Wang Huiyao speaks at 1st Princeton China Forum

CCG | April 19 , 2025

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Drawing from his own experience as a student in North America, Wang highlights the importance of academic exchange, frank conversations, and pragmatic cooperation in U.S.-China relations.

On Saturday April 19, Henry Huiyao Wang, Founder & President of the Center for China & Globalization (CCG), delivered a keynote speech at the first Princeton China Forum.

An on-stage interview with Wang and Robert L. Hutchings were then conducted on-stage. Hutchings is Lecturer with the rank of Professor at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas, where he was the Rostow Professor in National Security and Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His combined academic and diplomatic career has included service as Fellow and Director of International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Director for European Affairs with the National Security Council, and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State, with the rank of ambassador.

Available below is a transcript of the speech Wang delivered at Princeton.

Keynote Speech at the 1st Princeton China Forum

Wang Huiyao

Saturday, April 19th, 2025, delivered at McCosh Hall, Princeton University

Distinguished guests, cherished students, and friends,

It is a profound honor to serve as a keynote speaker for the 1st Princeton China Forum. Stepping onto this campus—where Gothic spires guard centuries of inquiry and dogwoods are just beginning to bloom—I feel both humbled and invigorated. Princeton’s motto, “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity,” captures the aspiration that first propelled me across the Pacific decades ago: the conviction that knowledge is not an ornament for the fortunate few but a lever for the many. To address a university that has nurtured presidents, Nobel laureates, and public servants of every calling is, for me, a homecoming of the spirit.

I first set foot in North America with two suitcases, a bilingual dictionary, and more curiosity than cash. After several formative years at China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade, I came eager to understand how the West unlocks human potential. Professors lengthened library hours so a newcomer could finish assignments; host families widened their dinner tables so a stranger could taste Thanksgiving. Those early kindnesses convinced me that trust—an old fashioned word—can travel faster than any cargo ship, and that when openness meets diligence, national destinies shift.

Years later, I founded the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), now ranked as the No.1 non-governmental thinktank in Beijing. CCG has become an unofficial port of call for diplomats seeking ground truth, for professors brainstorming joint studies, for journalists hunting nuance beneath headlines, and for students—American, European, African—searching for China’s place in their own future. We host dozens of dialogues each year, drawing participants from leading policy centers and universities across North America. It is in those exchanges—where tariffs and technology fears are probed with data rather than slogans—that I learn daily how engagement tempers ambition with realism and realism with empathy.

Collaboration is not a slogan at CCG; it is the workflow. We sustain a deliberately porous workflow: visiting scholars collaborate on fresh policy ideas, graduate students chase down the data that will anchor tomorrow’s theses, and retired trade negotiators still swap war stories in the cafeteria queue. Skeptics arrive with folded arms and leave at least better informed. That iterative enlightenment is how rival powers edge away from collision and toward coexistence.

Universities remain the first stringers in this bridge across the Pacific. Even in seasons of frost, Princeton climatologists co author with Beijing data scientists; engineers at top schools on both coasts refine battery chemistry with partners in Shenzhen and Suzhou. Science respects no passport queue, and peer review is an under appreciated instrument of global security. It is fitting, then, that China now welcomes 50,000 American students over five years—an invitation extended by President Xi Jinping in San Francisco at the end of 2023 and already embraced by nearly 16,000 young Americans in the past year. They are tasting delicacies in Chengdu, my hometown, probing AI ethics in Beijing, and discovering that the China of documentaries and headlines is never quite the China of daily life. If my generation built bridges armed only with paper dictionaries, imagine what theirs will do with AI powered translators at their fingertips.

Exchange, of course, must travel in both directions. Last year, the United States hosted nearly 290,000 Chinese students, injecting into local economies and sustaining a significant number of American jobs. Some will stay, founding start-ups from CRISPR labs in Boston to cloud computing firms in Seattle; many will return home, becoming bilingual ambassadors for American ingenuity in China’s vast marketplace. Either way, every dorm room friendship narrows the margin for miscalculation across the Pacific.

Let us also speak plainly about trade, for trade still pays tuition and lab fees. Chinese exports shave percentage points off U.S. consumer price inflation each year, cushioning American family budgets at the checkout counter. When tariffs rise, that quiet subsidy disappears; a recent Boston Fed analysis warns that proposed increases could add up to two full points to core inflation if mark ups stick. Affordable toys for children, laptops for college freshmen, spare parts for Midwestern auto shops—all become a little dearer, and the invisible tax falls heaviest on working families.

Conversely, collaboration in advanced manufacturing promises shared prosperity. President Donald Trump has voiced openness to Chinese automakers building plants in America. If clear, predictable rules follow—rules that respect U.S. labor standards and national security concerns—Chinese capital can revive industrial corridors from Michigan to Mississippi, accelerate the rollout of affordable electric vehicles, and create middle-class jobs American voters crave. Competition, then, enlarges the pie before slicing begins.

The digital economy offers further upside. American cloud providers host Chinese start-ups eyeing global markets, while Chinese e-commerce platforms rely on North American logistics firms to reach last-mile customers in the Midwest. When both sides align technical standards on data protection—a topic CCG has explored with its North American partners—small businesses benefit first: Ohio farmers selling soy snacks online, Sichuan artisans shipping tea sets to Phoenix.

Healthcare, too, rewards cooperation. During the pandemic, U.S. and Chinese scientists jointly sequenced viral genomes; today they refine mRNA platforms for cancer immunotherapy. Shared clinical trials accelerate breakthroughs for patients in Baltimore and Beijing alike. In an aging world, time is our scarcest resource, and collaboration, not rivalry, buys us more of it.

Beneath these sector specific gains lies a sturdier foundation: supply chain resilience. Dialogues with industry leaders show that diversified—not duplicated—routes are the surest insurance against global shocks. Ports on the U.S. coasts benefit from foreign upgrades in handling equipment and software, while ports along China’s littoral apply best practices from cold chain logistics and safety protocols developed abroad. Every incremental improvement lowers the odds that an earthquake in one hemisphere will empty store shelves in the other. Collaboration, again, is not charity; it is enlightened self-interest.

Track II and Track 1.5 diplomacy provide the scaffolding for such progress. At CCG, we convene international business delegations gauging consumer trends, investors seeking sustainable industry partnerships, and educators exploring new models of workforce training. We are determined to make well-tested ideas circulate long before formal positions crystallize into press releases.

To the students here, seize the gravity of engagement. Spend a semester in Beijing, an internship in Hangzhou, or a summer mapping green supply chains along the Yangtze River. Your skills—and your friendships—will outlive any single election cycle. To faculty, craft syllabi that share data while guarding legitimate security concerns; let peer review, not politics, judge science. And to policymakers across Washington and Beijing, remember: the next breakthrough in energy abundance or Alzheimer’s therapy may require visas stamped in both directions.

When I first left China, bilateral trade hovered near US$ 5 billion; today it is more than one hundred times larger. Numbers that large command their own gravity, pulling suppliers, consumers, and researchers toward collaboration—so long as we keep communications open. Having benefited from North America’s openness and China’s reform era, I stand convinced that bridges built of curiosity and respect can outlast any storm of suspicion.

Princeton’s charge is to serve the nation and, more ambitiously, humanity. Let us—scholars and students, entrepreneurs and officials—strengthen the bridges we have inherited and construct new spans, so future generations inherit affordable goods, resilient industries, and the habit of talking before acting. In doing so, we honor not only our two nations but the common welfare of humankind.

Thank you.

Note: The above text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. It is posted as a reference for the discussion.