The growing presence of Chinese students on American
campuses is causing a predictable backlash, chiefly the complaint that they are
squeezing out qualified state residents. This is wrong: Their tuition is
keeping public universities afloat, relieving taxpayers, and creating growth
that actually accommodates more places for Americans at these universities.
But this weekend's Wall Street Journal sheds new light on the brain
drain from China to the U.S. The increasingly repressive regime of President Xi
Jingping is a huge turn-off for the best and brightest of China’s youth.
Quoting this news story:
For students, campus life is heavily
regimented, with strict curfews. Every publicly funded school is required to
have a Communist Party committee, which is charged with helping direct the
ideological, political and moral education of students.
Such pressures have intensified
under President Xi Jinping, who has stressed the need to deepen education in
so-called “core socialist values.” China’s education minister last year
instructed colleges to resist Western values and more closely scrutinize Western
textbooks. China’s schools, he recently told The Wall Street Journal, aim “to
make our students qualified to inherit and build up socialism with Chinese
characteristics,” which is how the Communist Party describes its official
ideology.
Students and teachers are denied
access to websites such as Facebook and Google Scholar, a mainstay for many
academics.
If you support free speech and thought, worry about the
rising militarism and aggression of China, and want to strengthen the U.S.,
make Chinese students feel welcome. I have had the privilege of teaching students from China for 20 years. They are us, and we are them.
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