cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3358546
Had someone mention this to me in conversation this weekend. Not something I knew, but honestly, not something I really cared about either. I just said a lot of Chinese nationals attend American university. A large part of the student population in the university/town I live in is Chinese. They followed up with “Sure, a specific class of Chinese though right?”. My response being ,“Yeah wealthy business owners send their kids here.” They said “I was just surprised, wouldn’t he worry about her getting indoctrinated?” I said they get taught Marxism from like kindergarten, so no, probably not.
It really felt like a strange thing to bring up. I forget the context it came up in. This wasn’t presented as some counter argument to anything, bit I do wonder where this little factoid comes from.
I see that RFA reported on her being outed as going to Harvard and the person getting jail time for it (for what its worth). Other then that, nothing substantial really.
So what’s up with this? Is this some kind of lingering gotcha fed to libs to regurgitate when the topic is right?
She went to Harvard from 2010-2014, which was still in the honeymoon period after China joined the WTO, and when the US still thought it could make China capitalist, so was open to exchange.
Firstly, the best way to know your enemy is to study them from the inside. Several Chinese dynasties collapsed from invasion due to being too insular and not learning from the rest of the world. Heck, China’s Century of Humiliation was due to exactly this, because it didn’t learn and adopt modern industrial and military technologies. I grew up watching documentaries stressing this point, showing how Qing dynasty soldiers tried using crossbows against British guns. By sending his daughter to Harvard, Xi gets inside knowledge on the US elite and the educational practices which make US universities the ‘best in the world’.
Second, doing so shields her from the papparazi in China. You cannot expect teachers in China to treat the daughter of the president without bias. Chinese professors would always worry about giving her bad grades out of fear of government reprisal. This would give her a false experience of the world. Chinese socialism has always stressed the importance of going “down to the people”, experiencing their lives and problems. By going to Harvard anonymously, Xi’s daughter gets an accurate student experience while also learning other useful info.
If Xi had another child today, I don’t think he would send them to a US school. There is not much more China needs to learn from the US, and the US isn’t as amicable as before to giving China said info. Perhaps Xi would instead have them tour the Global South to learn about the most pressing issues China can fix there.