemony. The United States viewed China as a dangerous competitor
and was striving in many ways to prevent China from becoming rich and
strong, a first-class world power. In the common Chinese view, US politicians
were true believers in the law of the jungle, that might makes right. The US
objective was to overthrow China’s CCP government so that China would
again become faction-ridden and divided, and thereby unable to continue
the rapid development that might enable it to challenge the United States. US
demands regarding human rights were really mere instruments used by the
United States to undermine China, create disorder, and malign China’s image
before the world. This Chinese cynicism regarding US motives was so wide-
spread, the report said, that no one would openly affirm that the Americans
truly believed what they said about human rights.^15 The American strategy
of subverting rivals or potential rivals and bringing countries under US