From starry-eyed to sceptical: why young Chinese are turning away from the American dream
Unlike older generations, who saw the US as the ultimate destination, China’s Gen Z views the superpower through a more pragmatic lens
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. In this article, Jane Cai and Yuanyue Dang examine Chinese people’s changing attitudes towards the US.
For generations, the US represented not just a distant power but an aspirational ideal: a land of innovation, individual freedom and boundless possibility that contrasted with China’s own turbulent path through dynastic decline, republican hopes, invasion, revolution and rebirth.
Nowhere is the transformation more vivid than across two generations of Chinese families. Parents who once viewed America as the ultimate destination – a symbol of modernity and escape from scarcity – now have children who approach it with pragmatic respect or detachment, national confidence and sometimes outright scepticism.