So because the societies are so different and have limited contact, should we seek to cut off one of the few opportunities young people from borderline enemy countries across the world have to interact, or give them a space to interact freely?
I know most Chinese students at my university kept to their in-group and never interacted with anyone else. I also know loads who found a new culture that they felt comfortable in, made new friends, and started families.
Even if a bunch go home and forget about their time in America, plenty are having life-changing and potentially society-changing experiences.
It's not about societies being different. It's about Chinese international students engaging in blatant plagiarism, refusing to participate in classes, completely refusing to integrate, engaging in pro-chinese anti-local political activism, and basically expanding the CCPs political reach into foreign universities. This is something that all tertiary educators are painful aware of, as is the reluctance of faculty to take disciplinary action against international students because they're a major source of revenue. This is also something that is quite unique to Chinese and not other international students.
The Chinese students who don't subscribe to the CCP agenda are pressured by the others. They get labelled traitors, ostracised, word gets around and their families get harassed back at home.
In a nutshell, the CCP has identified inclusive societies as a soft target for remote propaganda achieved via international students. The CCP is highly selective in deciding who gets to leave the country to study abroad. This is something that couldn't even be discussed until recently because such discussions were/still are labeled as racism.
If AU/US international students tried to do anything like this in China, they'd be deported in the following few days but not before getting death threats and having their entire family doxxed and harassed.
>unique to Chinese and not other international students.
It’s really not. All wealthy international students are getting passed with As and pats on the back for cheating and doing no real work. It just seems worse with Chinese because they currently make up most of the foreign student base.
And political activism and silencing others on behalf of the CCP is an issue, but I’ve seen disproportionately way more student groups and public complaints in favor of a certain middle eastern country.
I can back that up with a different anecdotal experience not including the Chinese. Many of the students on my course were wealthy Emirati and Saudi students. They were quite open about the fact that most of them paid people to write their dissertations and other assignments for them. It was seen as a symbol of wealth who could get the most qualified person to do their work for them. None of them turned up to lectures though, and they'd all fail or do poorly in their exams - but their assignment scores were enough scrape them through the course. The plagiarism was so unbelievably blatant, but the university wouldn't do anything because the petro-states pay out big and they didn't want to appear to be targeting minorities (from the mouth of one of my lecturers). Can't say it's the same for all universities, but my institution was awful for it,
In my opinion the "targeting minorities" excuse is bullshit.
It's always something else, but that excuse is somehow more palatable. In this particular example I'd assume it's really about the money and the amount of ruckus those students and their well-connected parents will raise. Maybe it's not even that much about the money and more about the giant rectal pain genuinely powerful people with an outsized sense of entitlement can be.
Not related to Academia or Chinese or Emiratis, but the epic feud between Switzerland and the Gaddafi Clan about the treatment of the latters' servants/slaves comes to mind.
>The Chinese students who don't subscribe to the CCP agenda are pressured by the others. They get labelled traitors, ostracised, word gets around and their families get harassed back at home.
This has happened to people I know, for crimes such as going to a Taiwanese owned restaurant, a showing of a Tienanmen documentary and dating local white people.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students go abroad to study every year. Some of them cheat. Some of them get caught cheating. Some of those cheating scandals make the news. Guess who also cheats? People of every ethnicity and country.
It is true that test prep is a big deal in China. If there's a test to get into a top university, students are going to study like mad to pass that test. You're portraying that as a bad thing. Maybe it is bad to study to the test, but they're just playing by the rules as they exist - the test determines your chances, so you study as hard as possible for that test. If you want to change that behavior, make the test less important, or make it more creative.
One of the most disgusting smears against Chinese people is that they think cheating is okay. Just like in the West, cheating is looked down upon in China and cheaters are despised. Education is highly prized in China (Confucian ideals and all that), and normal parents and teachers certainly do not accept cheating.
What is also true is that in general, science/math education in Chinese primary/secondary schools is far more rigorous and difficult than it is in American schools. Kids generally learn advanced math at a much younger age in China, and that probably has something to do with the high number of extremely highly qualified engineers and scientists that the Chinese educational system produces.
I don't even see them making the point that Chinese students cheat more than others.
But there seems to be a persistent story of political activism and bullying that is pretty unique, and it seems to stem from organized politics rather than individual action.
It's both true and not racist. It would be racist to attribute that the observed behavior is due to genetic, ethnic or cultural reason.
In my opinion racism is about making value judgements across ethnic lines. First you draw a line along an ethnic distinction (maybe Chinese/Westerners). Second you make value judgement in the form of "one side has higher character". And third, possibly, you apply that value judgement to some other area or act on it.
Without a value judgement there can be no racism. Now, plagiarism is mostly seen as a negative behavior, but I don't get the feeling that the OP wanted to make a point about the Chinese students' character or their virtues.
I did not offer any opinion on what actions to take in that matter, nor do I have one at the moment.
I am generally in favor of international exchanges and people being allowed to go where they think they need to go. I'm not in favor of cheating your hosts.
I know most Chinese students at my university kept to their in-group and never interacted with anyone else. I also know loads who found a new culture that they felt comfortable in, made new friends, and started families.
Even if a bunch go home and forget about their time in America, plenty are having life-changing and potentially society-changing experiences.