What do you expect people to do? Abroad in a nation and culture which is quite hostile and dismissive of your own, most people would tend to be standoffish about anything that could be perceived as a slight against their home. American culture is and has been extremely biased against China, and not always with proper justification. Did anyone really expect to win over Chinese students with a harsh, aggressive, and, frankly, hypocritical, foreign policy stance interspersed with large amounts of good old-fashioned "dey tuk a jubs!" racism?