The Pew Research Center reported that 66 percent of Americans view China unfavorably. The Chinese are returning the favor in spades.

Political pressures in each country continue to encourage nationalistic feelings instead of cooling their citizens tempers. The die is cast to tear up 50 years of cooperation and ties between the United States and China.

If America and China do not stop their mutually destructive trajectory and assume joint leadership for global economic recovery, reconstruction of the post-coronavirus world could take years, with unimaginable consequences for the world’s 7.8 billion inhabitants. including unprecedented levels of global pandemics, unemployment, famine, and even war.

American policy makers are not the only ones, though, whose assumptions deserve closer examination. In this game of thrones China too has a key role to play.

This Osher class will discuss the oftentimes unrealistic assumptions that drive U.S. policy for China; discuss initiatives to rebuild trust between the two superpowers, and then distill the class discussions into a China agenda for the incoming Biden administration.