How many Chinese speak English? How many Americans speak Chinese? The difference is again in the orders of magnitude.
Say what you like about censorship in China. And the banning of CNN etc. But spend time reading the available news in China. The Chinese show a balanced and highly nuanced understanding of America and American policy development. Even the talk shows that demonstrate nationalistic bias are highly factual. Stations can devote expensive programming to entire lecture series on contemporary geopolitics. The US is often brought up for contrast, not in a dismissive manner, but well studied and relevant. On the one hand, China should be proud to have matched or exceeded the US here, and learn from the US for deficiencies there. There are American ideas to learn from, and also reject.
I think the only underestimation in recent years has been the willingness of the US to play dirty and contradict the very same global order she set up, dominated and policed. Current American trade policy would have sounded like science fiction under Obama.
Other than that, it has been mostly one way traffic, at least when it comes to misunderstanding.
Professor Zhang speaks better Mandarin than English. How many genuine American Sinologists have such mastery of both languages?
There is no comparison.
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