Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Chinese public opinion is often overlooked in discussions of U.S.-China competition, yet it shapes how Beijing defines threats, prioritizes interests, and calibrates its foreign policy. As tensions span trade, technology, Taiwan, and regional security, understanding how Chinese citizens view these issues offers critical insight into both domestic constraints and external behavior. 

In this interview recorded on March 31, 2026, Nick Zeller, Renard Sexton, and Yawei Liu discuss findings from China Pulse, a joint survey project by The Carter Center and Emory University. They examine Chinese attitudes toward the United States as a security threat, expectations around the trade conflict, views on Taiwan, and perspectives on China’s role in key regional relationships, and what these trends reveal about the trajectory of U.S.-China relations. 

Speakers

Yawei Liu

Yawei Liu (刘亚伟) is the senior advisor for China at The Carter Center and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the associate director of the China Research Center in Atlanta. He is the founding editor of the U.S.- China Perception Monitor websites. 

Nick Zeller

Nick Zeller is a senior program associate in The Carter Center’s China Focus initiative where he acts as lead researcher for The Carter Center’s Chinese public opinion projects and editor of the English-language U.S.-China Perception Monitor newsletter and blog. Prior to joining the Carter Center, Nick was a Visiting Assistant Professor of World History in Kennesaw State University’s Department of History and Philosophy, Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian History in the University of South Carolina’s Department of History, and an NSEP Boren Fellow at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He received his Ph.D. in modern Chinese history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Renard Sexton

Renard Sexton is an associate professor of political science at Emory University, where he studies national security and development, especially in the Indo-Pacific. He is managing director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict project and regularly engages with policymakers in the U.S. and among allies and partners. His research has been published in top scholarly journals, including the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. His policy pieces and commentary have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. He has held fellowships from the Luce-Mansfield Asia Scholars program, the Wilson Center China program, and the Southeast Asia Research Group. During the 2022–23 academic year, he served as an advisor at USINDOPACOM on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, working on China/Taiwan matters. Before joining Emory as an assistant professor in 2019, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and an economics of conflict fellow at the International Crisis Group.. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at New York University. 

Moderator

Jessica Bissett

Jessica Bissett is the senior director of government engagement of the NCUSCR. She works on the Committee’s congressional engagement and manages its subnational initiatives. She previously ran many of the Committee’s Next Generation Leadership programs, including its Schwarzman Scholars Partnership, Young China Professionals program, and Diplomat Orientation Program.  Ms. Bissett received her master’s in global affairs from New York University and studied Chinese language and history as a part of her double major in international relations and East Asian studies at Bucknell University.