Dear all Americans,
My dear all friends, If reading this X article makes you feel a physical discomfort—congratulations. It probably means you still have a functioning immune system against propaganda, regardless of which flag it wears. It also means you just tasted, for a brief moment, what many ordinary Chinese people have felt for decades when we watched self-proclaimed “China experts” in the developed world talk about China with supreme confidence—lecturing, diagnosing, prescribing—while barely understanding the lived mechanics underneath.
And if reading this X article makes you feel excited—also congratulations. But let me be blunt: that excitement might not be truth. It might be the pleasure of being emotionally rewarded by a narrative that flatters your side. In that moment, you are experiencing something familiar too: the mental state of the Chinese “traitors” Western information campaigns have historically targeted—people who were not persuaded by better facts, but seduced by a story that made them feel righteous, superior, and certain.
Let me make my intent unambiguous: I am not writing to defend any government. I am not writing to ask you to “support China,” or to shame you into silence, or to win an argument. I am writing because the most dangerous weapon in the modern world is not a missile—it’s the reduction of entire peoples into symbols.
For years, “America” and “China” have been turned into cartoon characters: one is “freedom,” the other is “threat.” But real life is not a slogan. Real life is mortgages, hospitals, layoffs, schools, dignity, fear, hope, and the daily work of keeping a family afloat. In that sense, ordinary Americans and ordinary Chinese are not aliens to each other—we are mirrors with different histories.
Yes, we have real disputes: systems, values, security, trade, technology, alliances. These are hard questions. But here is what turns hard questions into catastrophe: when we stop seeing the other side as human beings, and start seeing them as a single target.
So I’m asking for one simple principle—the beginning of a bridge:
Allow the other side to be complex. And allow yourself to be complex.
When you see content about China, ask yourself:
- Is this explaining mechanisms, or just triggering emotions?
- Does it admit contradictions and trade-offs, or does it sell a one-dimensional villain?
- Does it treat 1.4 billion people as living human beings, or as a convenient symbol to hate?
And I will ask the same when I see content about America:
- Am I collapsing 300+ million lives into “empire,” “plot,” or “enemy”?
- Am I consuming anger because it feels good, not because it’s accurate?
Because propaganda—on any side—doesn’t start by lying. It starts by simplifying. It replaces understanding with a label. It replaces curiosity with certainty. It replaces dialogue with mobilization.
This letter is a small attempt to reverse that process.
Not to erase disagreements—but to keep disagreements from becoming hatred.
Not to surrender any position—but to prevent “war” from becoming the default conclusion.
Not to demand that we like each other—but to insist that we recognize each other as human.
If you felt discomfort reading this X article, keep that discomfort. It’s a sign you’re still awake.
I write this only to build a bridge of mutual understanding between China and the developed world—one sentence at a time, without illusions, without worship, without demonization.
Stay safe. Stay human.
— A person who refuses to hate on command