Last week, the Trump administration proposed revoking the visas of Chinese students who express support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Just days later, Harvard offered a revealing counterpoint: the Kennedy School of Government selected a Chinese student to deliver the commencement address. The speaker, Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, used language strikingly similar to the CCP’s official worldview.
Let’s consider the parallels.
In 2013, shortly after assuming power, Xi Jinping introduced a new ideological slogan: “a community with a shared future for mankind.” It quickly became central to the CCP’s global propaganda efforts. A few years later, Xi elaborated:
“A community with a shared future for mankind, as the name suggests, means that the future and destiny of every nation and country are closely interconnected. We should stand together through thick and thin, share honor and disgrace, and work hard to turn this planet—where we were born and raised—into a harmonious big family, making the aspirations of people around the world for a better life a reality.”
This phrase was enshrined in both the CCP Charter and China’s Constitution. Since then, it has served as a soft-power motif for China’s global ambitions.
Now, listen to what Ms. Jiang told Harvard graduates in her speech:
“That moment reminds me of something I used to believe when I was a kid: that the world was becoming a small village. I remember being told we would be the first generation to end hunger and poverty for humankind. My program at Harvard is International Development. It was built on this exact beautiful vision that humanity rises and falls as one.”
The ideological alignment is hard to miss.
Given her Harvard credentials, Ms. Jiang is well-positioned for a promising career in China’s foreign service or propaganda apparatus—just like many alumni of the Kennedy School’s one-year Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) program. The program caters to rising leaders worldwide, including a steady stream of officials from China’s ruling class.
I, too, was once a Chinese student at Harvard, arriving in the mid-1980s to pursue a Ph.D. Much has changed since then—both at Harvard and among its Chinese student population.
Back then, Harvard was liberal in the classical sense. Professors represented a spectrum of political beliefs, and debate was encouraged. Ironically, my alma mater in China—Peking University—was staunchly anti-totalitarian and was more pro-American than many of my Harvard peers. Having emerged from the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, my classmates in Beijing had little tolerance for Marxist dogma.
I once asked my professor, Liah Greenfeld—who had grown up in the Soviet Union—why so many American academics seemed enamored with Marxism. She laughed and said, “If you want to see real Marxists, go to Berkeley.”
The small Chinese student community at Harvard at that time was nearly unanimous in its opposition to the CCP. When the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in 1989, we denounced the Chinese regime—and our professors joined us.
But everything changed after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The country rapidly became the world’s manufacturing hub, and its newfound wealth allowed the CCP to build influence in elite institutions across the West.
Just one month after China’s WTO accession, Harvard Kennedy School—partnering with China’s State Council Development Research Center—launched a joint program with Tsinghua University to train Chinese government officials. According to Harvard sources, it became the largest training program of its kind in the school’s history. At the time, tuition and expenses for each student were estimated at $200,000 per year.
Graduates of the program went on to play pivotal roles in U.S.-China relations. Most notably, Vice Premier Liu He, who led China’s negotiating team during the U.S.-China trade talks, is among the alumni.
Meanwhile, the makeup of the Chinese student body also shifted. Earlier generations—like mine—relied on scholarships. The newer arrivals are largely self-funded, often from families that prospered under the CCP’s rule and can afford Ivy League tuition. Ms. Jiang, for example, is reportedly the daughter of a high-ranking official.
These students increasingly use their platforms abroad to promote pro-Beijing narratives. Social media channels are now filled with anti-American commentary from students currently enrolled at U.S. institutions. Behind the scenes, the Chinese government has expanded its surveillance and influence network: party branches embedded in student organizations, pressure to report dissenting voices, and a legal requirement that Chinese citizens cooperate with state intelligence—even while abroad.
This raises a question that has been deferred for too long:
Are America’s universities educating future global leaders—or training the agents of authoritarian regimes and our adversaries?
***
Sasha Gong is a scholar, an author, and a journalist. She holds a Ph.D from Harvard University.
In 1979 President Carter created the Department of Education which initiated a spiraling downtrend trend in American Education to the point that it, once rated as first/second in the world, among western nations, has now plummeted to 40th. That is true not only through, and till K12, but often quite beyond; most liberal arts college degrees have little or no value to offer prospective employers. Despite the aforementioned I would say that an American science or engineering education has not been similarly tarnished. Technology has advanced to the point that a University education in America, with an emphasis on science, is still better than anywhere else in the world. Consequently America’s enemies, given the opportunity, would want their future leaders to be educated by the very country they aspire to compete with, overshadow and control.
What public service unions have done to American public education from preschool till K12 is minor compared to the indoctrination students receive from colleges and universities. And in no small way has China’s CP been responsible. What Public service unions did to precollege public education the CPC has been doing, similarly, to colleges and universities. Americans are being educated by anti-American academics, holding powerful positions in prestigious colleges and universities, so that graduates are more in tune with a one world globalist philosophy devoid of any comprehension of America’s Founding Documents. It appears that the CCP has off loaded their indoctrination attempts to American colleges and universities because American academics do a better job at proselytizing than they can.
There is nothing really surprising about what America’s Marxists have planned. When Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” was first published it received considerable criticism from European socialists.That could be understood because Europe, and especial Britain, drifted towards socialism post WWII but what could not be understood was the venom expressed by America’s socialist academics who made rival Keynesian economists seem mild mannered by comparison. Now, decades later, when Tiananmen Square protests are all a distant memory, the very purpose of those protests are being defeated in, of all places, the very country the protestors once looked up to. American Marxists are the ‘Enemy Within’ like no other. Joe Biden was as close to being a Manchurian President as could ever have been imagined. His reign of destruction is not over. The next Manchurian President is being educated and groomed in American Universities just like Barack Obama was. But first Americans themselves have to be indoctrinated to believe that China is a friend and that totalitarianism and genocide is not what they appear to be but, instead, underscore a futuristic, universal, harmonious nirvana where opposing views are but fairy tales once written about by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell.