At about 3 a.m. in 1978, President Jimmy Carter was woken by a telephone call in the White House. Frank Press, was in China with Deng Xiaoping, leader of the People’s Republic. Deng wanted to know whether America would accept 5,000 Chinese students at its universities.
Carter recalled his angry response: “Tell him to send a hundred thousand.” Then he hung up. That irritable exchange became part of the foundation of the new relationship. An October 1978 White House memorandum anticipated at least 500 Chinese students studying in America by the following fall, and 100 Americans studying in China.
These numbers grew rapidly in the following years and decades. Nearly half a century later, people in the two countries think they know more about one another yet appear increasingly determined to know less of one another firsthand. Which makes a striking new finding about young Americans harder to explain: Gen Z is becoming the American generation least frightened of China, and yet also a generation less likely to actually know China.
The polling is the central finding of a new Chicago Council on Global Affairs analysis, drawing on its 2025 survey and a March 2026 Chicago Council-NPR-Ipsos poll. The Council defines Gen Z as those born from 1997 through 2013, though its survey of 1,025 people included only adults. Only 34 percent of Gen Z said the development of China as a world power represented a “critical threat” to the United States, compared with 62 percent of baby boomers.
Yet 43 percent of Gen Z still described China as a rival or adversary, against 28 percent who called it an ally or necessary partner. And 65 percent of Gen Z believed China wants to become the dominant world leader, although that was considerably below the 86 percent of boomers who thought so. In other words, the Zoomer view is not that China is our friend, but that it’s not necessarily our enemy.
More intriguing is the trend. In January 2020, 50 percent of Gen Z regarded China’s rise as a critical threat, compared with 42 percent of boomers. By 2025, those numbers had moved in opposite directions: Gen Z had fallen to 34 percent, while boomers had risen to 62 percent.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
