In her widely publicized Harvard graduation speech, Jiang Yurong (蔣雨融) spoke of a shrinking world, common interests and a shared sense of humanity. She called for compassion and solidarity. However, what does Jiang know — or care — about the Uighurs in this “small world,” especially those suffering within her own country?
Has she ever spoken out about the more than 3 million Uighurs detained in Chinese concentration camps? Has she shown any empathy toward their fate or used her platform to call for justice? Did she only discover her “humanity” when US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed visa restrictions on Chinese students?
The influence and credibility of a humanitarian are not measured by eloquent speeches alone. They are tested by the ability to recognize and respond to human suffering, especially when it is politically inconvenient. Otherwise, such speeches are not just hollow, they are a calculated form of deception. The larger the stage, the louder the applause, the more dangerous the lie.
Jiang said that “if there is a woman anywhere in the world who can’t afford a menstrual pad, that makes me even poorer.”
A compelling sentiment, but what about the mothers in the Xinjiang Police Files — women who were not searching for pads, but for their missing children? Patiguli Ghulam searched for her son for five years, then was imprisoned simply for asking questions. Does Jiang’s humanity extend to her?
“If a child dies in a war they didn’t start or understand, a part of me dies with them,” Jiang said.
Where was this sorrow when China’s policies — including forced sterilization and family separation — contributed to the disappearance of more than 1 million Uighurs, as the birthrate fell by almost half from 2017 to 2019?
Jiang has not once acknowledged these atrocities — not officially, not on social media, not through any student or university platform.
Jiang, like hundreds of thousands of Chinese students in the US, made it abroad by passing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological and political loyalty tests. Such students benefit from a regime that rolled tanks over its own citizens in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and launched genocide against Uighurs in East Turkestan (known in China as Xinjiang) in 2017.
Despite being highly educated, these students remained silent during global catastrophes with clear links to the CCP. When COVID-19 spread worldwide and killed more than 1 million in the US alone, not a word of accountability was directed at the Chinese regime. Likewise, during eight years of Uighur genocide, there has been silence — strategic, complicit silence.
Since the 2000s, more than 1 million Chinese students have studied in the US. They absorbed the US’ technological prowess, but not its values of justice, equality and democracy. When they returned to China, they helped develop cutting-edge technologies used to run surveillance states and ethnic repression. Instead of bringing democratic reform, their foreign education became a tool for the CCP to entrench its power.
The Uighur genocide happened because China became stronger, technologically and economically, partly by students trained in US institutions. Facial recognition systems, predictive policing algorithms, data surveillance — many of these tools used against Uighurs have roots in Western research.
It is time the US reckons with the consequences of educating handpicked emissaries of authoritarian regimes. The Uighur genocide is a moral warning. The cost of naivety has already been enormous. So no, we should no longer be swayed by flowery speeches from figures such as Jiang. Trump’s decision to restrict Chinese student visas was not just political — it was moral, intellectual and strategic.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur-American observer.
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