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More than 1 million consumer users have logged into GuideGeek, the newest AI travel platform from Matador Network. Instead of forums and travel agents, travelers bank heavily on artificial intelligence to plan their future vacations. It’s clear that AI is rapidly reshaping the global travel industry, but it may come with some downsides.

More than 1 million consumer users have logged into GuideGeek, the newest AI travel platform from Matador Network. Instead of forums and travel agents, travelers bank heavily on artificial intelligence to plan their future vacations. It’s clear that AI is rapidly reshaping the global travel industry, but it may come with some downsides.

As interest grows, destinations also hop on board and adapt to meet the demand as people trade human knowledge for AI-planned travel. Artificial intelligence has steadily moved from a behind-the-scenes tool to a central companion for modern travelers.

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AI reshapes the traveler experience

Once used mainly for basic customer-service chatbots, artificial intelligence now anticipates traveler needs, personalizes recommendations and streamlines planning in ways that were previously impossible. Increasingly, travelers rely on AI not just for convenience but for reassurance that their trips will run smoothly from start to finish.

Younger generations, accustomed to instant digital solutions, drive this shift as they turn to AI platforms for itinerary building, budget tracking and real-time destination insights. In fact, a growing majority of millennial and Gen Z travelers say they trust AI-generated trip suggestions as much as, or more than, traditional travel agents.

By removing guesswork and reducing the time spent on logistics, AI empowers travelers to focus more on the experiences themselves. The rising demand pushes travel companies to redesign their services around predictive technology, offering journeys that adapt to user preferences, respond to real-time disruptions and deliver a more personalized sense of control.

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Travelers bet everything on AI to cut costs

One of the upsides to using AI is saving money. As the economy tightens, travelers opt to cut costs without canceling the trip. Intelligent platforms can scan flights, hotels and rental options to find the best deals. By analyzing pricing trends and predicting when rates will drop, AI tools can alert users to the optimal time to book, helping them save hundreds of dollars without spending hours hunting for bargains.

AI doesn’t just help with headline prices; it also uncovers hidden fees. From recommending hotels with free amenities like breakfast or shuttles to flagging airlines with lower baggage fees, AI helps travelers avoid unexpected expenses that can quietly inflate a trip’s cost.

Even the most casual travelers are exploring AI, using it to hunt for itineraries. The result is smarter, more efficient travel planning that gives users more experiences for less money.

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Tourism boards jump on the rise of AI

For well over a century, Mammoth Lakes has been a top California tourism destination. Travelers planning a trip to Mammoth can now rely on Sierra, an AI travel genius that provides instant answers to any travel or tourism questions about the area. The tool gives custom travel tips and itineraries in 50 languages, and leans into the history, culture and community of Mammoth Lakes. Exploring the rugged terrain starts at your fingertips.

Tourism New Zealand uniquely leverages AI, becoming the first playable destination to integrate with the Minecraft universe. A full New Zealand now exists in Minecraft, and users can seek answers to their New Zealand travel questions through the game.

Tourism New Zealand reports a significant impact since the integration. Over 200,000 unique visitors have leveraged the tool. The use of AI is clearly a key for tourism markets.

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The future of global tourism in an AI-powered world

Clearly, AI is set to transform global tourism, and 2026 marks a major shift as we see more tourism boards joining in. Future AI tools could design entire trips, optimize itineraries in real time and suggest eco-friendly routes or accommodations, helping travelers reduce costs and environmental impact. That’s only on the traveler’s side. In the transportation industry, it assists travelers in moving more efficiently.

However, reliance on AI raises concerns: privacy issues, fewer opportunities for human connection and potential shifts in tourism jobs. Striking the right balance between human involvement with machine intelligence will be key to this new frontier of AI for travel.

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Embrace the future of smarter travel

As AI continues to evolve, it’s clear that the way we plan, book and experience travel will never be the same. The possibilities are only beginning to emerge. While challenges like privacy concerns, accuracy and shifts in traditional travel jobs remain, the benefits of AI for travel point to a future where exploring the world is easier, more accessible and more exciting than ever.

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Kimberly Stroh is an Atlanta-based family travel writer and the founder of Savvy Mama Lifestyle. Since 2015, she has been sharing expert travel tips, destination guides and parenting insights tailored for modern families.

For years, January has been the unofficial start line for healthy eating. The holiday cookies disappear, the gym ads kick in and a nation collectively picks up its kale. But lately, something quieter, and more interesting, has been happening: long before the New Year’s confetti drops, people are already eating green.

For years, January has been the unofficial start line for healthy eating. The holiday cookies disappear, the gym ads kick in and a nation collectively picks up its kale. But lately, something quieter, and more interesting, has been happening: long before the New Year’s confetti drops, people are already eating green.

Grocery trends tell an unexpected story about December eating. Fresh produce sales rose 3.5% year-over-year in December 2024, even as dining-out growth slowed. It’s a sign that more Americans are turning to winter vegetables and greens in the heart of the holiday season. Nestled between frosted cookies and roast turkeys are bowls of emerald salads, pan-seared Brussels sprouts and soups tinted jade with spinach or broccoli. It seems the country is no longer waiting for January’s clean slate. The green shift has arrived early.

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A gentler approach to balance

Part of the appeal is simple: after years of whiplash between indulgence and austerity, people now gravitate toward balance, not in response to guilt but out of a desire to feel good right now. The December table no longer holds only roasts and sweets; it also makes room for crisp fennel salads, herb-forward grain bowls, warm sautéed greens and roasted vegetable salads brightened with citrus.

The tone has also changed. There isn’t the usual narrative of making up for holiday eating. Instead, there’s a softer recalibration. Greens appear as complements rather than corrections, incorporated naturally into meals that still feel festive and abundant.

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The color of renewal

Color psychology may play a subtle role in this early shift. In the darkest month of the year, green evokes life and possibility; a visual antidote to bare trees and early sunsets. Once the holiday lights dim, that splash of color on a plate feels grounding.

Greens carry symbolic weight across cultures. They signify growth, continuity and new beginnings. When cooks add them to the December dinner rotation, they don’t reject the season’s comforts, but make space for vitality alongside them.

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Produce that finally tastes like something

Winter greens now taste better than they used to. Improvements in indoor farming, vertical growing systems and controlled-environment agriculture mean that kale, chard, spinach and herbs reach grocery shelves crisp and flavorful even in cold months. Winter crops like Brussels sprouts, cabbage and broccoli are naturally at their peak in late fall and early winter.

What once felt like a compromise, like a salad in December, has become an opportunity. A nutrient-rich base, seasonal citrus, toasted nuts or a jar of homemade dressing turns an ordinary green into something worthy of the holiday table.

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The quiet influence of social media

Scroll TikTok or Instagram in December and you’ll see it: green content everywhere. Salads layered like art projects, bright pesto pastas, skillet green beans with sizzling garlic, soups blended into luminous shades of jade. The tone is joyful and sensory rather than performative.

This shift matters. For years, winter health content leaned heavily on restriction. Now, creators present greens as cozy and indulgent; something you eat because you want to, not because you should. Clips pair the sound of sizzling butter with handfuls of spinach or show a holiday spread confidently making room for both cookies and Brussels sprouts. The aesthetic has changed from penitence to pleasure.

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Older traditions reemerge

Eating green in December isn’t new. Many winter holiday tables around the world have long included vibrant vegetable dishes: stewed greens simmered with aromatics, herb-heavy sauces draped over roasted meats, cabbage braised until sweet and tender or leafy salads brightened with winter fruit.

What’s changed is our attention. Those recipes, once overshadowed by main dishes and desserts, now feel newly relevant. They offer warmth without heaviness, comfort without monotony. Home cooks are rediscovering them as bridges between celebration and nourishment.

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Restaurants lean into the shift

Dining out in December used to mean decadence: rich sauces, meats and desserts. But chefs have noticed diners’ appetite for balance and have responded by elevating vegetables to something worthy of the spotlight.

A crisp winter salad can open a tasting menu. Charred broccolini or roasted cabbage steaks might accompany a roast. Vegetable-forward small plates give diners room to enjoy the full spectrum of flavors without feeling overwhelmed. This isn’t minimalism; it’s intentionality. Greens bring brightness and contrast to a season that can otherwise skew heavy.

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Early renewal as a mindset

There’s a psychological appeal to starting early, not as a head start on resolutions, but as a release from the all-or-nothing mindset that January tends to bring. Eating green in December feels like a gentle way to stay attuned to the body’s rhythms, even amid celebration.

Researchers have long noted the power of micro-shifts, which are small habits woven into daily life rather than concentrated in sweeping resolutions. Adding greens before January aligns with this approach: realistic, sustainable and rooted in pleasure.

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A new kind of comfort food

Greens have also become comfort food in their own right. A bowl of creamy spinach pasta, a bubbling kale and white bean bake or roasted Brussels sprouts with a drizzle of maple or balsamic delivers coziness without leaving diners weighed down.

These dishes have a kind of quiet luxury; unfussy ingredients prepared with care that leans on texture, richness and freshness rather than excess. For many, they embody an eating habit that feels right in winter, one that’s warm, grounding and satisfying.

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A different kind of holiday table

The holiday table is evolving. Where greens once played a supporting role, a side dish at best, they’re now part of the main conversation. They sit comfortably next to the roasts, cookies and casseroles, creating a meal that feels well-paced and deeply seasonal.
This shift isn’t about virtue or self-improvement. It’s about embracing the fullness of the season: celebration, comfort, abundance and care. Greens just happen to deliver all of those in one bite.

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A new food year begins before the new calendar

When January arrives, many people won’t need a reset; they’ve already begun living the balance they want to carry forward. The new rhythm begins earlier, guided by instinct rather than resolutions.

Eating green before January isn’t a trend; it’s a new expression of how people want to feel during the most indulgent month of the year. It’s a quiet refusal to wait. A belief that renewal doesn’t need a date. And a reminder that joy, even in its simplest, greenest form, is already here.

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Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju is a food and travel writer and a global food systems expert based in Seattle. She has lived in or traveled extensively to over 60 countries, and shares stories and recipes inspired by those travels on Urban Farmie.

Taft Detroit partner Jonathan H. Schwartz was featured in a recent ABA Journal article, “Stolen Treasures,” which examines efforts to recover art and other property stolen from Jewish families during the Holocaust. The article highlights Schwartz’s work identifying and tracing looted cultural property through wartime Hungarian government records, in collaboration with Holocaust survivor and researcher Clara Garbon-Radnoti, who has spent decades translating and indexing the original documents.

Taft

Taft Detroit partner Jonathan H. Schwartz was featured in a recent ABA Journal article, “Stolen Treasures,” which examines efforts to recover art and other property stolen from Jewish families during the Holocaust. The article highlights Schwartz’s work identifying and tracing looted cultural property through wartime Hungarian government records, in collaboration with Holocaust survivor and researcher Clara Garbon-Radnoti, who has spent decades translating and indexing the original documents.

The ABA Journal feature also discusses Schwartz’s role as co-founder of the Holocaust Art Recovery Initiative (HARI), a project supported by the State Bar of Michigan’s Arts, Communications, Entertainment and Sports section, and the Jewish Bar Association of Michigan. HARI focuses on transforming previously inaccessible Holocaust-era records into usable evidence for historical research, restitution efforts, and public accountability.

Schwartz is a partner in Taft’s Commercial Litigation practice and works closely with many of the firm’s practice groups. He represents clients in complex and high-profile matters involving business, commercial, employment, real estate, intellectual property, First Amendment, and arts law in Michigan, across the United States, and internationally.

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Office of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer recently announced the appointment of Arthur Jay Weiss to the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards.

Weiss is the president of Arthur Jay Weiss & Associates PC. Additionally, he is the immediate past president of Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, the current treasurer of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills.  Weiss earned a law degree from Wayne State University Law School. 

Weiss will be reappointed to represent the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan for a term commencing January 1, 2026, and expiring December 31, 2029. 

The Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES) executes its statutory responsibility to promote public safety in Michigan by setting standards for selection, employment, licensing, license revocation, and funding in law enforcement and criminal justice, in both the public and private sectors.   

 This appointment is subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.  

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Fishman Stewart PLLC

Fishman Stewart PLLC is pleased to welcome Brian T. Corby as the firm’s first chief operating officer. The announcement was made by Managing Partner Michael Stewart and comes as the firm looks forward to celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2026. 

Corby has 35 years of professional law firm administration experience, including litigation management and practice management. Immediately prior to joining Fishman Stewart, he spent 19 years as the chief operating officer of a Detroit-area criminal defense firm. 
He brings a results-oriented mindset to the new role, along with key skills including strategic execution and innovation, culture building and enhancement, and data driven leadership. Corby’s responsibilities at Fishman Stewart include strategic planning and implementation, operational optimization, and running the day-to-day operations of the firm.

Active in the business community, Corby is a member of Vistage Michigan. He is also a member of the American Bar Association and the State Bar of Michigan, where he is a member of the Law Practice Management & Legal Administrators Section, Business Law Section, and the Labor & Employment Section. Additionally, he is a member of the Eastern District of Michigan Bar Association and the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. 

Corby earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Wayne State University.  

In U.S. political talk, Iraq is often treated as a “finished chapter.” The invasion is history, the occupation is history, and even the war against ISIS is presented as something largely completed. Yet in 2025, Iraqis are still living with the consequences of decisions made in Washington, and U.S. power in their country is not disappearing – it is simply changing shape.

In U.S. political talk, Iraq is often treated as a “finished chapter.” The invasion is history, the occupation is history, and even the war against ISIS is presented as something largely completed. Yet in 2025, Iraqis are still living with the consequences of decisions made in Washington, and U.S. power in their country is not disappearing – it is simply changing shape.

In September 2024, the United States and Iraq announced that the U.S.-led coalition’s military mission would end by September 2025 and evolve into a bilateral security arrangement, with hundreds of troops expected to leave and most of the rest by the end of 2026. But that announcement was never a promise of full withdrawal. It was a plan to rebrand and resize the presence, not to end it.

By October 2025, the Pentagon confirmed that the mission was being “scaled back,” not closed. Troop levels are dropping from about 2,500 to under 2,000, and most U.S. personnel are being repositioned to the northern city of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region, while a smaller presence remains in Baghdad under the label of “security cooperation.” Combat may no longer be the official role, but foreign soldiers are still on Iraqi soil, shaping the country’s security architecture.

At the same time, Washington just opened the largest U.S. consulate in the world in Erbil – a massive $796 million compound spread over 50 acres. Official statements describe this as an investment in “a sovereign and stable Iraq.” For many observers, it also looks like a signal that the United States intends to entrench long-term economic and political influence in the north, even as troop numbers are trimmed elsewhere.

Iraqi leaders themselves have linked foreign troop presence to internal instability. Last month, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said that bringing all weapons under state control will not be possible as long as a U.S.-led coalition remains in the country, because some armed factions justify their existence as “resistance” to that foreign presence. In other words, continued deployment of foreign forces makes disarming militias harder, not easier.

For ordinary Iraqis, this is layered on top of decades of war, sanctions, occupation, and extremist violence. Many carry memories not only of local actors’ abuses, but also of U.S. airstrikes, night raids, and notorious scandals like Abu Ghraib. Human Rights Watch has documented how Iraqis who were tortured and abused in U.S.-run prisons are still waiting for any form of compensation or official redress, two decades after their suffering became public. Those individuals are not statistics; they are people trying to rebuild lives while the government that harmed them refuses even basic accountability.

U.S. influence in Iraq today is not limited to bases and advisors. It is also economic and political. Earlier this year, when drone attacks by Iran-aligned militias hit U.S.-linked oil installations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Washington responded by pressuring Baghdad to reopen a key oil export pipeline to Turkey that had been shut since 2023. According to Reuters reporting, that pressure included threats of sanctions against Iraqi officials until the deal favored U.S. energy interests and partners. Such episodes show a pattern: military vulnerability is used to justify ongoing presence, and that presence is then used to extract leverage over Iraq’s economic choices.

Iraqis deserve more than a shift from one form of foreign control to another. Ending formal “combat missions” while keeping troops, enormous diplomatic compounds, and economic pressure tools in place does not amount to real respect for Iraq’s sovereignty. A genuinely different approach from the United States would start with admitting the harm caused since 2003, offering concrete compensation and support to Iraqi survivors of U.S. abuses, and committing to a clear, time-bound end to military deployment.

It would also mean redirecting resources from bases and weapons toward reconstructing schools, hospitals, water systems, and trauma services in communities damaged by past wars. And it would mean engaging with Iraqi civil society – journalists, community organizers, women’s groups, youth movements – without trying to steer their politics.

Iraq has the right to shape its own future without foreign soldiers in the background and foreign governments pulling economic strings. As long as U.S. power in Iraq is only resized and rebranded instead of reduced and held accountable, the chapter that began with invasion remains open – not for policymakers in Washington, but for the people who still live with its consequences every day.

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Sophia Gonzalez is an American activist and political analyst focusing on U.S. strategy, Middle East affairs, and global security. A peace and human rights advocate, she writes to challenge interventionism and promote diplomacy.

Masked officers conduct immigration raids. National Guard troops patrol American cities, and protesters decry their presence as a “fascist takeover.” White supremacists openly proclaim racist and antisemitic views.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Masked officers conduct immigration raids. National Guard troops patrol American cities, and protesters decry their presence as a “fascist takeover.” White supremacists openly proclaim racist and antisemitic views.

Is the United States sliding into fascism? It’s a question that divides a good portion of the country today.

Embracing a belief in American exceptionalism – the idea that America is a unique and morally superior country – some historians suggest that “it can’t happen here,” echoing the satirical title of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 book about creeping fascism in America. The social conditions required for fascism to take root do not exist in the U.S., these historians say.

Still, while fascist ideas never found a foothold among the majority of Americans, they exerted considerable influence during the period between the first and second world wars. Extremist groups like the Silver Shirts, the Christian Front, the Black Legion and the Ku Klux Klan claimed hundreds of thousands of members. Together they glorified a white Christian nation purified of Jews, Black Americans, immigrants and communists.

During the 1930s and early ‘40s, fascist ideas were promoted and cheered on American soil by groups such as the pro-Nazi German American Bund, which staged a mass rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939, displaying George Washington’s portrait alongside swastikas.

The Bund also operated lodges, storefronts, summer camps, beer halls and newspapers across the country and denounced the “melting pot.” It encouraged boycotts and street brawls against Jews and leftists and forged links to Germany’s Nazi party.

Yet the Bund and other far-right groups have largely vanished from public memory, even in communities where they once enjoyed popularity. As a sociologist of collective memory and identity, I wanted to know why that is the case.

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The Bund in New Jersey

My analysis of hundreds of oral histories of people who grew up in New Jersey in the 1930s and ‘40s, where the German American Bund enjoyed a particularly strong presence, suggests that witnesses saw them as insignificant, “un-American” and unworthy of remembrance.

But the people who rallied with the Bund for a white, Christian nation were ordinary citizens. They were mechanics and shopkeepers, churchgoers and small businessmen, and sometimes elected officials. They frequented diners, led PTA meetings and went to church. They were American.

When they were interviewed decades later, many of those who had seen Bundists up close in their communities remembered the uniforms, the swastika armbands, the marching columns. They recalled the local butcher who quietly displayed sympathy for Nazism, the Bund’s boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the street brawls at Bund rallies.

German American interviewees, who remember firsthand the support the Bund enjoyed before the U.S. entered World War II, 50 years later laughed at family members and neighbors who once supported the organization. Even Jewish interviewees who recalled fearful encounters with Bundists during that period tended to minimize the threat in retrospect. Like their German American counterparts, they framed the Bund as deviant and ephemeral. Few believed the group, and the ideas for which it stood, were significant.

I believe the German Americans’ laughter decades after the war was over, and after the revelations of the mass murder of European Jews, may have been a way for them to distance themselves from feelings of shame or discomfort. As cognitive psychologists show, people tend to erase or minimize inconvenient or painful facts that may threaten their sense of self.

Collective memories are also highly selective. They are influenced by the groups – nation, community, family – in which they are members. In other words, the past is always shaped by the needs of the present.

After World War II, for example, some Americans reframed the major threat facing the U.S. as communism. They cast fascism as a defeated foreign evil, while elevating “reds” as the existential threat. Collectively, Americans preferred a simpler national tale: Fascism was “over there.” America was the bulwark of democracy “over here.” This is one way forgetting works.

Communities will remember what they have forgotten or minimized when history is taught, markers are erected, archives are preserved and commemorations are staged. The U.S. has done that for the Holocaust and for the Civil Rights Movement. But when it comes to the history of homegrown fascism, and local resistance to it, few communities have made efforts to preserve this history.

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Remembering difficult pasts

At least one community has tried. In Southbury, Connecticut, community members erected a small plaque in 2022 to honor townspeople who in 1937 organized to keep the Bund from building a training camp there. 
The inscription is simple: “Southbury Stops Nazi Training Camp.”

The story it tells provides more than an example of local pride – it’s a template for how communities can commemorate the moments when ordinary citizens said “no.”

When Americans insist that “it can’t happen here,” they exempt themselves from vigilance. When they ignore or discount extremism, seeing it as “weird” or “foreign,” they miss how effectively such movements borrowed American idioms, such as patriotism, Christianity and law and order, to further hatred, violence and exclusion.

Research shows that some Americans have been drawn to movements that promise purity, unity and order at the expense of their neighbors’ rights. The point of remembering such histories is not to wallow in shame, nor to collapse every political dispute into “fascism.” It is to offer an accurate account of America’s democratic vulnerabilities.

The year 2025 has not been a great one for U.S.-Chinese relations. Tit-for-tat tariffs and the scramble over rare earth elements has dampened economic relations between the world’s two leading economies. Meanwhile, territorial disputes between China and American allies in the Indo-Pacific region have further deepened the intensifying military rivalry.

(THE CONVERSATION) — The year 2025 has not been a great one for U.S.-Chinese relations. Tit-for-tat tariffs and the scramble over rare earth elements has dampened economic relations between the world’s two leading economies. Meanwhile, territorial disputes between China and American allies in the Indo-Pacific region have further deepened the intensifying military rivalry.

This rift has often been portrayed as a clash of opposing ideological systems: democracy versus autocracy; economic liberalism versus state-led growth; and individualism versus collectivism.

But such framing relies on a top-down look at the two countries premised on statements and claims of powerful leaders. What it obscures is that both superpowers are administered by the same kind of professionals: career bureaucrats.

We are an international team of researchers investigating bureaucratic preferences and behavior. Earlier this year, we hosted a two-day workshop with participants from China, the United States and other countries to compare bureaucratic agencies’ responses to global challenges.

Our research and that of others shows that, despite the ideological standoff at the leadership level, officials in China and the U.S. are shaped by comparable incentives and dynamics that lead them to act in surprisingly similar ways. In other words, when it comes to the women and men who carry out the actual work of government – from drafting regulation to enforcing compliance – China and the U.S. aren’t really that different.

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Separated by politics, not practice

That’s not to suggest there aren’t differences in aspects of China’s and the U.S.’s bureaucratic base.

China’s system is more centralized, with a larger civil service of around 8 million employees as of 2024. The U.S. bureaucracy is more decentralized across federal, state and local levels and employs fewer bureaucrats, with around 3 million federal employees in 2024.

Still, comparative research on bureaucracies around the world shows that civil servants act similarly when confronted with complex problems, regardless of political system or policy field.

Whether they are municipal bureaucrats in Brazil, foreign aid officials in Germany, Norway and South Korea, or international civil servants at the United Nations, they all operate within the constraints of politically embedded organizations while pursuing their individual careers. In other words, they want to get ahead in their jobs while navigating constantly changing political winds.

Bureaucrats in the U.S. and China also navigate changing demands from their political leaders while seeking to gain expertise and progress in their careers.

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Managing public expectations

Foreign aid, environmental management and pandemic governance in the U.S. and China provide telling examples of these parallels.

At first glance, the approaches of China and the U.S. to the use of foreign aid may appear as complete opposites. The former established the China International Development Cooperation Agency in 2018. Since then it has expanded and evolved its engagement abroad.

By contrast, the U.S. abolished USAID earlier in 2025, slashed its foreign aid budget, and moved remaining staff members into the State Department.

It would therefore seem that the U.S. and China are on opposing trajectories. Yet, the current moment obscures similarities between foreign aid bureaucrats in the two countries. Their tasks entail satisfying political objectives, overseeing taxpayer-funded projects abroad, and managing domestic public expectations.

The expertise required of these bureaucrats is to increase their country’s “soft power” while avoiding the appearance of wasting scarce funds abroad amid looming domestic needs.

With foreign aid admonished by the Trump administration as wasteful politics, officials in Washington are under unprecedented pressure to pursue financial diplomacy that recognizably serves U.S. interests while supporting foreign leaders whom the president considers allies. This agenda shift moves the U.S. closer to the Chinese foreign aid principle of seeking mutual benefits.

Meanwhile, Chinese aid officials are pivoting away from prioritizing large-scale infrastructure projects and toward a purported “small but beautiful projects” approach that centers on the well-being of beneficiaries. 
This pivot aligns their thinking with “softer” topics emblematic of U.S. foreign aid until 2024.

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The logic of blame avoidance

The case of bureaucratic responses to environmental pollution scandals is equally instructive. Again, one might expect bureaucrats in the U.S. and China, operating within different governance systems, to approach the problem differently.

In practice, however, bureaucrats in both countries are often motivated by an urge to avoid blame.

Rather than building on policy success stories, they tend to seek to deflect criticism for policy failures onto others. The underlying reason is so-called asymmetric payoffs: Success stories may lead to short-term public acclaim; policy failures jeopardize entire careers.

In China, the anti-air pollution measures introduced in Hebei province, which borders the capital Beijing, provide a prime example of the logic of blame avoidance. When the central government in 2017 urged provincial officials to reduce air pollution by banning coal heating, the officials’ overzealous implementation was motivated by a desire to shield themselves from potential blame from national leadership.

As a result, the needs of Hebei residents were ignored, with schoolchildren shivering in unheated classrooms. Rather than assuming the blame, both national and local officials shifted the focus onto middle-class Beijing residents, who were pilloried in the media for prioritizing clean air over the well-being of others.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the city of Flint, Michigan, had been reeling from decades of industrial decay and financial distress. The state government appointed an emergency manager who implemented cost-cutting measures, including switching the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. This change resulted in lead contamination and widespread health impacts, escalating into a national scandal. As in Hebei, all parties – from state regulators to local officials and environmental agencies – blamed each other in an attempt to avoid responsibility.

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Careerism as constraint

Parallel bureaucratic behaviors also became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. In China and the U.S. alike, public officials worked at the forefront of implementing public health guidelines. The Chinese response was said to benefit from an “authoritarian advantage,” allowing its authorities to impose drastic measures rapidly and comprehensively.

However, evidence-based policymaking was constrained by political preferences and bureaucratic careerism – the drive of officials to prioritize actions that help them get promoted.

It produced similar dynamics to those observed in the more decentralized U.S. setting. In both China and the U.S., bureaucrats were risk averse and anxious not to fall out with supervisors and political leaders.
The Chinese approach resulted in a decrease in public trust, a phenomenon that has also been unfolding in the U.S.

And much like their American counterparts, Chinese bureaucrats initially scrambled together information from a cacophony of political and expert voices. This indecision blunted their response to the viral outbreak in the decisive early days of the pandemic, even though it was eventually replaced by an official narrative emphasizing efficiency and success. In both systems, bureaucratic delays had detrimental consequences for public health.

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An anchor of stability

Amid the heightened geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington, it is important to remember that all powers rely on capable administrations to implement political directives. Politics set the tone, but bureaucrats shape reality.

And the modus operandi of Chinese and American bureaucrats has remained strikingly stable over the years – driven primarily by incentives rather than ideology. This similarity is increasingly being reflected by converging leadership styles at the top of each political system.

U.S. President Donald Trump resembles Chinese President Xi Jinping in his campaign-style politics and the cult of personality that many political observers see developing around him.

There is a definite upside to similar bureaucratic behavior. It renders the two superpowers more predictable in periods of increasingly heated political rhetoric.

For national leaders’ proclamations to have any effect, large bureaucratic organizations need to translate political content into national and international action. Not only does this take time and resources, but erratic announcements are dissipated by bureaucratic routines.

And that provides an anchor of stability in volatile times.