Chinese perceptions of America have frequently been characterized as having a kind of “love/hate” dynamic, though perhaps one should use the more culturally idiomatic description of “sweet and sour.” As David Shambaugh’s classic formulation put it, we have long been seen as the “Beautiful Imperialist,” simultaneously a kind of object of desire in the Chinese mind and an object of aversion, both serving as Mĕiguó—the Chinese term for the United States, literally meaning “beautiful nation”— and as China’s national nemesis.
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