
American Universities’ China Problem - hkai
https://quillette.com/2018/12/23/american-universities-china-problem/
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carlyfan
I came from Vietnam, in my views, Vietnam is China-lite or China-CC.

The other day my American friend (who was my roommate) came with me to visit
that country and we had a pretty interesting conversation on the taxi cab from
the airport to the hotel. My ex's dad worked in the government and his role
was essentially censor the press (and my ex was particularly hush-hush about
that). Now on my ex's views, she said her dad has no illusion about how shitty
the situation is, either. In her description of his job, that is to walk the
thin line to allow the press to say as much as possible without making anyone
really pissed off (and take revenge on the journalists). My American friend,
predictably, didn't like that and thought that was just an excuse.

My dad, like many people of his generation, refused to work with that
government. He refused to take any higher-up position. He is just a college
lecturer for all his life. To him, taking upper management jobs means he will
be corrupted just like the ones he despited. Now he is a disgruntled, angry
old man who now faces the fact that there is absolutely nothing he can do to
change anything in that shitty system. I believe if he took the job, he would
have been able to do more good to the students than the corrupted people he
despited.

One of the things that Vietnam has over China is that the internet is much
much freer. We get access to Facebook, Google, etc. without problems. That was
thanks to someone who worked in the government basically convinced the higher-
ups to open up the internet and "fix problems as they appear."

I talked to one of my Chinese graduate friends who has a dad who did
essentially what my dad did. I feel bad for both of them.

I feel that in dictatorship countries, making something happen is better than
nothing.

I still don't know what to think about my ex's dad, but I owe my gratitude to
whoever worked in the government to get the internet to Vietnam so I can be in
the USA today to do really great, great work and to speak freely. But I only
write this because I had the choice to get the fuck out. My dad and my
friend's dad, they had a family to feed and couldn't get out due to many
reasons. In that case, for their owns' good, I wonder if making a compromise
and "do what you can" is a better choice for both the person and the common
good. This is one of the cases where I ask whether the black-and-white,
absolutist thinking of good-and-bad what was a too simplistic view of the
problem. I believe many scholars in China didn’t say things directly because
they were brainwashed or cowards. They know their priorities.

~~~
carlyfan
>I believe many scholars in China didn’t say things directly because they were
brainwashed or cowards. They know their priorities.

What I meant was “many scholars in China didn’t say things directly not
because they were brainwashed or cowards.” Say if I do AI or biology research
or whatever, I’d rather spend my time doing those things instead of arguing
with people about whether a particular person really was good or bad. It’s
like how we see the Trump administration now: everyone already made up their
mind. I don’t go out to the street to protest Trump everyday, and I don’t
share CNN news about how bad he is on my Facebook feed.

Not that I can freely do it in those countries, but the idea is that we have
limited time in this world. Asking people to express/assert their views on
shit they have little interest in and saying that they’re cowards when they
don’t say what you want to hear is simplifying it a bit much.

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Simulacra
It’s very interesting and unfortunate that our universities taken a lot of
money from awful regimes. There’s been a lot of talk about universities
heavily depending on international students because they pay exorbitant
tuition. I’m not sure what the solution to this is.

~~~
hkai
Establish the culture of not being afraid to "offend with facts", which
academia is now lacking.

Run universities as nonprofits.

~~~
Simulacra
Here’s a fact: Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation. Try saying that as a
professor and not getting attacked by China’s expat thought goons.

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buckysock
Has anyone studied the effects of an American education in bringing more
westernization and western ideas into China ? Surely all these graduate
students aren’t gonna go back with the same exact ideology that they came
with, per se

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grenoire
The kind of students who have the means to study abroad are more often than
not (in my anecdotal experience, in the Netherlands (which has a different
scholarship dynamic too)) already pretty Westernised. I also know that myself,
given I _got to_ leave Turkey.

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i_am_proteus
A lot of this support comes in the form of large numbers of small
contributions: Chinese graduate students. This is especially pernicious
because it influences at the level of the department and even individual
professor, since they see the funding directly.

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xte
China and in general "productive Asia" grab the worse of USA/UK model and push
it to the extreme, that's the real problem for them, especially for their
citizen.

