My magazine piece on a series of China-related clashes at the University of Rochester last fall—an interesting case study into some of the dynamics that have created tensions at many universities globally.
#longreads
Remember that Beijing Olympics ceremony controversy when Yang Peiyi (L) wasn't considered cute enough so her singing was lip-synced by another girl (R)? Postscript: Yang apparently kept singing, excelled academically, started a band, and recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill.
Houston Rockets fan in China posted photo on Weibo wearing a James Harden jersey while holding a up Chinese flag and a lighter, with the caption: “I live and die with my team. Come and catch me.”
They caught him.
As Australian reporter is preparing to return home from Beijing, the Chinese movers reportedly tell her she can't take her 7-year-old son's cherished light-up globe with her...because it depicts Taiwan as a country.
"If [the Chinese people] had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, capable people. They just gave and gave and gave to me."
-1990 article on Tim Walz after he returned from teaching in Foshan, China. -Star-Herald
Like many protests that have taken various forms in China in the past ~20 years, those unfolding now…
1. Should erode the idea that young Chinese (who tend to drive these movements) have largely been pacified by the CCP or made blindly supportive of it...
Remembering 2012 Ningbo protests against a petrochemical plant, when locals were so happy to see foreign reporters because Chinese media couldn't report on it. Protestors even helped hoist one up so he could get a better camera angle.
Just watched this week's South Park: All about American companies self-censoring to keep access to Chinese market (with subplot about Winnie the Pooh as a political prisoner for looking like Xi Jinping). Can still watch full episode online
Great way to handle the likes of Gao or state media firebrands or youtuber apologists. Ask what they think Xi specifically's worst ACTUAL mistake has been. All leaders make mistakes. If you're independent and can speak freely, surely you can name one.
CCP Apologist, Victor Gao, insists there’s free speech in China, so I asked him for a demonstration— to criticise Xi. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t even admit he looks like a well-known bear🙃
I'm honestly amazed that any international students at all—especially from China—still want to apply to study in the US. It's just been senseless "f*** you" after "f*** you" from every direction.
Hui Chinese student on US green card studying at U of Washington visited dad in Xinjiang; was put in camp for using VPN to file homework. While detained, lost student loans, credit was wrecked, now unable to resume studies. Uni not being especially helpful
Tomorrow is an interesting milestone for China's Communist Party. It will mark its 25,198th day in power, meaning that at the end of the day, the People's Republic of China will have outlasted the Soviet Union.
Candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, conflating all Chinese students with Communist Party members (most aren't) and suggesting Texas is subsidizing them (it's the other way around).
If China manages to release an effective vaccine first, expect to see plenty of claims (or disingenuous "just raising questions") that it did so by stealing US research, whether there's solid evidence for it or not.
The second happened moments later when NBC commentator Savannah Guthrie talked about how China is under “international scrutiny from human right organizations” and Western governments for HK, Uighur, and minority treatment as the Chinese team walked out.
Someone like Walz who's unambiguously critical of the CCP but unambiguously empathetic to Chinese people and appreciative of China's non-political aspects makes him a harder case for CCP than someone hawkish on all dimensions. Makes him hard to villainize as an "anti-China" foil.
Watching HBO's Chernobyl reminds me of another man-made disaster clouded in secrecy in a communist state: The 1975 Banqiao Dam collapse. Banqiao killed many more than Chernobyl (~170,000-230,000), yet remains virtually unknown both in and outside of China.
China's Foreign Ministry is paying journalists from outlets in Asia and Africa to come to China for 10 months. They get housing, special tours, language classes. They're expected to cover certain issues. Most outlets don't disclose the arrangement.
85 percent of the Chinese students at the University of Pennsylvania say they don't have a single American friend, according to a grad student's thesis research.
After Tiananmen, the US Congress passed the Chinese Student Protection Act, giving US residence to those who fled in China in the year after June 4. Ted Cruz, conversely, blocked a bill in 2020 that would have done the same for those fleeing Hong Kong.
35 years ago, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party sent thousands of soldiers into Tiananmen Square to attack protesters who had peacefully assembled to advocate for freedom in China.
The protestors courageously refused to disperse and the CCP’s army opened fire,
There are people out there implicitly rooting for Delta to rip through China and kill lots and lots of people because it *might* hurt the Communist Party.
100 incidents of Chinese nationals “gate-crashing” US military bases over several years seems a bit less ominous when you get to the part about 10,000 people who aren’t supposed to be there being turned away from US bases EVERY DAY.
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has paid $424,000 to insure against a drop in Chinese students. Coverage provides up to $60 million in the event of a 20% drop in revenue from Chinese students in single year due to a “specific set of identifiable events”
Enjoying that brief period of near uniform silence from state media workers on Twitter between the time a sensitive event happens and when the Party line on it is decided.
That's not to say the unfolding events are insignificant. They're clearly a very big deal. But in the moment, we often get over-excited and underestimate the Party's ability to handle these things and make them virtually forgotten (at least publicly) within a very short time.
Yet again getting déjà vu from 2008 Melamine scandal, Wenzhou train crash, Wukan protests, Beijing floods, Southern Weekend protests, Tianjin explosions, “Under the Dome,” initial covid outbreak – events that made a sea change look almost inevitable...then quickly petered out.
80% of Americans think it's good to have international students in the country's colleges, but 55% support specifically limiting Chinese students, according to a new Pew survey
China's official youth unemployment is 18.4%. Job market flooded w/ unprecedented surge of new grads (10.8m, beating last year's record by 1.7m). One recruiter said entry-level job market is worse than Financial Crisis; new jobs down 20-30% from last year.
China discourse 2020:
Person 1: "China is feeding babies to alligators!"
Person 2: "Um, a lot of bad stuff is happening in China, but pretty sure nobody's feeding babies to alligators"
Person 1: "Person 2 is a wumao panda-hugger and probably getting paid by the Communist Party"
Even for China Daily—which has conjured up a fake CCP-friendly op-ed and slapped well-known person's byline on it—this is a pretty spectacularly brazen feat.
Reading takes about how coronavirus is presenting the Communist Party with a crisis of legitimacy and could challenge its rule is giving me déjà vu from the 2008 Melamine scandal, Wenzhou train crash, Wukan protests, Beijing floods, Southern Weekend protests, Tianjin explosions…
“As a Hong Kong person who loves Hong Kong, I really miss the Hong Kong of before, which was developed and ruled by law,” one account wrote. Its location was described as “Georgia, USA.” Before this year, nearly all of its tweets were links to pornography.
Chinese embassy in Saudi Arabia isn't renewing Uighurs' passports, only giving a one-way travel document back to China. Leaves them choice of remaining illegally or almost certain detention in internment camp upon return.
Imagine coming from China to study in the US as an aspiring journalist—a very competitive industry, where you'll have to research, interview, write at a very high level in a foreign language. Everything is stacked against you...🧵
Maybe this will have an effect on Zero Covid policy, which WOULD be big. But often the lasting change that comes from instances of mass protest is the CCP learns from them, gets more paranoid, and the 'stability maintenance' apparatus gets even more sophisticated and draconian.
A lot of the ~1 million international students in the US probably woke up this morning thinking they might have a future in this country after all; or at the very least, might not have their lives arbitrarily shattered at any moment.
Tim Walz interview on Tiananmen 25th anniversary, recalling going to teach right after massacre.
"I thought it was more important than ever to go...to make sure that story was told and let the Chinese people know we were standing there, we were with them"
Chinese official tells
@isaacstonefish
there exists a "white list" of China-watchers who speak positively about the US-China relationship, promote engagement & overlook human rights abuses that are rewarded with multiple-entry visas.
Two Republican Senators just have introduced legislation "that would prohibit Chinese nationals from receiving visas to the United States for graduate or post-graduate studies in STEM fields."
City of Changchun rolls out propaganda subway train dedicated to the political doctrine of Xi Jinping. The municipal government described the train as a “highly condensed spiritual manual” of “Xi Jinping Thought.”
Great to see
@yuxin_gao
writing again, on how the massive expansion of college enrollment in China and subsequent devaluation of degrees partly planted seeds of "lying flat" and the feeling by many youth that the endless rat race won't get them anywhere.
Chinese scholar describes "harassment" at Boston airport customs. "They questioned me under the premise that I am here to steal technology." Says he won't ever visit the US again, is now persuading his Chinese friends here to consider returning home.
The ironic thing about all the people invoking Chernobyl on Chinese social media to criticize coronavirus cover-ups is that China had its own Chernobyl x10, but it was so well covered up, hardly anyone knows about it today.
Watching HBO's Chernobyl reminds me of another man-made disaster clouded in secrecy in a communist state: The 1975 Banqiao Dam collapse. Banqiao killed many more than Chernobyl (~170,000-230,000), yet remains virtually unknown both in and outside of China.
Periodic reminder that "Western media" is not a thing. It's an ambiguous, non-existent construct usually meant to streamline the discrediting of vastly disparate reporters and outlets under a nice neat "us versus them" framing.
NYT article cites study where Chinese students, given VPN, hardly use it to browse blocked foreign sites, but doesn't mention the other big findings: If directed to sites like NYT Chinese and nudged to read, they gobble it up & substantially change beliefs
I knew China-Australia relations, and the treatment of foreign journalists generally, were already bad in 2018. But didn't realize it was threatening to detain the 14-year-old daughter of a journalist at "an undisclosed location"-level bad.
I know I'm really beating a dead horse at this point, and that the outlets that continue to run these headlines don't necessarily care about the distinction, but....
HU 👏XIJIN 👏 IS 👏 NOT 👏 CHINA
I figured Meng Wanzhou's return to China would be celebrated domestically, but I'm a bit taken aback at how (looking at state media coverage and my Weixin feed) it seems to have basically become a national holiday.
China's leaders would probably prefer Biden over Trump the same way a boxer would prefer sparring against a fellow boxer rather than a maniac waving two chainsaws around with his pinkies. The maniac would probably hurt himself a lot more than you, but the risk just isn't worth it
Big gift to China and India. Big blow to many US businesses. Enormous blow to legions of students who invested 10s and 100s of thousands of dollars in US education with expectation they'd have shot at working in the US after graduation.
NEW: Trump suspends issuance of new work visas through Dec.31, senior official told reporters
Pause affects H-1B, H4, some H-2B, J and L visas
Also to require H-1B visa applicants to receive higher salaries
Earlier report:
Jackson He is believed to be the only Chinese-born player in the league. ASU 'celebrated his heritage by putting his name in Chinese on the back of his jersey. He pointed to the back of his jersey and was mobbed by teammates' after scoring touchdown.
Amazing that people are still dying on the hill of insisting there's nothing wrong with using "Chinese virus" as it's literally being shouted at people as they're hate-crimed.
"I was at dinner with a friend, and she asked about my work. 'Name one thing you wish Americans knew about China,' she said.
'That the Chinese people are people,' I replied. By
@yangyang_cheng
So much this 👆
17-year-old Chinese student canvassed for Joe Biden in Iowa and New Hampshire, then showed up at one of his rallies with a pre-written college recommendation letter for the candidate to sign. He actually did! But then an aide seized it.
A survey of Chinese intl students at Purdue was conducted in early 2016 and again this year. When asked how their perceptions of the US have changed since arriving:
2016:
Became better: 26%
Became worse: 29%
2018:
Became better: 16%
Became worse: 42%
In his Georgia speech, Secretary of State Pompeo falsely suggests the CCP "sends 400,000 students a year to the United States." The vast majority of those students send themselves with no government backing or funding.
But I also won't be surprised if this massive rebuke of authority is also forgotten in a few months when the next round of simplistic "Young Chinese have become so pacified by the CCP and brainwashed by 'Patriotic Education' and censorship" articles come out.
Chart circulating of all the bad options Chinese students in the US have right now (translated by
@shenlulushen
in Politico's China Watcher newsletter)
"When US prosecutors sought last month to throw a Chinese scientist in jail until her trial for visa fraud, a judge refused, saying they had sought to paint her as a 'foreign spy' without backing up the claim."
The Hill publishes op-ed advocating government subsidies for American universities that reject applications from Chinese students. Calls them "potential threat" to US intellectual property; pushes false premise they're taking STEM spots from US students.
"The CCP has also established a new online portal that allows people to refer their compatriots to police for political crimes."
Accessible in Australia, it facilitates allegations of "attacking the party...harming the national image & slandering heroes."
The gems you sometimes find when scouring old newspaper archives.
From 1959: U. of Michigan student from China, ashamed to face friends and family after an academic failure, retreated to an Ann Arbor church attic and stayed there for four years w/o leaving the building.
African American in Guangzhou finally found landlord willing to rent to him. Then a message circulated in a neighborhood WeChat group: "A real estate agency has 'introduced an African family to rent in our neighborhood. Is money more important than lives?”
Complete lack of human empathy aside, it's also questionable it would have that effect. Delta will be much easier to blame on other countries than initial outbreak was. Can say if other countries had handled covid as effectively as China did, it wouldn't have proliferated/mutated
THREAD: After HK protests internationally & counter-protests by PRC students abroad, I’ve been seeing debate about how representative the rabid nationalist PRC students are, & how manipulated/nationalistic vs. liberal/cosmopolitan Chinese overseas students are in general. 1/x
"I’ve been told by many Chinese people that they’ve deliberately told foreign reporters asking them about [the Tiananmen suppression] that they knew nothing about it, because it was the fastest way out of a conversation that to them had no upside."
The University of Missouri announced yesterday that it will be ending ties with Confucius Institute. State Dept told Missouri it would begin requiring state-certified Mandarin teachers to be in every classroom with CI staff, which would be cost-prohibitive
Pompeo has had a lot of nice words for "the Chinese people" today...many of whom his administration has been making life miserable for in the United States the last few months.
As aggressively as images of Tank Man are now censored in China, it's easy to forget that the footage was initially broadcast on Chinese state television...with a very different spin.
Chinese students in the United States in 1920 write some of the misconceptions Americans have about them, and vice-versa. (From The Chinese Students' Monthly 'Humor & Wit' section)
“I mean, this was an RV park…”
My look at the strange case of two Chinese U. of Michigan students arrested earlier this year in Key West, who now sit in federal prison on 9 and 12-month sentences.
"It's a worrisome sign that US authorities are failing to understand something important: The most useful technology is not intellectual property in the form of written documents, but the unwritten knowledge in people’s heads."
"Mass protests that have besieged Hong Kong all summer show no signs of foreign influence or interference, according to the city’s police force. 'From the operational angle, I cannot see that at this stage,' said a senior police official."
“In your opinion, does China engage in censoring its citizens?” asked Sen. Ted Cruz.
“As the privacy representative of Google,” said Enright, “I am not sure I have an informed opinion on that question.”
The Wenzhou train crash was 10 years ago today – what became a nationwide indictment of official incompetence and cover-ups at the height of the freewheeling Weibo era, with a traditional media that still had *some* room to operate. So much has changed.