China aggressively trumpets its cultural norms

In RealClearInvestigations, Richard Bernstein reports,

Rather than being transformed by exposure to Western values, many Chinese students, swept up in patriotic fervor, seem to be embracing their nation’s authoritarianism. Result: Instead of educating a new generation of leaders who might make China more liberal, U.S. schools may be training an oppositional cadre more interested in acquiring American know-how than American values. This is occurring against a larger backdrop in which a resurgent China aggressively trumpets its cultural norms, demanding that foreign businesses – from Google to the NBA – play by its rules.

Why has this happened?

Part of the answer involves the way China's authoritarian system works. There is growing evidence that the Chinese government coordinates with students, encouraging them to protest activities that its leaders deem insulting to the national dignity, whether it's inviting the Dalai Lama or pro-democracy activists to speak on an American campus. It's likely that significant numbers of Chinese living abroad sympathize with the Hong Kong movement, but they don't dare express their views for fear they will be ridiculed on social media or suffer reprisals when they return home.

...With some 300,000 Chinese students studying in American colleges and universities, the danger to Beijing's authorities is that they could become a center of pro-democratic dissent. China has responded with a mixture of patriotic appeals and implicit threats. Many of these students, moreover, come from China's newly emerged upper middle class, whose members have the most to lose if they run afoul of the authorities. They are described by their teachers as diligent, ambitious, and firmly instructed by their families back in China to study hard and stay out of politics.

...“I think that even compared to 10 years ago, the whole vibe among Chinese students has changed,” said Echo Wang, a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism in New York. “A common thing that I've heard is that the Olympic Games [held in Beijing in 2008] marked a big change for the country, creating a lot of patriotic pride, and so was the financial crisis of that year when China did incredibly well economically when the West did poorly.

“The conviction in China is that we're on the right track,” Wang added. “The vibe is that the system we have is better than the West's.”

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