Farewell to the U.S.-China Golden Age

A lunch meeting about China this summer at the Upper East Side headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations felt more like an Irish wake.

A crowd that included gray-haired China hands and not-so-gray-haired tech executives shared memories of their years in the Middle Kingdom as diplomats, entrepreneurs and English teachers in the countryside. One attendee recalled how the car of Warren Christopher, then deputy secretary of state, was attacked by a mob in Taipei, Taiwan, after U.S. officials announced that Washington would re-establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. Another told stories about living for years in Beijing as a translator, brand strategist and freelance music critic on a “dodgy visa” that the Chinese government would never give out today. They were all keenly aware that they had lived through an extraordinary period of warm relations that is now gone, perhaps forever.