The recent meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in California was heralded as an initial attempt to thaw relations. As part of that broader effort, both sides expressed interest in expanding educational exchanges. China’s announced goal of hosting 50,000 U.S. students in the next five years looks wildly ambitious compared to the current 211 Americans studying in mainland China today, but ten years ago, as many as 15,000 studied there annually.
The drastic decline of American students in China is creating an expertise gap that threatens the United States’ long-term ability to navigate the complexities of the China-U.S. geopolitical landscape. CLICK HERE to continue reading this article.
Last Monday, the White House announced that, because of the “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses,” President Joe Biden will not be sending any diplomatic, government or other official representatives to the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. With the U.S.’ announcement, other countries and territories have followed suit. New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Scotland, Kosovo and Japan all have announced similar diplomatic boycotts. To its credit, Lithuania preceded the United States in announcing a diplomatic boycott by three days.
But in light of the Chinese government’s ongoing persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims – the unlawful internment of one to three million in camps (and yes, it is unlawful under Chinese law), the criminalization of their religion, the restriction on Uyghur births, the constant destruction of their mosques and other religious grounds, the seizure of Uyghurs’ passports, and the dehumanization of Uyghurs – a diplomatic boycott is not enough. Our athletes’ participation in the shadows of what the U.S. government has declared a genocide and U.S. corporations’ Olympic sponsorship will make the Beijing Winter Games come off as business as usual. We don’t look back on Berlin 1936 because we sent our diplomats to attend the Nazi’s Olympics. We look back on the Berlin Summer Games because we allowed our athletes to perform before a regime that we knew was persecuting and dehumanizing its Jewish population. And in allowing for business as usual, we demonstrated our lack of commitment to protecting Germany’s Jews and gave the Nazi government the imprimatur of global legitimacy. With just a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, expect the same result which, if history is a guide, does not bode well for the Uyghurs.
Additionally, leaving the moral responsibility to do more on the shoulders of our athletes is not only unfair to them, it is also dangerous. Many of our athletes are in their late teens to mid-twenties, peak age to take on causes and protest. In March of this year, likely recognizing their athletes’ proclivity to activism and the U.S.’ tradition of free speech, the U.S. Olympic Committee permitted demonstrations at the U.S. Olympic trials. At this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, U.S. shot-putter Raven Saunders, while on the medal podium, held up her arms in an “x” in protest for the oppressed of the world.
Tibetan flag
But such protests in Beijing could result in severe consequence for our athletes under Chinese law. Disrespecting the Chinese flag is a crime under Chinese Criminal Law (Article 299) and anything touching upon Tibet or Xinjiang, such as unfurling or wearing a Tibetan or East Turkestan flag or symbol, could be deemed inciting separatism (Article 103) or inciting ethnic hatred (Article 249). Similar with any show of support for an independent Taiwan or for protestors in Hong Kong. Even writing #WhereIsPengShuai could easily fall under the Chinese government catch-all, anti-activist criminal prohibition against picking quarrels and provoking troubles. (Article 293(4): “making disturbances in public places. . . .”). Even if the Chinese government doesn’t want to throw the book at a foreign athlete, there is always administrative detention – a 15-day prison sentence without trial – as a result of “disturbing public order” that could be a good way to prove its point.
East Turkestan flag
The fact that the world will be watching should not afford any comfort. The past few years have shown that the Chinese government has no qualms in using its legal system to prove a political point. For almost two years, the Chinese government detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation of Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. American citizens and siblings Victor Liu and Cythnia Liu, who went to China to visit family, were forbidden from leaving for over three years, likely as a way to pressure their businessman father to turn himself in on fraud charges. Even the United States Department of State has noted the political use of the legal system , warning Americans traveling to China that the “government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including by carrying out arbitrary and wrongful detentions and through the use of exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries without due process of law.”
So what’s the Biden’s administration’s plan when one of our athletes is detained or not allowed to leave China? Has the U.S. Olympic Committee informed athletes’ parents and family what it will do when their relative goes missing? The Biden administration and the U.S. Olympic Committee need to be honest with our athletes and their families that protesting in China could have real consequences and if they do protest, communicate now what the U.S. government will do for them. It’s funny how our choice to engage in a diplomatic boycott also puts us, the bastion of free speech, in the awkward situation that to ensure our athletes’ return, we have to tell them not to protest against some of the gravest human rights violation in the world today. Perhaps a more complete boycott – athletes, corporate sponsors, media coverage – would have been the better choice, both morally and for the safety of our athletes.
All the Fulbright countries are highlighted in orange. Map is only current through July 13, 2020.
Last Wednesday, SupChina published our oped calling on the Biden administration to restore the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs, both terminated by the Trump Administration’s July 14, 2020 Executive Order. As we noted in the article, prior to that termination, the United States had been sending approximately 200 Americans every year to China on the Fulbright program and China was sending more than 100 Chinese citizens to the U.S. as Fulbrighters. Since the United States resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, the United States has sent 3,556 Americans to China on a Fulbright and China has sent 1,545 Chinese scholars to the U.S.
These numbers come from an analysis of the Fulbright annual reports, published between 1978 and 2016, which China Law & Policy reviewed and made a summary excel spreadsheet of the number of Fulbrighters, broken down by year (see below). The spreadsheet also includes an analysis of the Chinese government’s annual contribution to the Fulbright program.
The annual reports for 2004 to 2016 are available on the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ (ECA) website here. After China Law & Policy made a request to ECA for the pre-2004 reports, ECA provided us with all the reports dating back to 1959. We have uploaded the Fulbright annual reports here from 1979 to 2003 here. Unfortunately, for the last three years the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board has failed to fulfill its Congressional-mandate of publishing an annual report and thus, the last report is from the 2016 academic year.
How to Read the China Fulbright Excel Workbook
You can download the Excel Workbook below or view it in the embedded document. Note that the Workbook has three sheets, the first shows the number of U.S. citizens sent to China, broken down by the various different sub-programs covered by the Fulbright program. Sheet two is the number of Chinese citizens sent to the U.S., also broken down by Fulbright sub-program. For both of these sheets, the right most column lists the total number of Fulbrighters by year. The bottom of the right most column totals the number of China Fulbrighters between 1978 and 2016.
You are welcome to use these numbers as you see fit but we would appreciate it if you could cite to China Law & Policy if you use this excel spreadsheet or the data we collected.
It was 1999, and for the Fulbright program, Nickolas Zaller and I were pioneers. Never before had China hosted recently-graduated college students on the Fulbright program, and it only permitted five of us to come that August for a year-long fellowship. The following year, 26 U.S. students went to China on a Fulbright, and for the last 15 years, that number has hovered around 50 annually.
But earlier this year, on July 14, with neither explanation nor warning — and buried deep in an Executive Order addressing the legal status of Hong Kong under U.S. law — the Trump Administration terminated the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs. . . .
In response to the precarious situation of U.S. journalists in China where approximately 24 New York Times and Bloomberg reporters may not have their visas renewed, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China will host a roundtable discussion on the issue, tomorrow, December 11 at 3:30 PM. The event will be held in Washington, D.C. at the Capitol Visitors Center, Room SVC 203-202 .
Panelists will include Paul Mooney, who was outright denied a journalist visa to work as Reuter’s Beijing correspondent, Edward Wong, current New York Times China correspondent, Bob Dietz, Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists and Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia at Freedom House.
Because of the demand for this roundtable, an RSVP is required. Please RSVP, no later than 10 AM on December 11 to Judy Wright at judy.wright@mail.house.gov
Since Vice President Biden’s visit to Beijing where he met with U.S. journalists and publicly raised the issue of press censorship, there have not been any reports of any New York Times or Bloomberg correspondents receiving their visas. To the contrary, in a series of Twitter posts, New York Times China correspondent Ian Johnson stated that the first reporters will be forced to leave on December 17, presumably the expiration date of their current visa, with all to leave by December 31.
Yesterday, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) released its 2013 Year-End statement, noting yet another year of negative trends. The FCCC found “…that the Chinese authorities are increasingly using the denial of visas, or delays in their approval, in an apparent effort to influence journalists‘ coverage. No correspondents for the New York Times and Bloomberg have yet been able to renew their annual residence visas, which have been subject to unusual and unexplained delays this year.”
The FCCC also noted that potential censorship goes beyond China’s borders, giving credence to author Peter Manseau’s belief that in 2010 the Chinese embassy contacted senior editors at the Washington Post to kill his story on Falun Gong in DC. Although Manseau’s incident was in 2010, the FCCC reported that in 2013, “…[o]n at least two occasions this year Chinese embassy staff in foreign capitals have approached the headquarters of foreign media and complained about their China-based correspondents’ coverage, demanding that their reports be removed from their websites and suggesting that they produce more positive China coverage.” One wonders how many other occasions there have been.
If you are in DC tomorrow, this should be an interesting and important event. Again, RSVP is necessary by 10 AM tomorrowto judy.wright@mail.house.gov.
For those interested in learning more about foreign journalists’ visa troubles, please see China Law & Policy‘s three-part series with Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.
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