At Harvard’s commencement ceremony last month, Jiang Yurong (蔣雨融), an international student from Qingdao, China, delivered a speech titled “Our Humanity.” She was the first Chinese woman to speak at the university’s graduation. Her speech was intended to be a politically packaged inspirational story, but things did not go as planned. Rather than resonating with the public, Jiang’s speech drew criticism. What people saw was not her hard work, but an old trick used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elite to monopolize educational resources, brainwash Chinese and show a false image to the world.
Jiang’s speech was hollow and affectatious, filled with rhetoric and buzzwords that catered to the political correctness of US liberals. Jiang was criticized by Internet users, who said that she had left China at a young age to study in the UK, transferring through the General Certificate of Secondary Education system and never having to experience the fierce competition and struggle of China’s National College Entrance Examination. Further reports suggested that her father held a senior position at the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation — where Jiang previously interned — and that it was through recommendation letters and her father’s backing that she gained admission to Harvard. If true, then Jiang took a shortcut to earning an elite education — something that is unattainable for ordinary citizens and a source of long-standing public resentment in Chinese society.
Jiang serves as a timely explanation for why US President Donald Trump has been harshly criticizing Harvard. He sees through the CCP’s cultural infiltration — on the surface, some might appear to be just like any other international student from East Asia, but they are often tools used by elite families to spread their values globally. Such people do not represent China, and they certainly do not represent Chinese. They only represent a privileged social class that benefits from nepotism, institutional loopholes and double-dealing.
The content and attitude of Jiang’s speech were mockeries of Harvard’s diverse values. Dressed in an embroidered shawl like a feudal aristocrat, Jiang, with carefully planned — and almost robotic — gestures and expressions, knew exactly how to cater to white audiences’ ideas of Asians and said all the “right” things. However, for regular people in China, Jiang’s words were an insult. The message she shared was not the voice of the Chinese people, but political rhetoric carefully crafted by the CCP’s propaganda machine.
Jiang’s remarks once again ignited public suspicion and resentment in China toward children of high-ranking officials. While the privileged class paves a path for their children to study abroad at the world’s top universities, ordinary people must fight a decade-long battle just to cross the threshold to get into universities in China. Those “outstanding students representing China” have become silhouettes against a glaring backlight. Not only did the speech fail to bring glory to China, but it also exposed a systemic ugliness of privilege and hypocrisy. This “glory” was nothing but a mockery of the thousands upon thousands of poor students who lack a voice.
Jiang went viral in China not because she spoke the truth, but because she accidentally tore the corner off the CCP’s carefully packaged facade. She unintentionally poked a hole in the myth surrounding her own upbringing and — more importantly — in the CCP’s propaganda of equality and merit-based selection. Although Harvard faculty applauded the speech, many Chinese Internet users were not impressed. Jiang was not telling the story of the Chinese, but conveying a grossly insulting message designed by the most wealthy and powerful to mislead the rest of the world.
Elliot Yao is a reviewer.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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