US-China cultural exchange at low point after tensions and Covid, data shows

Cultural ties between the US and China are at a low point after several years of decline, according to Guardian analysis of official figures.

The Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions, coupled with the continuing trade war between the two countries, is diluting cultural exchanges, with visitor numbers, students and even the world of literature all affected.

During the late 2000s and early 2010s there was an increase in cultural exchange between the US and China. Since then, tensions between the two countries – which rose under Donald Trump and have continued under Joe Biden – have sent those trends into reverse.

Here the Guardian looks at the cultural effects of the political and economic antagonism between the superpowers.

Study abroad

A western education has long been valued by wealthy Chinese people. Figures show the number of Chinese students studying in the US boomed during the Obama administration, rising from 98,235 in the 2008-09 academic year to 350,755 in 2016-17. But rapid increases witnessed under Obama tapered off during Trump’s stint in the White House. The Covid-19 pandemic led to the first drop in numbers since 2003-04.

A similar pattern has been seen in reverse. The number of US students choosing to study abroad in China rose massively in the early 2000s, before peaking in 2012. Since then, student exchanges have fallen – with the pandemic leading to a massive drop from 11,639 US students in China in 2018-19 to just 382 in 2020-21.

Journalism

During the past few years journalistic relations between the US and China have reached new lows, with tit-for-tat expulsions and visa changes making life hard for foreign correspondents of both nations.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said 56% of foreign bureaux noted delays in receiving J-1 visas for their correspondents in 2022, and that Chinese authorities often used Covid-19 as a pretext to deny foreign journalists access. About 38% of the journalists surveyed had Chinese sources that had been in some way harassed or called in for questioning, up from 25% in 2021.

Meanwhile the number of US journalist visas issued to Chinese citizens, including family members, reached record lows in 2021, when just two were issued (non-essential visa services were disrupted by the pandemic). In 2015, a record 1,041 were issued, but numbers have been steadily dwindling since then, as relations between both countries have worsened.

In 2020 the US state department required Chinese media to register as foreign missions and also announced it was cutting the number of journalists allowed to work at US offices of leading Chinese media from 160 to 100. In November 2021, both countries agreed to ease restrictions on journalists, but just 16 were issued in the 2022 fiscal year.

Film and literature

The cooling of US-China relations has even encompassed literature. Figures from the University of Rochester’s translation database shows the annual number of publications of Chinese fiction and poetry translated and published in the US has steadily declined since 2017.

A Guardian analysis of books tagged “US” on the website Douban – a Chinese equivalent to IMDb and Goodreads – shows a similar pattern in reverse. There were 267 US books on the site published in 2017 – which fell to 146 in 2022.

The influence of Hollywood has also faded in China. While Chinese-produced films have never been that popular in the US, Hollywood historically made up a large portion of Chinese box office revenues.

In recent years, that calculation has changed, with domestically produced films making up 85% of the Chinese market in 2022 – up from less than 50% a decade earlier.

Travel and tourism

The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic caused global travel to collapse – and China has had strong restrictions in place longer than any other country. Figures from the I-94 arrivals programme, however, show a dwindling number of Chinese tourists to the US even before the pandemic hit.

Figures for the first five months of 2023 – after China reopened its borders – show that arrivals are creeping up, but remain far lower than pre-pandemic levels. Just 87,600 Chinese nationals arrived in May this year – compared with 255,000 in May 2019.

The UN World Tourism Organization publishes separate figures on the number of US tourists to China, which show rising figures up until 2018, when numbers started to drop.