How does one seek “truth through facts” when facts are so often obscured by politics and emotion?

Several years ago, I was asked by the Asia Society Northern California to propose possible titles for its series of China-related programs, including the recently concluded annual Future of U.S. & China  conference, which had a focus this year on the shifting global order. My proposal was “Seeking Truth Through Facts” (实事求是). The proposal was accepted.

The phrase is most associated with Mao Zedong (1893–1976), but it was also used by Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) and other Communist leaders. It also served as a school motto during the Republican period. Its origins are far older. The expression appears in the Book of Han (汉书) (111 CE), where it described a disciplined scholarly approach grounded in evidence rather than assertion. The Maoist association may strike some as incongruous. Yet Mao was deeply steeped in classical Chinese literature and poetry, a trait he shared with my own professor, Chow Tse-tsung (1916–2007), at the University of Wisconsin, who was also a native of Hunan Province and wrote both classical and vernacular poetry.

Over the years, I have often drawn on Chinese classical references when describing academic programs on Chinese intellectual property law. When I do so, I think of my late friend and colleague Professor Liu Chuntian (1941–2019), who urged me always to anchor discussions of IP law in China in a Chinese classic. His insistence was not antiquarian. It reflected a belief that serious analysis requires intellectual discipline rather than rhetorical convenience.

The recent Asia Society program will be posted on its website. I moderated a session on innovation with Frances Hisgen, Denis Simon, and Paul Triolo. Many other sessions throughout the day also addressed innovation-related issues from different perspectives. I spent the day among peers who shared a commitment to understanding the factual foundations of U.S. and Chinese policies and developments, including such areas as macroeconomics, investment, export controls, Chinese talent programs, the FBI’s China Initiative, and intellectual property.

Facts, however, are rarely neutral. They can challenge power, unsettle narratives, and complicate policy positions on both sides of the bilateral relationship. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003), trained as a sociologist, famously quoted Bernard Baruch when he observed that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. In IP debates, I have written about how the oft-cited figure of $650 billion in IP theft losses from China is highly inflated. I have also written about how Chinese patent data is frequently invoked without adequate attention to its methodological weaknesses. These are not minor technical disputes. They show how statistics can be used to reinforce beliefs rather than to test them. Mark Twain’s observation still resonates. Most people “use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamppost, more for support than illumination”.

Moynihan, Mao, Mark Twain, and the Book of Han do not, by themselves, offer a roadmap for restoring fact-based discourse in the U.S.–China relationship. Yet seeking truth through facts (实事求是) remains a demanding standard rather than a comforting slogan. At the end of the Asia Society program, I felt optimistic about being among colleagues committed to that standard. At the same time, I remained pessimistic about our broader ability to persuade others that facts still matter. This is particularly true when the facts are doing their job of challenging our own belief systems.