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Wang Zichen is the Beijing-based founder and editor of Pekingnology, a newsletter about policy debates in China and U.S.-China relations. He is also a research fellow and director for international communications at Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based non-governmental think tank, where he edits another newsletter about China, The East is Read. Previously, he was a reporter for Xinhua News, the state-owned media outlet in China, based in Heilongjiang Province, Shandong Province, Brussels, and Beijing. We spoke about his newsletters, his unique position in the U.S.-China space, and what he thinks Americans get wrong about China.

Q: How did you decide to start Pekingnology?

A: I started it technically in May 2020, but I seriously got to write it towards the end of 2020. The reason for starting the newsletter was, first and foremost, inspiration from Bill Bishop’s Sinocism. Secondly, I was aware of several other China-focused newsletters at the time, but I discovered that none of them were written by a Chinese mainland national, much less by someone with a background in the state apparatus. Thirdly, I set up the newsletter because I was based in Brussels — I was a European Union correspondent for Xinhua News Agency – and there was a semi-lockdown in Belgium. It was the fifth month into Covid, and we couldn’t travel much, so I spent a lot of time indoors. Certainly, I wanted to make a name for myself.

Who do you see as your readership?

It’s English-speaking people who are really interested in China, but who want perhaps more nuance than news reporting, more accessibility than academic writing and peer review journals, and perhaps more formality than just tweets on Twitter. So they are diplomats, professors, analysts, think tankers working on China, and students studying China. The newsletter now has around 13,000 subscribers.

Do you have any readers in China?

I think I do, but they compose a very small percentage. The main reason is that mainland Chinese people just don’t use emails. People in China — there are a billion internet users there now — are used to instant messaging, WeChat or QQ. Emails never took off in China and this is actually one of the biggest blind spots in the Chinese mainland around external communication. If you look at China’s state-run media — Xinhua News Agency, CGTN, Global Times, China Daily — all of them put together have like four or five email-based newsletters, and even dedicated China professionals probably couldn’t name any one of them. The Washington Post has 11 email-based newsletters on food alone. That is a huge gap in terms of delivery of information and one of the biggest reasons that my Pekingnology newsletter and East is Read, which I’m also running currently at the Center of China and Globalization (CCG), have been able to fill a void.

There are surveys that show Americans, Britons and Canadians spend on average five or six hours a day on both their professional and personal emails, and of this huge volume of information only a tiny percent comes from the Chinese mainland. A U.S. interlocutor perceived in America as a Panda Hugger recently said he has zero regular sources of information in his inbox from China except our several newsletters. So this is one of the biggest deficiencies in terms of a very simple way of delivering information. I believe it has had an outsize impact on how people perceive China.

You said before that readers of your newsletter may be looking for more nuance from mainstream news reporting about China. What do you see specifically as the differences between what you are emphasizing in the newsletter versus the New York Times or Wall Street Journal? 

I certainly do not see my newsletters as competitors or rivals with the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. But for example, after a phone call between the Chinese president Xi Jinping and the U.S. President Joe Biden, the Chinese side will put out its readout of the phone call. And actually the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in their English language version of their website, will put out the readout in English pretty quickly. But people on Twitter who are think tankers, or journalists working on China, many of them are not aware of such information already appearing. So if I just copy and paste the information into Pekingnology and send it, the post will get the best number of reads across all my newsletters. Sounds quite silly, huh?

Because of a lack of supply, the general context of information about China is very different in the Chinese mainland from outside. People tend to look for information that they agree with, they tend to validate what they already believe in. Also, on the Western side of the world, only controversy and bad things are understood as newsworthy, so the news media typically doesn’t report the good things. All these factors put together mean there is a very big gap in understanding — also in the Chinese understanding of the Western world. 

When you see people in the U.S. or outside of China trying to translate and interpret Chinese policy documents, what do you see as the biggest common mistakes? 

If you want me to name some very specific mistakes, unfortunately, there is an increasingly common observation in the United States that China somehow wants to start a war with the U.S.. I don’t think that’s true at all, and I think believing that is also quite dangerous. 

Why do you think that belief is so common in the U.S. now? 

It’s a result of a combination of factors. The words ‘Thucydides Trap’ get thrown about a lot. From the Chinese point of view, the current geopolitical situation is structural because China is a rising power, it’s the second largest economy, and it’s viewed as maybe able to overtake the U.S. as the largest economy, and it has three or four times more people than the U.S.. So as the number one leader of the world for many decades, at least some people in the U.S., the elites, are increasingly uneasy about a rising China that has the potential to challenge American dominance of world affairs. 

…it’s in the interests of the U.S. and these people themselves to base their decisions on facts, especially firsthand experience on the ground in China.

The two countries have different political systems, and a very different culture. I think it comes from a lot of basically different backgrounds and information in the entire environment and in the ecosystem, and the Chinese way of communicating its intentions, its strategies, and framing its development paths and its aspirations [in a way that] is sometimes not shared and well received in the United States. 

China insists its policy is consistent, but the U.S. and its allies — take Germany’s China policy, for example — don’t buy it. They think China has changed dramatically, so they are responding.

Do you think that there are ways that China could communicate its intentions in a clearer way? If you were in charge of making sure that the U.S. doesn’t think that there is going to be a war, how would you do that?

More exchanges between the people, like having more journalists in each other’s countries. And smaller things, more flights between the two countries, more people-to-people exchanges. These are the building blocks we can start with. And there could also be [more effort to] recognize the deficiencies, the weaknesses, the respective domestic struggles that both countries are trying to take care of. 

Fundamentally, I do not think the People’s Republic of China or its governing Communist Party of China has any intention to launch a war against the U.S. or NATO or Japan. There was a recent article by Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher in Foreign Affairs. The two authors and a lot of like-minded people really perceive China to be aiming for a war. Pottinger wrote in another Foreign Affairs article last year that Xi Jinping says he is preparing China for war. And I think that’s just wrong.

To be clear, I don’t think the framing in the U.S. is that China is going to go to war with the U.S.. Most of the framing is that China is going to invade Taiwan, and that will lead to a war.

There was recently an election in Taiwan, and the DPP candidate, William Lai, won. It’s been generally observed and agreed by many U.S.-based China watchers or practitioners that China has handled this outcome in a very calm manner. I don’t see a war coming across the Strait, unless some very extreme provocations from the separatists on the Taiwan island really trash the Chinese mainland’s red lines. The talk of war in Taiwan is used excessively to the point that it has been somewhat rationalized and normalized, and that’s not constructive at all because we risk a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Which side do you think is rationalizing it, the U.S., Taiwan, or China?

There are some military commanders at a really high level on the U.S. side telling the media a war is very likely in 2027, or even sooner. These comments are not helpful. They are also not compatible with their senior leadership’s positions. I think that’s actually quite dangerous. 

You mentioned the Pottinger and Gallagher op-ed. What was your response to that, and also, how is that type of op-ed received in China among foreign policy circles you are part of?

It was really an ideologically extremist take, the tone is almost frantic. It basically preaches about the need to put the U.S. on a war-like footing. This could precipitate a war. And it didn’t really talk about crisis prevention or containment, which is actually part of the priorities of the Biden administration of re establishing military contacts and restarting critical communications. 

One thing I really want to take the opportunity to highlight is that, by all accounts, the now former congressman Mike Gallagher, who has an MA and a PhD., is a smart, competent, and very productive professional. But unfortunately, I think he is really misinformed on China. I heard from a recent, high-profile U.S. visitor to Beijing that Mr. Gallagher has never visited China. Now that he is no longer in office, it would be politically easier for him to contemplate a visit to this place, if he wishes. 

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I think he should be welcome to China to take the pulse of a country that he believes is so adamant about basically kicking off the U.S.. I’m a realist and I don’t expect him or any other so-called China hawks in the U.S. to not advance U.S. interests, but it’s in the interests of the U.S. and these people themselves to base their decisions on facts, especially firsthand experience on the ground in China. He should come, not only to Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen, but also to the least developed regions and have a chance to connect with ordinary Chinese people. [On Tuesday, the Chinese government sanctioned Mike Gallagher, banning him from entering the country.]

I don’t think he will take you up on that! So back to your newsletter: when you started it, did you get approval from Xinhua or anyone else to start it? 

No, I did not. I just started it. I’m actually quite new both to newsletters and to China-U.S. relations. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I graduated from college in 2011. I joined Xinhua News Agency right away. First, as a provincial news reporter, I started in the northernmost Heilongjiang Province, where we could, to quote Sarah Palin, see Russia from our backyard, for four years. And then I went to Shandong Provincial Bureau for another two and a half years. I was dispatched by Xinhua to Brussels from the end of 2017 to July 2020. I seriously started the newsletter at the end of 2020 and got on to Twitter, so I’ve been in this so-called China watching community for only four years. I came back to the Chinese mainland and was basically transferred to Xinhua headquarters in Beijing. I stayed there for two more years and I joined the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), which is a think tank under the leadership of Henry Huiyao Wang [the founder of CCG and former Chinese government official], in October 2022.

I didn’t ask for any approval because having been in the state system for almost a decade, I understood that if you are a risk taker, the better way to do things is to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission, as the English language proverb says.

And did your superiors or editors start to notice that you were getting a following? What was their reaction?

They didn’t notice until 2021. I come back to the fact that few in China use emails. They really only noticed quite some months after I started. 

And they were okay with it?

Yes, that’s correct. And what I’m most proud of is that after I started writing it, my good friend and former colleague Yang Liu founded the Beijing Channel newsletter, and we also have a very good friend and former colleague called Jiang Jiang and he started the Ginger River Review [two Substacks founded by Xinhua journalists]. So although I left Xinhua and the state apparatus, there were some quite good substacks emerging at my inspiration.

Are there any issues in the newsletter that you won’t write about because they’re too sensitive? 

What we cover in the newsletters includes very substantial and substantive discussions about China and its policies, some of which are quite critical. I try to remain relevant, and have an impact, and be constructive both at home and abroad. That actually quite aligns with the model of the CCG. 

Have any of your posts ever been taken down or censored?

No, I have the login and the password, and only people with the login and the password can do that. 

Many of your posts, and your tweets, are about debunking articles or narratives about China. We already talked a little bit about this with Taiwan, but are there other kinds of major misconceptions that you feel like you need to push back against?

I have had the privilege to know quite a few foreign journalists, including from the mainstream media in America and Britain, and from other countries. I would say the people I know are very friendly. They try to do their job. I maintain professional respect and personal friendships with them. So I don’t set out to debunk them or just criticize them. And it’s also a learning process. I have to admit, when I first got on to Twitter, I probably had the urge to say, oh, this is wrong, oh, that is wrong, I need to correct it. Gradually I’ve come to take comments in what I believe is a more calm and more comprehensive manner. People have different perspectives on the same set of facts, and people don’t even agree on the same set of facts today. But I don’t think I set out to debunk Western “evil forces blaming China”, that’s not my mission. 

We should stick to the facts and not overreact, and we should believe in the goodness of people’s hearts and try to approach each other in a more constructive manner. 

One of the biggest myths about China is that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is a completely new thing. If you really look at the leader’s speeches, or official documents, there is a great continuity in what Xi Jinping says on Taiwan. You can find almost identical, if not the same, remarks made by his predecessors, by Hu Jintao, by Jiang Zemin, by Zhu Rongji. Some of the remarks that have been branded as new or unprecedented, are just not. I think part of the reason that the issue has now got a lot of attention is because China today is not the same as 10 or 20 years ago. I don’t blame people for not following Chinese political discourse for three decades. When I do something like a debunking or rebuttal, I try to focus on the facts and on the logic, and not to initiate personal attacks. 

Do you think that some of this would be helped if more U.S. reporters could be in China? 

Yes, definitely, and vice versa. When you only have one or two people in China, what do you cover? Security and politics. These are the most controversial, most divisive subjects. I sincerely believe it’s a travesty that the numbers of journalists posted to China from the U.S. media, and to the U.S. from China, are very low. 

Even worse is the situation between China and India. The two countries combined have 2.8 billion people. There is not even one single Chinese reporter based in India, and I don’t think there are any from Indian media outlets in China, or maybe just one.

What do you think of wolf warrior diplomacy? 

First of all, in the Chinese understanding, there was a century of humiliation [in the 1800s], where basically the colonists came to China and divided up the Chinese mainland. That is a very bad memory. China didn’t grow to be prosperous and rich with an advanced economy until very recently. So it has always been the Chinese aspiration to be standing among the more respected leaders in the world. 

Secondly, after Trump’s trade war, which was totally unexpected because in his first year in office the China-U.S. relations were actually very good. He came to Beijing, he was given a grand tour of the Forbidden Palace. China treated him with great respect. But things changed rapidly. So for the Chinese media and diplomats, there was this urge to stand up for the nation, for the people, and that’s a big part of the posturing and the kind of speech that they use. 

There are different estimates of what sort of effect they are having across the international community. In the Western world, also in neighboring South Korea and Japan, according to the Pew polls, the favorability of China is dropping. In some cases it has dropped significantly. But in the global south, in Africa, favorability towards the Chinese is still pretty good. There was a recent opinion poll out of Singapore which shows there is still quite some affinity for the Chinese compared to Americans across Southeast Asia, although there are debates about the methodology. 

What I’d like is a more diverse point of view reflected in Chinese communications. There should be two or three or four media outlets that are as influential as the Global Times newspaper, which is read quite widely, but maybe could have different nuances, different styles, different takes.

In your view, how has the wolf warrior approach impacted the U.S.-China discussion and also, has it impacted how people view you? 

One thing I remember, which has given me a very strong impression, is something that Michelle Obama said before the 2008 election: When they go low, we go high. That has been the ideal approach. We should stick to the facts and not overreact, and we should believe in the goodness of people’s hearts and try to approach each other in a more constructive manner. 

My colleague at The Wire recently published a piece about Sixth Tone and its evolution. What do you think that story says about Chinese state media and how it has changed?

If there was a way to poll foreign readers of Sixth Tone and ask them if they have developed more nuanced depth and empathy for China after reading Sixth Tone, I firmly think the answer is yes. President Xi Jinping calls for “telling China stories well” and I think their stories include the challenges and difficulties facing China and its people. The other half of Xi’s quote is to “present a true multidimensional and panoramic view of China.” This is a vast developing country, there is a lot of diversity and people have been grappling with rapid changes over several decades, while economic and social development might take many more years to unfold. China’s GDP per capita is just $13,000, ranking around 70^th globally and lower than the poorest EU member state. And according to Chinese officials, there are still 600 million people with a monthly disposable income around or below 1,000 yuan, or $150. So there are pains and sufferings and struggles. And these stories deserve a voice. And it also helps the rest of the world to understand that, as with every other country, this is not a perfect nation. There are a lot of difficulties. 

What parts of the Biden administration’s China policy do you think have been successful?

Last year we had the climate envoy John Kerry, we had Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, we had Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, we had Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, they all came to China. So the restart of high-level visits has been a success of the Biden administration. They got President Xi’s remarks in San Francisco about China feeling the pain of Americans about fentanyl and the Biden administration got Chinese cooperation on that, and that is also a very good policy success. 

Left: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Guangzhou, April 5, 2024. Right: Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, April 26, 2024. Credit: Janet Yellen, U.S. Department of State

Any failures?

The State Department still has not changed its travel advisory on China. It’s now at the second most serious level, and that’s not helpful in enabling Americans to visit China. There is no sign that the Fulbright Scholarship, which was halted during the Trump administration, will be restarted. 

But from the Chinese point of view, the most sensitive and the most serious challenges stemming from U.S. policy are the increasing export controls and prohibitions on cooperation on science and technology, and on products based on various entity lists. I’m quite suspicious that these policies could really stifle China’s development in these areas and maybe these measures will not prove as ideal as the designers of this policy imagined. 

On the travel advisory, that is in part due to exit bans and concerns about arbitrary detention in China.

When I grew up, the overarching slogan was development is the highest priority. But now the overarching argument is to coordinate development and security. So it’s true. Beijing is now emphasizing security much more than it used to. That’s also a fact. We need to acknowledge it.

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