Reminds me of this story from last year:<p><i>But those [Chinese] students often bring to campus something else from home: the watchful eyes and occasionally heavy hand of the Chinese government, manifested through its ties to many of the 150-odd chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations.<p>The groups have worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses. At Columbia a decade ago, the club mobilized students to protest a presentation about human rights violations in China, urging them to “resolutely defend the honor and dignity of the Motherland.” At Duke, the group was accused of inciting a harassment campaign in 2008 against a Chinese student who tried to mediate between sides in a Tibet protest. More recently in Durham, England, the group acted at the behest of the Chinese government to censor comments at a forum on China-Hong Kong relations.</i><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/chinese-students-western-campuses-china-influence.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/chinese-students-weste...</a><p>Also reminds me of this recent news, of Mercedes Benz made to apologize to China for posting a quote (in English) by the Dalai Lama on Instagram, a platform banned in China:<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/mercedes-apologises-china-quoting-dalai-lama/" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/mercedes-apologis...</a><p>EDIT: damn, downvotes are coming fast for this one. I wonder why :^)
During my undergrad university days (at the University of Utah), I took some Mandarin classes. There was a local Confucius Institute which provided various free materials in Chinese to the campus library. The extent of my direct contact with them was receiving a couple hundred dollars for doing well in a Mandarin speech contest they held for my class.<p>It was obvious that there was a certain propaganda aspect to this outreach effort; the reading materials provided of course didn't go into any potential negatives of the Beijing government, etc. Very much in line with the CCTV news network. My Mandarin teacher was Taiwanese and so I think that was good for me in that I wasn't getting all my exposure to Chinese from a single source.<p>I would not be surprised at all to learn that Chinese government operatives were using these various state-funded educational agencies for gaining intelligence and promoting their ideology. I assume the US is doing the same thing. It's a long game, with assets being put into place sometimes decades in advance. A healthy dose of cynicism is always important when dealing with state-funded groups; it's rare that countries invest such resources just out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts.
Australia has of late had its own issues involving accusations of Chinese espionage as well as good old-fashioned palm-greasing: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence_scandal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence...</a><p>If the US starts clamping down on this sort of thing, expect China to accuse the US government of xenophobia, since of course "we'd like to stop so many Chinese agents and toadies from infiltrating our governmental and educational systems" translates to "we hate Chinese people" in Mandarin.<p>EDIT: To be clear to any Chinese agents reading this, my issue is not so much with the spying and soft power campaigns so much as it is the unfair accusations of racism.
And we continue to tolerate those who wouldn't tolerate us...<p>Even the Chinese have a word for these people who naively defend and turn a blind eye to this sort of thing: "Baizou".<p>From Wikipedia:<p>"The word baizuo is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western "liberal elites". He further defined the word "baizuo" with the definition "People who only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment" and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.[7] The term has also been used to refer to perceived double standards of the Western media, such as the alleged bias on reporting about Islamist attacks in Xinjiang."<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo</a>
Isn't this well known fact? It isn't a secret that the chinese, along with the israelis, russians, british, french, japanese, koreans, canadians and even the saudis have operatives in academia, government, business, etc.<p>And of course we have operatives in all those countries as well.
This isn't a new controversy, for what it's worth. For example:<p><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/29/chicago-faculty-object-their-campuss-confucius-institute" rel="nofollow">https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/29/chicago-facul...</a><p>One way to summarize: colleges accept Chinese-sponsored Confucius Institutes as a way of bolstering Chinese language programs, which are valuable in the marketplace. But if you let China fund your Chinese language programs, the instructors you end up with will to some extent suppress discussion of politically-sensitive topics. And, of course, college staff probably also see this as a labor dispute: colleges that accept CI-sponsorship are in a sense outsourcing the work of professors.
Honestly, is this news? Is it anything new that there are people roaming around university campuses that intend to make inroads into young, impressionable minds?<p>When I was at university, I remember there was an organization called "Horizons" which would show up to a number of social events and invite people to their building located near campus for free dinner. Of course, they were a Christian organization and were keen to sell their religion in this way.<p>I remember thinking it was a bit disingenuous but mostly just saw it as being silly. Students would go to get free dinner but seemed mostly capable of avoiding being indoctrinated. I think people such as those from the Confucius Institute should be regarded similarly. That is, they should not be seen as a real threat.<p>What concerns me is that giving attention to these things in the wrong way will only encourage people to develop a xenophobic attitude towards foreign students. I don't think there's legitimate cause for concern here. The overall culture and message of academia -- that one should investigate for one's self and see -- still seems intact and should be capable of standing up on its own, even if some seek to infiltrate it with their own agendas.
Personally I think some Mandarin should become compulsory in the US because I think basic lack of communication is the greatest security risk. The biggest problem to me is the Chinese suppression of dissent and overcentralization. And since there are so many Chinese people it seems almost inevitable that these tendencies will encroach upon or at least rub off on the US.<p>I assume at this point most universities realize any work they feel should be closed is not so if they have Chinese students involved.<p>I wonder if it might be possible to start requiring study of decentralization and free speech topics as general requirements for graduation.
If the federal government is so concerned about giving away R&D, they need to do something about all the companies that freely give it away when they offshore manufacturing to China and other countries. They've been doing it for decades; the horse is already out of the barn. Not only that, he left the barn 30 years ago, and has recently died of old age.
Wow, this seems like straight-up racist fearmongering. The Chinese have "infliltrated" our schools by <i>attending</i> and starting culturally oriented studies? What's wrong with setting up classes for studying Mandarin, the #1 most popular language on the planet?
I'm not sure I understand the argument of the article. Yes my graduate classes have many Chinese students in them, but why exactly is it bad that they are furthering their education and doing research in the US? The biggest issue I see is that many of them want to live and work in the US after graduation, but basically have to leave it up to luck in the visa lottery system.
That being said, the Chinese do have a term called: shan zhai which deals with copyrighting/conferfiting. While I'm not endorcing it, it does have some cultural roots.<p>The strange parts guy explained it some in this video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdKV6x13cz8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdKV6x13cz8</a>
In Australia, I am concerned with the Influence that China has over our economy and how they are trying to influence our politics[1][2][3][4]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-14/china-backlash-australia-questions-of-political-interference/9258462" rel="nofollow">http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-14/china-backlash-austral...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the-art-of-influence-how-chinas-spies-operate-in-australia-20171203-gzxs06.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/chinese-influence-at-all-levels-of-australian-politics-says-clive-hamilton/news-story/77be3faf6ab6f40738fc5d7d5897d78b" rel="nofollow">https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-af...</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-politics/australia-concerns-over-china-influence-spark-us-probe/news-story/24c8a86697d0b37b4c5b6cb1b8312b55" rel="nofollow">https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-politics/aust...</a>
Duh. Ask Chinese grad student about it. They know who the active communist party members are and who they don't speak their mind in front of about affairs back home.
350,000 students and god know how many employees. FBI apparently has around 35,000 employees. I know not all the students are spies, and not all suspicious ones get their own team of agents rights away, but looks like using a Patriot Missile to kill a $150 drone. Time and time again.
The FBI never changes, does it? I’m not even saying that they’re wrong, but stating it this way is just fodder for bin fires. It would be strange if China and others didn’t do this, and strange if the US didn’t do it to them.
The Chinese government has been very aggressive when it comes to media in foreign countries. Via Foreign Policy (<a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas-biggest-chinese-language-newspapers-toes-beijings-party-line-china-influence-united-front/" rel="nofollow">http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas-biggest-...</a>):<p><i>In recent years, and especially since Xi became president in 2012, the Chinese government has sought various ways to increase its influence over China’s 40 million-strong diaspora. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, a ministry specifically dedicated to the task, works to extend the party’s reach, and the push has seen increasing success in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, where local ethnic Chinese organizations have begun to vocally push for pro-Beijing policies.</i><p>For years The Washington Post ran a paid supplement from the China Daily supplement, which was basically propaganda aimed at English speakers (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/official-chinese-propaganda-now-online-from-the-wapo/70690/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/of...</a>):<p><i>For instance, the item above: "Stop Telling Us What We Should Do," with "we" being China and the object of the imperative sentence being the nagging United States. Or this one and this, clarifying how unfair it was for foreigners to criticize China's "rare earths" exports policy. As a matter of fact, China's "actions taken in the past few months, and those to be taken in the months to come, are totally legitimate."</i><p>In Canada, the CCP pushed Canadian officials to ban English-language reporters from certain events featuring a Chinese official, and kick out a reporter from a local Chinese newspaper that criticized China's human rights record (<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne-agrees-to-closed-events-with-chinese-after-communist-party-officials-asked/article26696163/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne-agrees-t...</a>).<p>In Hong Kong, the situation for media companies is much worse - agents kidnapped book publishers and booksellers off the street in Hong Kong and Thailand and shipped them to China for trial. Their crimes? Publishing or selling unauthorized books about government officials (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/17/china-behaving-like-gangster-state-with-bookseller-kidnap-say-hong-kong-politicians" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/17/china-behaving...</a> ).<p><i>Lam, the 61-year-old manager of the Causeway Bay bookstore, claimed he had spent months in solitary confinement in a cramped cell after being snatched by a group of men as he entered mainland China in October 2015.<p>“They blindfolded me and put a cap on my head and basically bundled me up,” Lam told reporters.<p>Lam claimed Chinese agents had forced him to confess to crimes he had not committed during his detention. He said he had decided to speak out after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest the booksellers’ disappearances.</i>
Gosh it's getting so you have to worry that you might inadvertently be exposed to <i>Chinese ideas</i> now. Or that - God forbid - they'll steal all the <i>good pure American</i> ones. Like how to be a spendthrift blowhard with great hair.
Is there any link to intellectual property theft? I always wonder about the need to steal our intellectual property when China is doing so well with their own startups and innovations.
Regardless of what side(s) you take, it really is a blessing and benefit of the US system, there can be an open, lively, and free discussion without comments or commentors disappearing as if a phrase would topple an entire system.
Here's where this statement is poisonous: I'm not sure if the FBI is actually being honest, or if this is some Trumpist bullshit that confirms how racist the current administration is.<p>Either way, I find it hard to believe. If its the former, its not shocking. If its the latter, it's disappointing but not at all surprising.
Hard to get through some of these statements:<p>> They have a long-term strategic objective to become a world power.
> Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats<p>O RLY? Funny, last I checked, China was a world power. Shit, China rivals the US as a world power.<p>> Most Americans have not heard of all of these companies.
> Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat<p>Surprise surprise! Well, most American's haven't heard of Acxiom either. It's always surprising how much other people don't know, isn't it?<p>And, FWIW, I bet more people have heard about ZTE than half the organizations that contribute to Mark Warner's campaigns. New companies entering our markets from China have to play by the same rules our own companies do, how is this any different. If it is different, why? How does this matter in the discussion of Chinese intelligence gathering. More importantly, who cares?<p>The fear-mongerers care, that's who.