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
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
After declaring Iran’s military “gone,” US President Donald Trump appealed to the UK, France, Japan and South Korea — as well as China, Iran’s strategic partner — to send minesweepers and naval forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. When allies balked, the request turned into a warning: NATO would face “a very bad” future if it refused. The prevailing wisdom is that Trump faces a credibility problem: having spent years insulting allies, he finds they would not rally when he needs them. That is true, but superficial, as though a structural collapse could be caused by wounded feelings. Something
RSS