Speaking at the University of Maryland, Yang Shuping (楊舒平), a graduating senior from China, sprinkled her upbeat commencement speech with observations that drew warm applause: The air was far cleaner in the US than in China, she said, and she could openly discuss racism, sexism and politics in ways that she had never before dreamed possible.
Growing up in China, “I was convinced that only authorities owned the narrative,” Yang, a theater and psychology major from the southern city of Kunming, told the crowd in a basketball arena in College Park, Maryland. “Only authorities could define the truth.”
However, the speech on Sunday drew harsh criticism from some of Yang’s Chinese classmates in Maryland and from legions of social media users in China, many of whom accused her of selling out her homeland. Even Kunming city weighed in, saying on Chinese microblogging sites, that her comments about the city’s air pollution were “not related to us.”
On Monday, Yang said she hoped the speech would not result in any personal attacks against her.
“I apologize if my speech was at any point misleading,” she wrote online. “I sincerely hope I can be understood and forgiven by the public.”
“The speech was just sharing a part of my experience studying in the United States,” she added. “There was no intention to belittle my country and my hometown.”
The episode appeared to show how, as more Chinese study overseas, comments that they make about China or its one-party government can spread online and prompt taunts, even threats, from other students or social media users in China.
There were 328,547 students from China studying at US higher-education institutions during the academic year that ended last year, nearly one-third of all international students in the country, according to data published by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
That figure was about double the number of students in the US from India, which ranked second on the institute’s list.
In a separate study that cited data from the Chinese Ministry of Education, the consultancy ICEF Monitor said that 523,700 Chinese students had gone abroad to study in 2015, up from fewer than 300,000 in 2010.
The study said that as many as 80 percent of the Chinese students who went abroad typically returned to China to work.
The Maryland episode is hardly the first time that a student or professor at an overseas university has provoked complaints in China. Earlier this month a lecturer from Monash University in Australia was suspended after a Chinese student complained of a classroom quiz that had appeared to insult Chinese officials.
In 2010, the University of Calgary in Canada announced that the Chinese education ministry had removed it from its list of accredited overseas institutions. The decision came weeks after the university had awarded an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese government accuses of promoting Tibetan independence from China.
A planned speech next month by the Dalai Lama at the University of California, San Diego, has already prompted the local chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association to threaten “tough measures to resolutely resist the school’s unreasonable behavior.”
In her speech on Sunday, Yang said she had been relieved to find that she did not need to wear any of her five pollution masks in the US.
She also discovered that the freedoms enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence were not the abstractions she had once imagined, she said.
“Democracy and freedom are the fresh air that is worth fighting for,” she said.
However, critics on social media skewered the address. Some challenged Yang’s comment about pollution masks:
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese