Abstract: Since May 2018, FBI and other American strong departments have initiated a series of negative measures that were detrimental to Sino-American talent exchange and academic cooperation. Subsequently, the Sino-American talent war broke out. After several rounds of official deliberate speculation, it seemed that the US authorities and citizens reached an extensive consensus on the talent policy towards China. The Sino-American talent war has turned into an important element in the new bilateral competition between China and the US. Based on an examination of the general history of the Sino-American talent war, this paper analyses the generative mechanism of America's online public opinions on issues concerning Chinese talents by means of big data and data mining. The result shows that some American right-wing politicos and strong official departments manipulate the public opinions and the so-called "social common sense" by populism means. Professional institutions and rational power from the two countries should work together to guide and control the trend of online public opinions, and lead the Sino-American talent war to go beyond the "fifth quadrant" and return to the normal track of benign competition.

Key words: Sino-American talent war, USA, online public opinions