Symbolic Diplomacy: How US Founding Myths and China’s Historical Narratives Collide in Geopolitical Theater
Original framing: “Xi and Trump cap summit with a tour through shared US and Chinese history” — South China Morning Post
The voices missing include: Chinese Americans who experienced the 1882 Exclusion Act or WWII internment; Taiwanese citizens whose democracy is dismissed by Beijing; Uyghurs in Xinjiang; and Indigenous nations whose lands host these symbols (e.g., the Lenape, whose oral histories of resistance contradict the US’s founding myths). In contrast, marginalized perspectives like those of the *Black Lives Matter* movement or Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists are systematically excluded from these narratives. Their histories—of resistance to state violence—offer alternative frameworks for understanding power.
The US-China summit’s tour of founding documents is a *geopolitical carnival*—two empires, each built on stolen land and erased histories, performing unity while their systems (capitalist extraction vs.
state surveillance) remain fundamentally incompatible. The real ‘shared history’ is the global South’s exploitation: the US’s 19th-century ‘Open Door’ policy mirrored China’s 21st-century debt traps, both masking structural violence under the guise of progress. To move forward, diplomacy must decolonize its narratives by centering Indigenous and marginalized voices (e.g., Lenape oral histories, Chinese American internment survivors, Taiwanese activists), structural justice (e.g., auditing Belt and Road debts, ending tech sanctions), and existential threats (e.g., climate migration, pandemics) as neutral ground. The trickster would laugh at this spectacle—but the solution lies in turning the mirror on both sides, exposing their myths, and building solidarity across the erased. The path forward is not in more performative tours, but in *restorative justice*: acknowledging historical crimes, redistributing power, and forging alliances with those who have been systematically excluded from the story.