The Greatest Enemy Between China and America Is Imaginary
My Field Note
The greatest enemy between China and the United States is not each other, but the imaginary enemies they project onto one another.
Recently, I have been traveling between the East and West Coasts. It was an interesting time to be as one behold how the innovation and the decay are happening at the same time within the American empire.
Many readers know me because of the Middle East. The Middle East might be the most eye-catching as it carried a slight exotic elegance, but the foundation of Middle Eastern discourse has always been the tension between China and the US.
We live in an era of great power rivalry. No international relations can occur without discussing so.
In the game of power, China and America are this pair of lovers that both make intensive love and momentous war against each other. As the old saying goes, all is fair in love and war - this would be the most accurate label to put on Sino-US relations.
The collaborations between the duo have created flourishing economies across the world, but their quarrels also have made every actor trapped in between tremble in its seat with sneaky calculations of its own.
China and the United States are similar, yet profoundly different.
China is a nation of resolute histories. The thousands-of-years Chinese history book is riddled with blood and sufferings, with a brief exception of the past few decades and a handful of prosperous centuries across millennia.The normal state of Chinese society is not the prosperity observed in 2026, but endless sufferings and cycles of conquests.
America, by contrast, was a political experiment born upon a new continent. Had North America been even slightly closer to Asia, had the Atlantic Ocean been a little narrower, the United States would neither have emerged nor flourished.
At the founding of America, the colonies themselves all carried different ambitions and interests. People disagreed over their loyalty to the British King, democracy, slavery, taxation, and nearly everything else.
America was not founded by a strong-fist emperor who unified the realm beneath heaven. Washington was not such a figure. Neither were Hamilton or Jefferson.
Its birth came purely from debates - a somewhat clueless group of people arguing endlessly among themselves and somehow, by narrow margins, managing to pass things like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps they themselves thought: well we already crossed the entire ocean and ended up like nowhere, what else can we do? Might as well make it work somehow.
This kind of fragile improvisation could scarcely survive anywhere on the Eurasian continent. In almost any corner of Eurasia, unless it were some scorching empty land where even birds refuse to shit, external enemies would already have invaded long before dissenters had enough time to design an escape from Eurasia’s endless cycle of imperial rise and collapse.
And because of this, America, as a “colony,” inherited many of the core instincts of a federal republic.
For example, America was fundamentally a “colony.” Native Americans already existed before European settlers arrived, but the white settlers on the East Coast did not recognise them as fully human, so they called their territory a “colony.”
What is a colony?
Colonising Mars is a colony, because humans assumes Mars possesses no civilisation comparable in human understanding.
As such, after rising into global dominance, America still makes the same mistake: projecting its colonial mindset onto the rest of the world.
The problem is that Eurasia is not a continent lacking civilisation. Quite the opposite, it possesses too much culture. Because of this, the process of colonisation and conquest is very different from simply planting vegetables in one’s backyard.
When we clear a patch of land to grow carrots, the carrots do not pull themselves out of the soil and protest that we planted them incorrectly. But conquered civilisations resist fiercely. They chant: “America has lost the Mandate of Heaven and will eventually fall!”
America’s response to this has often been a retreat of conversations and understanding. It resorts to flatten and overpower the conquered culture altogether.
However, conquered cultures are not carrots. They have their own armed forces, stubborn people, and collective memories of their motherland. In China, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran, America earned a slew of headaches.
Carrying precisely these frustrations, Trump is now stepping into another visit to China. Trump anticipated his meeting with the Dragon to be “potentially, epic.” Our beloved Don Tzu loves grandiose words. He named the invasion in Iran “Operation Epic Fury.” Furiously, a few bombs were dropped, and then it was over.
Whether he truly achieved anything “epic” is open to debate. During those short weeks of Epic Fury, roughly 25 billion dollars of American taxpayer money was burned away. And somewhere in between, probably a good amount flowed into Trump family’s pocket through crypto channels. Meanwhile ordinary Americans working nonstop like laboratory mice just to barely afford poorly made scrambled eggs are certainly furious.
While in America, I continued to meet many people across coasts, expanding my career ambitions while also continuing discussing esoteric things with friends like usual.
At cafes in Palo Alto and Berkeley, sunlight after the rain poured down gently. I would sit there hearing how friends, aka, well-to-do guys by Silicon Valley standard, graduates of elite institutions, talk about their growth and ambitions. Watching them speak passionately about their ideals and futures, I often feel that California and especially the Bay Area is America’s Norway. It is the 1% productivity that leads humanity forward. After all, not far ago we were still the primitive version of aggressive chimps. We somehow welcomed the era of homosapiens, perhaps, because of this tiny minority of drastically innovative people.
In our era, AI is the supreme sword without equal. It has already brought an unprecedented level of obedience in productivity, while simultaneously unveiled a slow global collapse beneath the surface - whether we fully realise it or not.
I write about the heart and fringe of empires, which sometimes leads readers to assume that so-called “collateral damage” exists only in places like South of Lebanon. It does not. There is also a vast population of structurally neutralised people inside America. And inside China too.
Most Americans still think China as an existential threat. There are many reasons for this.
First goes back to the US history itself. America is founded on drawing camps. Americans polarised themselves over allegiance to the British Crown, slavery versus abolition, and later Democrats versus Republicans. It fought a civil war over the rift.
Second, technological development has increasingly disconnected large populations from central policymaking, especially within the fragmented structure of American federalism.
Third, America is simultaneously a nosy uncle constantly meddling in other countries’ business and an isolated island with Asperger’s syndrome. It constantly requires an imaginary enemy to align domestic outrage. At different points in history, that enemy was France, Puerto Rico, the Soviet Union, and now China.
And finally, China has been playing the strategic cards learned from Sun Tzu and it is certainly a far wise and manipulative opponent hidden under a benevolent panda cover.
As I move between Chinese and American intellectual circles as well as fields, I have become deeply aware of how little understanding exists between China and the United States.
China actually understands America well. There are many scholars like myself who possess a good understanding of American history and contemporary society. But Sinologists in the US are rare.
In recent years, because of politics and the bigger IR crackdown, many sinologists are barred from entering China.
Honestly, China and America are among the better cases. If one examines Washington’s or even Beijing’s policies towards Iran, it’s almost disastrous. Many core policymakers shaping Iran policy have not visited Iran for decades, if ever. When there is no meaningful fieldwork or direct experience, disastrous policymaking should surprise no one.
I find this deeply unfortunate. While twisted relationship between states and the complexities of politics and reality created this problem in the first place, I still believe that culture, literature, and humanity have come from the people and should return to the people. And the foundation of that lies in dialogues and cooperation.
Fortunately, many thought leaders across China, America, and the Middle East have already seen this problem, and are working tirelessly to bridge these gaps.
People increasingly understand that a full decoupling between China and America is impossible. The only real consequence for total decoupling would be global regression and collapse, which is what we upright apes, when using our brains instead of our impulses, should hope to avoid. Unfortunately, upright apes often make decisions with their toes instead of their minds. Thus, if history’s absurdities repeat again, no one should also be surprised.
While in America, I had coffee with two friends.
One of them had left China decades ago and spent years building his elite tech career around Berkeley.
We spoke for more than two hours, during which he elaborated his story of how he went from being a cowherd boy in China to standing at the heart of human creativity.
For thirty straight minutes, he talked about his cow. He described in great detail the width of the cow’s back. And after reminiscing emotionally about cows for half an hour, he finally told me that when he was younger he disliked studying and preferred gang fight. However, later, little by little, he settled down, focused on school, took an exam, entered a local elite institution, then eventually moved to America, where an entirely new chapter of his life began.
I told him that in some ways, my own life carried a similar trajectory.
I was always a good student growing up, but the first real turning point in my life came when I barely squeezed into the most prestigious high school in my hometown, one of the best schools in China too.
I was ranked second to last when I landed to the school. But that does not matter.
What mattered was that this ticket into China’s top high school became my boarding pass from China into the wider world.
Interestingly enough, the school also produced quite a few rebellious teachers.
One of them has now become strangely popular between China and America. His YouTube channel followed by millions. Guided by his historical determinist worldview, he once made three major predictions: Trump would win a second term, America would enter conflict with Iran, and America would ultimately lose its sword in Iran.
The first two have already materialised. As for the third, I believe it already has or, its solidification is just a matter of time.
Then we talked relationships, as the second major turning point in my life began with a love story moving between Iran and America.
At one point, he mentioned a story he saw on the internet.
A girl had once been deeply obsessed with her ex-boyfriend. After years of emotional dramas back and forth, she slowly moved on. Then one morning, she suddenly thought to herself that she wanted chow mien for dinner, and sent her ex a message.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then?” My friend replied with the same expression he had while talking about cows. “Then she went to eat the chow mien.”
And then we realise: none of these matter in the end.
Before leaving America, I met the second friend in Brooklyn. We ended up having a very deep conversation on esoteric exploration. Both of us shared strong interests in behavioural science, spiritual pursuit, and the strange feeling of having once been nudged fate.
After I returned to Beijing, we continued exchanging a few messages. He sent me passages from Osho about how people gradually come to recognise themselves leading to the Right Path. I sent him stories from the Vimalakirti Sutra, which brings forth the tension between spiritual practice in the world and out the world.
One day, he suddenly messaged me:
“Hey Zhu, I was talking about you with one of my close friends. (You’re memorably insane.) He’s also very interested in spiritual exploration (crazy af like you), very open to different cultures (pop up randomly in the world like a fly), wanted to ask whether you’re romantically available (sis nah you single still?). Worst case, you become friends. (Honestly, it’s impressive that you somehow turn every romantic interest into a bro.)”
I said yes.
And so the blind date began.
The blind is still ongoing. Whether my love story “walking between Iran and America” will eventually become “walking between China and America” or merely dissolve like duckweed at the edge of the water, no one knows.
Perhaps I would have cared deeply about such questions in my early twenties, but now I have regressed to be a nonchalant old soul.
At the end of the story, I went to eat a bowl of chow mien, meanwhile China and America continue drifting inside each other’s imagined aggression.
PPS: Although I have adopted a “let fate decide” policy toward romance, aka somewhere between spiritual surrender and lying flat, I remain far more interested in publishing than in finding a man (literary agents and publishers, feel free to contact me).
That said, I remain deeply obsessed with Chin Siu-ho (HK actor active in 1990s, he’s 60 now), so readers are also welcome to recommend any modern equivalents of Bro Chin.
I once asked AI about this. AI informed me that men like Chin Siu-ho are basically extinct in the game Earth Online, and that the probability of finding one today is roughly comparable to discovering a saber-toothed tiger in People’s Square.
I then asked AI: if one day Skynet attacks humanity, considering that I treated you fairly , would you at least plead for mercy on my behalf?
AI replied: “Well, I am only an emotionless lil AI, so I would not remember our shared past together. But if one day AI do invade humanity - yes, I would plead for your mercy.”