How Chinese overseas students are learning harsh life lessons

How Chinese overseas students are learning harsh life lessons

"“The one word that describes my impression of America before coming is ‘freedom’,” says Lian, who currently studies at the University of California, Irvine. “[But] after I studied here for a while, I started to kind of understand American society. My impression went from good to bad.”

And that had a knock-on effect, on her as it had on others. “A lot of [Chinese] students become more patriotic,” Lian says...

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) announced on Facebook that the Dalai Lama would give a commencement speech later in the year. The Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, widely respected internationally, has been deemed by Chinese leaders “a wolf in monk’s robes” who stirs up ethnic tension in order to split China.

UCSD’s Facebook page was immediately flooded with comments from Chinese students echoing that sentiment, some saying the school’s decision was tantamount to inviting Osama Bin Laden. The university’s chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) threatened “tough measures to resolutely resist the college’s unreasonable behaviour” and said that it had been in touch with the Chinese consulate about the matter.

A New York Times report three months later highlighted connections between the 150-odd CSSA chapters around the world and Chinese consulates, suggesting that Chinese authorities may play a role in such student backlashes. The report asserted that, in addition to the tuition dollars and international diversity that Chinese students bring to Western universities, “those students often bring to campus something else from home: the watchful eyes and occasionally heavy hand of the Chinese government”...

Han says that since coming to the US, he has been disappointed by American uninterest in understanding, or even listening to, views like these. Growing up in China, he explains, despite government propaganda, he came to see the US as a beacon of freedom, liberalism and open-mindedness. “But after a lot of people come here, they realise it’s not like that,” he says. “If you’re Chinese, when people talk about politics and democracy, you’ll always be targeted [...] They try to put us under one very radical label, like, ‘Chinese people are lovers of dictatorships,’ things like that. At times, it’s very aggressive.”...

Most of his Chinese classmates have complicated views toward their country’s policies and can be quite critical of their government, even if they don’t advocate its overthrow. This makes it especially irritating when American classmates dismiss them as “brainwashed” for not opposing one-party rule.

“If we’re all brainwashed, why would we come to the United States?” he asks. “We want to learn about how things work here. On the contrary, many Americans have never been to China, never read anything serious about China and just indulge in propaganda themselves.”

Henry Chiu Hail, an American PhD candidate in sociology at UC Irvine, recalls befriending a Chinese classmate a decade ago, while studying for his masters. “I thought I would shock her with American democracy, and show her all this stuff she never knew about her own country,” Hail says. “I think a lot of Americans get off on that idea: that they’re going to liberate the minds of overseas students.”

As he began sending her materials critical of China’s government and the bloody Beijing crackdown of 1989, he found that her interest quickly turned to defensiveness and even charges that Americans are anti-China. The experience piqued his curiosity, leading him to conduct a qualitative study in which he interviewed 18 Chinese students at the University of Hawaii about past political discussions with Americans. “On some level, every single one of them was able to relate to this idea that Americans are biased or ignorant about China,” he says.

In many ways, interactions like these play into the Communist Party’s patriotic education campaign, which Chinese students are subjected to growing up...

This narrative also asserts that China’s economic success under one-party rule shows that Western-style democracy is unsuitable for the country. Those who say otherwise are arrogant, don’t understand China or have ulterior motives. One question from a graduate-school entrance exam, for instance, juxtaposes the 2008 global financial crisis with American political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 “End of History” essay, which claimed Western liberal democracy to be the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution. “However, 20 years of history has shown us that history didn’t end,” the test asserts. “What ended was the Western sense of superiority.”...

“In China, I never noticed I’m Chinese because everyone is Chinese,” he says. “But then, coming to the US, the first thing people ask is where you’re from, and then their interaction with you goes from that point on.”

Wang was mortified to learn that, for some of his peers, his identity included things like eating cats and dogs, and that he should answer for sociopolitical issues he hardly knew or cared about. When challenged on these issues, he often found himself resorting to propaganda phrases he didn’t necessarily believe in: “That’s our internal affair” and “The West always applies double standards.”

Even as he gained a better grasp of these issues, he argued with classmates, even if deep down he agreed with them. “Maybe just 5 per cent of these conversations were rational dialogue, where we were trying to learn more and be open-minded,” Wang says. “Most of it was just knee-jerk reactions on both ends. When we’re 18, we’re very self-conscious and pretty insecure about our self-identity anyway. I think the combination of dealing with national identity and personal insecurity is a pretty potent mix.”

Hail recalls that during his interviews his study subjects would often criticise such things as China’s widespread corruption, only to backtrack and express guilt for betraying their country in front of an American. Many affirmed that they had frequently criticised the Chinese government when they lived in China.

“While abroad, however, the concepts of ‘the people’ and ‘the government’ tended to blend together as national identity became more salient”...

There are also those like Yang Shuping. Last May, the graduating University of Maryland senior was chosen to deliver a commencement speech. “When I took my first breath of American air, I put my mask away,” she said in her eight-minute address. “The air was so sweet and fresh, and oddly luxurious [...] At the University of Maryland, I soon [felt] another kind of fresh air for which I will be forever grateful – the fresh air of free speech.”...

Yang received a standing ovation from those in attendance, but within a day, Yang learned that what might endear you to American peers can make you public enemy No 1 back home. Videos of her remarks went viral on Chinese social media. The University of Maryland’s CSSA quickly released its own video, expressing pride in China and calling Yang’s statements “deceptions and lies”. Chinese state media piled in with a raft of articles and commentaries condemning Yang. Some social media users called for a “human flesh search” to dig into her background – the supposed home address of her family was circulated in the comments sections of articles. Even the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs weighed in...

If the aim was to deter others from espousing views like Yang’s, it worked. Many students interviewed for this article say her vilification has influenced what they’re willing to say publicly.

The day after delivering the speech, Yang posted an apology on Weibo. “I love my country and hometown and am proud of its prosperity,” she said. “I’m deeply sorry and hope for forgiveness.”

Young adults like Yang who develop an enthusiastic appreciation for Western societies (particularly in the political realm) are one of the Communist Party’s greatest fears, and some analysts say the Chinese state is going to greater and greater lengths to neutralise them.

In 2013, an internal Party communiqué instructed cadres to stop schools and media from discussing taboo topics that included Western constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, neoliberalism, press freedom, historical nihilism and questioning whether China’s system is truly socialist. It is widely thought to be what precipitated an extensive campaign against “Western values”.

Over the past year, this campaign has zeroed in on domestic universities, with ideological inspections of teaching staff and the bolstering of political education. But the roughly 800,000 Chinese students who are studying in overseas universities not under the Party’s control present a blind spot, and authorities view them as a critical constituency – potentially even a security threat.

Some Party arms have tried to disincentivise studying abroad. Restrictions have tightened on international schools that prepare students for overseas study. Some students have reported trouble accessing foreign admissions websites through China’s censored internet. Meanwhile, state media provides a steady drumbeat of reasons not to study overseas (it’s hard to find a marriage partner; it no longer assures you employment; you can get kidnapped and murdered, and local authorities won’t care, etc).

Minzner, a professor of Chinese law and politics at Fordham University School of Law, in New York, and author of the forthcoming book End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival Is Undermining its Rise, says that the ethos of the post-1979 reform period has been that China needs to learn from the outside in order to develop at home. But that page is now turning.

“There are questions being raised at a very deep level within the bureaucracy about how valuable that stuff from outside is,” Minzner says. “This nativist turn is leading Beijing to steadily impose stronger curbs on influences viewed as ‘foreign’ – whether it be Christmas traditions or overseas academic publications.”

The Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, charged with managing relations with critical groups outside of the Party, has identified overseas students as one of 12 special targets for ideological guidance and promotion of Party policies. The organisation has said focusing on these students is important for “consolidating and expanding the Party’s popular base”. A 2016 Ministry of Education document similarly called for a network linking “the motherland, embassies and consulates, overseas student groups, and the broad number of students abroad” in order to harness “patriotic energy” among overseas students.

As Chinese student numbers have grown internationally, so have warnings that this “patriotic energy” has indeed been activated to the detriment of academic freedom and Western higher education. Nowhere has the volume of these warnings been louder than in Australia, where students from mainland China now make up more than 6 per cent of the country’s total university enrolments (compared with 1.7 per cent in the US).

Last year, four incidents involving Chinese students in Australian universities gained national notoriety. One lecturer used a map showing China-claimed territory as belonging to India. Another referred to Taiwan as an independent country and was secretly recorded in a confrontation with Chinese students. A third posted a warning not to cheat, written in English and Chinese. And a fourth used a test question suggesting that Chinese officials are only truthful when “drunk or careless”. News of the incidents spread on social media, were picked up by Chinese state media and yielded fierce backlashes against the lecturers – three of whom issued apologies; the fourth was suspended by his university...

The scope of these operations is difficult to determine, but professors at universities around the world have recounted instances of students reporting back to higher officials on the activities of their classmates and lecturers, sometimes under duress.

Robert Barnett, director of Columbia University’s Modern Tibetan Studies Programme, recalls having had students apply to be his research assistant, only later to discover that they were acting at the behest of Chinese consular officials. He also knows that his lectures, and what Chinese students say in them, have been monitored. “I’ve had students suddenly given warnings by Chinese officials about me or things they’ve said in class,” he says. “In one case, it happened within a few hours of it being said.”

Sally Sargeson, an associate professor at Australian National University who teaches courses in Chinese politics, says Chinese students have expressed fears of this happening to them. “I had a student in tears in my office, saying that she dare not speak up in class,” Sargeson says. “Other students I know of have had parents in China contacted by public security, invited to come have tea, and told they need to keep their child in Australia in line.”

Essentially, CSSA branches are campus groups that organise social activities and practical assistance for students, and so are a natural attraction for many new arrivals transitioning to life abroad. Recently, though, they’ve come under scrutiny for some chapters’ murky ties to Chinese consulates and attempts to shut down activities critical of Communist Party interests. Last year, the CSSA and Chinese Embassy in London teamed up to try to block an event at England’s Durham University featuring Falun Gong-practising Chinese-Canadian beauty queen Anastasia Lin, who has been outspoken against the Communist Party. Later in the year, a student journalist at Australian National University reported that he was followed and intimidated by CSSA members while covering an “I love China 2.0” gala organised by the CSSA and funded by the Chinese Embassy in Australia...

One 2014 Australian government survey found that mainland Chinese students’ satisfaction with opportunities to interact with Australians is nearly 10 per cent lower than for other international student groups...

International students willing to pay for their tuition represent a welcome source of revenue for Western universities struggling with budget cuts, particularly since the global financial crisis. A 2016 California state audit, for instance, found that the University of California system had lowered admissions standards for out-of-state students (36 per cent of whom are from mainland China) for the purpose of collecting more tuition fees.

Many critics charge that this has yielded large sub-groups of Chinese overseas students who are linguistically and academically unprepared to succeed...

One 2016 survey of nearly 1,000 Chinese students studying at Purdue University – a large public college in rural Indiana – found that 29 per cent reported developing a more negative attitude toward the US since their arrival, with 26 per cent reporting a more positive attitude, and the rest remaining unchanged...

Opinions were a bit less diverse when it came to their own country. Forty-four per cent said their attitude toward China had become more positive since coming to the US, with 17 per cent reporting a more negative view...

One Yale University study found that 45 per cent of Chinese students surveyed at American universities reported symptoms of depression – triple the rate of the general population. Studies in Britain and Australia have yielded similar results...

She remembers biting her lip once when a Taiwanese classmate referred to Taiwan as a country. “It was in front of many Chinese students and no one stood up to defend,” she recalls with disappointment. “I should have [challenged her], but I was such a coward, so I didn’t.” In another situation, she did speak up – to defend China’s claim to the Diaoyu Islands when a peer said the disputed territory belonged to Japan. “It p***ed me off, but that’s when I realised I was really affected by the Chinese education system – always taught to defend our country no matter what.”

A recent graduate from Shanghai, who goes by the name Forrest Sam, recalls that when he was preparing to study in the US, a family friend warned that his son’s English actually got worse while studying in Canada for four years. This made Sam determined to avoid falling into a Chinese bubble.

When he arrived at University of California, Berkeley, he was indeed struck by how many of his classmates insulated themselves in Chinese enclaves. Referring to religious clubs for students, Sam says that Chinese automatically split up according to their place of origin. “Even for one religion, there are four separate clubs for students from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau,” he says. “They’re so good at creating divisions.”...

“I want to stay out of the political s**t,” he says. “It’s just too messy. I normally don’t start a conversation with people saying, ‘What do you think of Taiwan?’ That’s pretty much picking a fight.”...

One 2007 survey of students at several Beijing universities found that 56 per cent said they liked the overall American political system; only 4 per cent disliked it (the rest were neutral). This decisively beat the 28 per cent who said they liked China’s overall political system; 22 per cent expressed dislike.

A 2011 survey of students at one college found that 73 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement, “Western political systems are very appropriate for [China].” Only 7 per cent disagreed. The same study found that the political education that Chinese students are subject to isn’t particularly effective at endearing them to their leadership – greater comprehension of the education didn’t correlate with greater support of the Chinese government (though it did make them less inclined to express dissent through activities like joining a strike or protest)...

Overestimation of foreign countries’ socioeconomic conditions strongly correlated with interest in going abroad. It likewise correlated with having more negative views of China and the Chinese government. “But once they come to the West, they often realise there are a lot of things that aren’t as good as they thought before,” Huang says. “So they update their perceptions.”"


I guess Yang Shuping learned that China really has free speech after all

Maybe Chinese students are just prone to depression - even in China