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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, February 27, 2021

Tomorrow marks the 74^th anniversary of the 228 (two-two-eight) Incident.  Never heard of it?  I hadn’t either until a couple of years ago. But the 228 Incident marks the start of a violent, dark period of Taiwan history: the White Terror.  Starting on February 28, 1947 and for the next 40 years, Taiwan’s ruling Nationalists Party (“KMT” or “Guo Min Dang”) instituted martial law, subjecting any dissenters – or those who the government believed to be dissenters – to arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and death. At times, the White Terror even made its way to U.S. shores, such as assassinations sponsored by the KMT. 

The world knows little of the White Terror because of the KMT’s effective suppression of the topic even after martial law was lifted in 1987. And also because of Taiwan’s friendship with the U.S., which didn’t ask the questions it should have even when U.S residents and citizens were subject to the White Terror, let alone ordinary Taiwanese.  Then, came the mid-1990s, when Chinese studies in the U.S. began to focus on the mainland, with Taiwanese history an afterthought, if even that. 

Now though Taiwan is on the rise.  With its successful containment of COVID-19 and its strong embrace of democracy, the world is watching Taiwan.  And another example that Taiwan can offer to the world is how a country deals with the mass violence and murders of its own people. In 2018, the Taiwanese government instituted the Transnational Justice Commission to investigate and address the atrocities committed during the White Terror.

To even contemplate if the Transnational Justice Commission will be successful, knowledge of the violence and pervasiveness of Taiwan’s White Terror is a must. Shawana Yang Ryan’s Green Island, a historical novel that tells the story of a Taiwanese family trying to survive the White Terror, provides that understanding.

Green Island starts on the eve of the 228 Incident, with the birth of its narrator who remains nameless throughout the entire novel. Her father, a doctor, delivers her, but the next day he is violently hauled off by the police, all because of a brief moment when he spoke, in public, about his desire for a freer Taiwan. He returns to the family 10 years later, unrecognizable after a decade of on Green Island, the island where the KMT set up its diabolical prisons for political dissidents.  Ryan briefly details the father’s torture, covering only the time period soon after his detention; Ryan does not go into the gory details of his decade-long prison sentences.  But what Ryan shares is enough to know that the father will emerge – if he emerges at all – a very broken man. And by telling the story through the daughter, we see the intergenerational damage of the White Terror: a distant, destroyed father, who will never be able to hold a job again nor the respect of his family; the constant surveillance by the authorities; the crushing of civil society; family and friends forced to turn on each other to save another or sometimes just themselves; the retribution experienced by family members in Taiwan when an emigrated child exercises her freedom of speech in America.

Green Island is not an uplifting novel, nor can it be given the truth it seeks to expose about the KMT’s martial law.  Even the narrator is a complex character, where at points you are rooting for her but then at others are appalled by her choices. Although on some level, you wonder – would I have made the same choice if put in such a horrific situation, and are thankful that your government never has asked you to. With Ryan’s artful prose and development of characters over a 60-year time period, Green Island is a necessary read to learn about the White Terror and to understand the trauma that Taiwan still grapples with even as it establishes itself as a vibrant democracy. 

Rating:

Green Island: A Novel, by Shawna Yang Ryan (Penguin Random House, 2018), 400 pages.

Interested in purchasing the book? Considering supporting you local, independent bookstore. Find the nearest one here.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, February 15, 2021

It was disappointing to read The Economist‘s most recent piece about the atrocities in China’s Xinjiang province – “‘Genocide’ is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang” given the hard stance it has taken in the past against the Chinese government’s violence, oppression and mass internment of Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims. But in its most recent article, by ignoring the sexual violence against Uighur and Kazakh women, The Economist demonstrates its lack of understanding of the crime of genocide under international law and perpetuates a misogynistic view of the crime.  

Although sexual violence has been a key element of most genocides – from Armenia in 1915 to the Rohingya today[1] – the term rape does not appear in either the Genocide Convention or the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  But the systematic rape of women has repeatedly been found to constitute the physical element of genocide.  In 1998, the U.N. Tribunal for Rwanda found former Hutu mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty of genocide for the systemic rape of Tutsi women in his community.[2] Specifically, the Tribunal held that systematic rape constituted the genocidal act of “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.”[3] More recently, the U.N.’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that the Islamic State of Iraq’s (“ISIS”) systematic rape of Yazidi women and girls constituted the physical element of genocide: “Rape can be a measure to prevent births [another defined genocide act under the Convention] ‘when the person raped subsequently refuses to procreate, in the same way that members of a group can be led, through threats or trauma, not to procreate.’”[4]

But in arguing that genocide is the wrong word to describe what is happening in Xinjiang, The Economist ignores clear legal doctrine.  Allegations of rape in Xinjiang’s concentration camps have been circulating since at least 2019.  Earlier this month, the BBC reported on the systematic use of rape and sexual torture against Uighur women in the concertation camps, with different women, from different camps, describing the same horrific acts perpetrated by Chinese state actors. The eerie similarity in these women’s stories is what gives them credibility, especially as the Chinese government’s sole retort is to state that these sources are “untrustworthy.” The Chinese government has also failed to give the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights access to Xinjiang for an independent assessment of what is happening there.  If The Economist failed to mention these women’s stories because it doesn’t think these stories “prove” genocide, “we should long ago have shifted the burden of proof away from the refugees and to the skeptics, who should be required to offer persuasive reasons for disputing eyewitness claims.”[5]

In addition to ignoring the well-developed doctrine that mass rapes can constitute the physical element of genocide, The Economist implies that the only action that could be “intended to prevent births” is “the systematic sterilisation of all women.” As show above, the United Nations – and the world – moved away from such a narrow definition years ago. The Economist does a disservice to its readers – and female victims of genocide – by offering such an inaccurate assessment. 

Ultimately though, it appears that The Economist wanted to make the argument that we shouldn’t get hung up on defining what is happening in Xinjiang as a genocide or as crimes against humanity; it’s all just a parade of horrors that need to end.  China Law & Policy has made this argument too (see here) since for both genocide and crimes against humanity, U.N. member states have the same “responsibility to protect.” But The Economist went too big in definitively stating that what is happening in Xinjiang is not genocide. The Economist does not know that and offers no proof or legal analysis; instead it merely states that genocide “exaggerates” the Chinese government’s crimes in Xinjiang.  But it doesn’t if you focus on the violence perpetrated against Uighur women.  The Economist – and the world at large – would be wise to heed the advice of Samantha Power in her authoritative book on the world’s missteps in stopping genocide in the past: “A bias toward belief would do less harm than a bias toward disbelief.”[6]

[1] Global Justice Center, Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide & Obligations Under International Law, pp. 18-19 (Dec. 6, 2018), available at https://globaljusticecenter.net/files/Gender-and-Genocide-Whitepaper-FINAL.pdf.

[2] Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, pp. 485-86 (Harper Perennial 2002).

[3] Id.

[4] U.N. Human Rights Council, “They came to destroy”: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, ¶ 145 (June 15, 2016), available at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf.

[5] Power, supra note 2, at p. 506.

[6] Id.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, February 9, 2021

The world needs an ox. Boy does it need an ox. Grounded, loyal, gentle and trustworthy, the ox fixes and stabilizes, heals and unifies. And on Friday, the ox will finally arrive as our friends in East Asia celebrate the lunar new year and mark the start to new beginnings.

The ox is known to work hard and plan and because of that some see this ox year as one that will take the negative challenges of last year – a rat year that brought a world-wide pandemic – and transform them into positive outcomes.  But the ox year can’t do it alone.  We have to put on our ox hats and work at it too.  There does seem to be light at the end of this COVID tunnel, but like an ox, we must stay focused and persistent, ensuring that we reach our goal of ending this pandemic. 

Although many are positive about the upcoming year of the ox, seeing its reliable nature as something that will get us through the next few months, there are some doubts.  In particular, feng shui master Raymond Lo warns that it could be a “bleak” year. That is because this year’s ox isn’t just any old ox but a metal ox.  In Chinese astrology, a new year doesn’t just usher in a new animal, it also brings forth a new element.  In addition to being associated with an animal, each year is also associated with one of the five astrologic elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth).  For 2021, that element is metal.  But at the same time, each zodiac animal is independently associated with one of the five elements.  And a ox’s intrinsic element is earth.  According to Lo, mixing an earth ox with a metal year “is a symbol of a harsh and cold atmosphere that incites disharmony, conflict, assassination, and terrorism.”  But Lo has never been a “glass half full” kind of feng shui master and if you ask me, Lo seems to be a little too focused on 1901, another metal ox year that saw the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley, the attempted assassination of German Emperor Wilhelm II, and an attempted coup in Portugal.  Let’s hope these are all things of the past.

What does year of the metal ox mean for you?  That depends on how your zodiac sign interacts with the ox.  To find out your wealth, career, love and health prospects for 2021, click here (Don’t know your Chinese zodiac sign? Find out here).

But most importantly, the lunar new year is a time to cherish your loved ones.  That’s hard to do in person right now, but maybe this weekend you, your friends and family can each order in some dumplings (traditional new year food in northern China), hop on the Zoom, and reminisce about the good times you have had together and plan for more in the future!  With that, I wish everyone a happy and healthy new year and 恭喜发财! (gong-see-fah-tsai – “may you be happy & prosperous!”)

Since many will be missing outdoor lion dances this year, here is a great performance from Hong Kong, 2019.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, January 26, 2021

Reading Derk Bodde’s memoir, Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution, is like watching season four of The Crown. Sure we know what is going to happen to Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but it’s watching the details develop that is fascinating.  The same with Peking Diary, Bodde’s account of his year in Beijing in 1948, when China was in the midst of a civil war.  We know that the Chinese Communists will eventually defeat the Nationalist government, but seeing precisely how that happens, and the changes it brings to everyday life in Beijing, is fascinating.  Anyone who wants to understand better how the Communists were able to defeat the U.S.-backed Nationalists, Peking Diary is a must read. 

Peking Diary opens with Bodde, fluent in Mandarin and a professor of Chinese studies, returning to Beijing in August 1948 as a Fulbright fellow.  It’s been eleven years since he was last in China and Beijing is a shell of its former self.  Bodde sees a city, weighed down both economically and psychologically by a corrupt Nationalist ruling party that largely ignores the Chinese people’s hardships.  Through conversations with various Chinese people – both the elite and the average individual – Bodde conveys the Chinese people’s frustrations.  Much of the first half of Peking Diary is a recounting of the exploding inflation under the Nationalists, a fact that makes living in Beijing, especially for the Chinese, extremely difficult.  Bodde himself becomes obsessed with it as he sees his Fulbright stipend able to buy less and less each day.  But instead of trying to get the inflation under control, the Nationalists try to pass it off as fake news.  Bodde never expresses support for the Communists but, as living conditions worsen and the Nationalists continue flounder in response, a sense of eagerness for the Communist invasion of Beijing permeates his entries.  For the Chinese people Bodde talks to, they seem to feel the same. 

On January 23, 1949, after two weeks of air raids and the sounds of constant gunfire just outside Beijing’s city walls, the Communist finally take Beijing.  Within a few diary entries of that conquest, the city seems to come back alive.  Most people are excited about the Communists, or at the very least that Nationalist rule is over.  It is Bodde’s description of this ground level reaction to the Communists that makes Peking Diary a compelling read.  So few histories from that time cover what people on the ground were thinking and how they were reacting to the fall of the Nationalists.

But what comes as a shock is how quickly the Communists were able to get control of the Beijing and effectively run the day-to-day affairs of the city.  Blackouts quickly ceased, running water returned, homeless students were sent back to their schools, and, to limit inflation, the Communists adopted plans that the Nationalists ignored. 

Peking Diary generally portrays the Chinese Communist Party in a positive light, but there are moments when Bodde is rather prescient about the hidden dangers of the Party.  Almost immediately the Party shuts down the foreign press and, through control of the Chinese press, Bodde sees how the Party seeks to limit the Chinese people’s independent knowledge of affairs outside the city’s borders.  The Communists fondness for thought control also unnerves Bodde.  And Bodde also sees the beginning of a police state, with anonymous “investigation boxes” set up in Tianjin so anyone can secretly denounce another.

But there are also things that Bodde gets terribly wrong.  In particular, his assessment of the Communists’ land reform policy. Throughout the book, Bodde describes the new policy as relatively benign, nothing more than the reallocation of land from the rich and well-off medium farmers to everyone else in the village.  But outside the walls of Beijing, the mass murder of landlords in the countryside is occurring as part of the land reform policy.  Between 1949 and 1953, the Chinese government estimates that anywhere between 830,000 (as estimated by Zhou Enlai) and 2 to 5 million landlords (as estimated by Mao Zedong) were killed.  Under Communist control, Bodde is not permitted to leave Beijing to see for himself the effects of what he thinks is a harmless land reform policy. 

But Peking Diary is a must read not just because it is one of the few books from that time period that captures the ground-level impact of Communist rule, but also because some of Bodde’s warnings to U.S. policymakers still resonate.  In the Epilogue, Bodde cautions policymakers from seeing China’s Communist revolution as a mere extension of Soviet influence or that somehow the Chinese people have been “enslaved” by an illegitimate Communist party.  Bodde makes clear that the reality on the ground is much different – with Chinese people, even critiques of communism, welcoming the Chinese Communists. 

Unfortunately, this idea – that the Party is illegitimate – has re-emerged in today’s Washington.  In July 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo distinguished the Chinese people and its government: “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people – a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.”  But the Chinese people’s relationship with the Communist Party is not that simple.  It is much more nuanced, just like any citizenries’ relationship with its government.  This isn’t to say that there isn’t a large number of dissatisfied Chinese citizens, demanding greater reform, freedom and human rights. And there are some who also seek the downfall of the Communist Party.  But there are many who are at the very least agnostic toward the current Chinese government if not supportive of it.  To fail to recognize these distinctions will only lead to an uninformed China policy, much like it did in 1949. It’s disappointing that 70 years on, the lessons of Peking Diary still need to be learned.   

Rating:

Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution (Henry Schuman, Inc. 1950), 274 pages.

Peking Diary is currently out of print but appears to be available for free in it entirety at Internet Archive here. Used physical copies are available on Amazon.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, January 19, 2021

In one of his last acts as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo stated that the Chinese government’s extrajudicial internment of 1.8 million Uyghurs, the torture and forced labor of Uyghur detainees, and the forced sterilizations and abortions of Uyghur women, amounts to crimes against humanity and genocide.  Hours later, in his confirmation hearings, President-elect Biden’s secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken agreed with Pompeo’s designation of genocide.  Immediately, the U.S. press heralded the bi-partisan nature of this genocide declaration.

But genocide is not just about the acts committed; it also requires government intent to physically or biologically destroy the group.  See Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”) (emphasis added).  By declaring genocide, the U.S. government could easily get bogged down in this required element, an element that even Pompeo left out of his declaration. Nowhere in his statement does Pompeo assert that the Chinese government had an intent to physically destroy the Uyghur people. 

That is why Pompeo’s declaration that the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang province amounts to crimes against humanity is more actionable, and has been for the past couple of years. Like genocide, crimes against humanity include acts that attack the very soul of a people and its culture: murder, extermination, torture, arbitrary detention, forcible transfer of a population, rape, sexual violence, forced sterilizations, apartheid. But unlike genocide, these crimes do not require an intent to biologically destroy.  Instead, acts that constitute crimes against humanity merely need to be part of a widespread or systemic attack directed at a group, with the perpetrator’s knowledge that his or her acts are part of this larger attack.  In looking at Pompeo’s declaration of genocide he states that “we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs.” In those words, he seems to mistake the element of crimes against humanity for genocide.

This isn’t to say that the crime of genocide is not occurring in Xinjiang nor that such a declaration is inconsequential. It certainly carries meaning and should. But the U.S. must ensures that it acts on these declarations and not just get caught up in a war of words with China and its allies, something that could more easily happen by solely focusing on genocide.  In fact, the United Nations, through a 2005 Resolution signed by all 193 member states, requires countries to respond similarly to both genocide and crimes against humanity. For both, states have a duty to “protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” and must “use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means.” See ¶¶ 138-39.

To fulfill this obligation to protect, the U.S. must step up its efforts.  Pompeo’s statement, while full of important policy pronouncements, provided no new courses of action. Similarly, Blinken’s suggestions on how to respond – ensure that we don’t import cotton picked by forced labor and guarantee that we don’t sell surveillance technologies to China – didn’t break new ground.  Instead, the U.S. should be advocating a liberal asylum/refugee policy for Uyghurs. 

More obvious, the U.S. government needs to start discussing boycotting the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and encourage allies to do the same.  How can the U.S. send its athletes to compete in games hosted by a country engaging in crimes against humanity and genocide?  To do so would render Pompeo and Blinken’s statements today hollow words and would embolden the Chinese government – and all governments – to continue genocidal policies.  The last time we ignored the genocidal intent of a host country – Berlin, 1936 – six million Jews were murdered by the governing party.  The 2022 Winter Olympics are a little more than a year away.  In fairness to our athletes, these discussions must begin now.  Also, making these discussions public now, might save some lives in Xinjiang. 

But the U.S. cannot go this alone, either boycotting the 2022 Olympic boycott or fulfilling its responsibility to protect. Only a multilateral response can defeat crimes against humanity; no individual country has ever been able to end a genocide. The U.S. must re-engage international institutions including re-joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body where has been dominated by China since the U.S.’ 2018 withdrawal from the Council.

Genocide is a bold word. Those words need to be followed up with bold action.  Failure to do so only weakens those post-World War II international institutions and treaties the Biden Administration has promised to uphold.  It also means that Uyghurs will continue to suffer while all we did was play word games.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, December 21, 2020

Since 2017, the Chinese government has interred over a million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, destroyed Uighur religious sites and limited – at times forcibly – the number of children a Uighur woman can have, all in what appears to be an effort to stamp out the Uighur culture.  This summer, in Inner Mongolia, the government instituted policies that restrict the use of Mongolian in local schools, an effort Mongolian parents maintain is designed to eliminate their language and culture.  For many outside of China, these policies are a shocking new development, reflective of the hardline approach of current President Xi Jinping.  But, as Barbara Demick shows in her harrowing new book, Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, for Tibetans, cultural destruction has been a part of their lives for the last 70 years. 

Eat the Buddha tells the story of this destruction by focusing on Ngaba, a town on the Tibetan plateau that has earned the morbid distinction as “the undisputed world capital of self-immolations.”  Ngaba is not located in the Tibetan Special Autonomous Region (“SAR”), the area on a Chinese map that most non-Chinese think of as “Tibet.” Rather, Ngaba is located in the northwest region of China’s Sichuan province, and is an important reminder of just how far the Kingdom of Tibet once extended and how dispersed the Tibetan population is today. In fact, as Demick notes in her introduction, the vast majority of Tibetans in China live outside the Tibetan SAR, but this in no way lessens the Chinese government’s repressive rule. In many ways it is worse.  According to the International Campaign for Tibet, since 2009, 45 Tibetans in Ngaba have self-immolated in protest. In Lhasa, the capital of the of Tibet SAR, only two have. 

In Eat the Buddha, Demick asks why. Why have so many in Ngaba chosen to set themselves on fire, especially in a religion where suicide is not an accepted practice. Demick answer this question by examining the lives of eight Ngaba residents spread across generations, from the daughter of the last king of Ngaba (Princess Gonpo) to a twelve-year-old Tibetan girl, captivated by Chinese social media and uninterested in her own culture (Dechen).  None of the people are particularly militant or even interested in Tibetan independence.  Even Princess Gonpo, whose family members died, some by suspicious means, during the Cultural Revolution, is not anti-China and sees some of the benefits of being a part of the world’s second largest economy. 

But as Demick tells their stories, each of the eight, even the younger ones, begin to resist Chinese rule and increasingly view the Chinese governments’ efforts in Ngaba as the degradation and ultimate destruction of their culture.  And as Demick shows, these efforts have not just been limited to policies designed to “assimilate” the Tibetans; some have been violent attacks on the Tibetan people.  Particularly harrowing is the retelling of the violence perpetuated on Delek’s grandparents in 1958 when he was just nine years old.  As he hid in basket in their home, he heard screams and the senseless beating of his grandparents.  When he emerged, this nine-year-old saw his grandmother, blood running down her head from where her braids had been ripped from her head.  More recently, Ngaba has seen the increase militarization of the police force, creating an air of violence and captivity in the city, and at times resulting in the loss of innocent, young lives.  For most of us who have studied Chinese history – at least those of us outside of the Mainland – we have been taught about the harshness of Chinese rule.  But Eat the Buddha, by putting a personal face on this human suffering for the past 70 years, horrifies in the way a history lesson never can. 

What Eat the Buddha also powerfully makes clear is that as much as the Chinese government attempts to censor this history in schools or tries to buy young Tibetan’s loyalty through a higher standard of living, these attempts ultimately fail.  Dechen is a perfect example. When we first meet her, she is a twelve-year-old Tibetan girl fluent in Mandarin who loves watching Chinese movies that glorify the Chinese military.  For her, Tibetan culture is for the old. But then, as Chinese rule becomes increasingly suffocating in Ngaba and her family members become victims of the government’s violence, she awakens her from her social media stupor. 

By the time Demick reaches the start of self-immolation period in 2009, the reader is not shocked. It is the last form of protest available to Ngaba’s Tibetans, particularly the young monks at the Kirti monastery, grandchildren of those Tibetans first exposed to the Chinese government’s oppressive and violent rule.  Unable to freely learn their religion and watching their culture be destroyed, they are left with nothing else but the ultimate sacrifice.  The sad truth though, these self-immolations, with their shocking nature and international attention, result in the easing of some restrictions.  45 monks had to kill themselves in the most horrific of ways for the Chinese government to listen. 

Eat the Buddha is a brilliant exposition of the Chinese efforts to eradicate a culture and how the culture pushes back.  But that push-back is not enough to save the Tibetan culture and one starts to wonder why other countries aren’t doing more.  Yes, some leaders, risking Beijing’s ire and meet with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists (Angela Merkel in 2007; Barak Obama in 2016).  But those are just symbolic gestures. And this is why Eat the Buddha is a must read. By telling Tibetan’s stories, Demick reminds us that the world’s commitment to human rights is more than just words, sometimes it is the difference between life and death for a people and their culture. Its time we give more than just words.

Rating:

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, by Barbara Demick (Penguin Random House, 2020), 352 pages.

Interested in purchasing the book? Considering supporting you local, independent bookstore. Find the nearest one here.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, November 30, 2020

It often comes as a surprise to most Americans when they learn that the first country to participate in the Fulbright program was not the United Kingdom, where the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships send students, or even a country in Europe.  Rather it was China. And it would be Derk Bodde, a Chinese historian, fluent in Mandarin, who would earn the title of America’s first Fulbright scholar. 

Soon after the U.S. and China signed the Fulbright agreement on November 10, 1947, Bodde wrote to the Fulbright Board.  For months he heard little.  But in March 1948, the Fulbright Board called Bodde, asking if he would accept a scholarship to China. The Board needed an immediate response since it planned to issue a press release that day announcing that the Fulbright program had begun.  Bodde replied yes and five months later he, his wife and eight-year-old son were on a boat to Beijing.  “Such was the unorthodox beginning to an unorthodox journey which was to culminate in a decidedly unorthodox year in China” Bodde would recount two years later in his memoir, Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution

Bodde’s time in Beijing would be unorthodox because he, and the 20 other China Fulbrighters, arrived as China was in the midst of a civil war.  When World War II ended in 1945, so too did the ceasefire between the ruling Nationalist party (“Guomindang” or “KMT”) and the insurgent Chinese Communists.  By the time Bodde arrived in August 1948, Beijing was on the cusp of falling into Communist hands, an event that occurred on January 23, 1949, midway through his time there.

But Bodde would complete his full Fulbright year and would share his experiences in his 1950 memoir, Peking Diary.  With accounts showing the efficacy of the Communists’ initial rule in Beijing – clamping down on run-away inflation, adding order to a society that had gone astray, returning students back to classes, promising an end to government corruption, and responding to the people’s grievances  – Peking Diary was instrumental in explaining why the people of Beijing readily accepted Communist rule. Bodde, reading various Chinese newspapers daily, also reported that the Communist takeover in China was not some Soviet-led effort, the reigning orthodoxy of Washington, D.C foreign policy circles.  Instead, Bodde saw the Chinese Communist revolution as uniquely Chinese, a response to the deep problems plaguing Chinese society.  U.S. policymakers ignored this reality at their peril Bodde maintained. 

Peking Diary, with its eyewitness account from an American fluent in Mandarin and familiar with the culture, shows just how foolish the Trump Administration was to terminate the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs, an action it took in its July 14, 2020 Executive Order.  The Fulbright program has been vital in deepening U.S. policymakers’ understanding of China, with Fulbrighters returning from the country, sharing their experiences and their perspectives.  Bodde is just one.  More recent China Fulbright scholars have testified before Congress, have published op-eds, have written various reports and have broken the story of the mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang.  All of these efforts gives U.S. policymakers a much more nuanced perspective of China.

Senator J. William Fulbright, the architect of the program, never wanted it to be used to promote the U.S. government’s foreign policy goals such as providing information to government policymakers.  For him, the Fulbright program had one goal: world peace through the humanizing of other cultures and people.  “If international education is to advance these aims – of perception and perspective, of empathy and the humanizing of international relations – it cannot be treated as a conventional instrument of a nation’s foreign policy.  Most emphatically, it cannot be treated as a propaganda program designed to ‘improve the image’ of a country. . . .” Fulbright told an audience in 1967, after seeing his program exploited during the Cold War for U.S. foreign policy goals.

Mutual understanding of other cultures, which in turn fosters peace among people, is and should remain the Fulbright program’s primary purpose.  But as much as Senator Fulbright may not agree, we can’t ignore that the program does serve to educate the U.S. government in understanding a country that for the last 40 years has been in a state of constant transformation.

But, with the termination of the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs, we lose this crucial information source when we need it most.  For the first time in recent history, China is emerging on the world stage, not to play a bit part but to be the director of the show.  It’s imposition of the Hong Kong National Security Law, which ignores its obligations under international treaties and disregards Hong Kong law, reflect that fact.  Today, one could imagine another “Diary” written by a Fulbright fellow except this diary would be situated in Hong Kong with a people rejecting Communist rule instead of welcoming it.  Unfortunately, with the Fulbright program terminated in Hong Kong and China, that book will not be written. 

If world peace alone is an insufficient reason for the Biden administration to reinstate the China and Hong Kong Fulbright programs, our own self-interest should be enough.  The knowledge that Fulbright fellows bring back to the United States is vital to the country’s interests and its national security.  The Biden administration must modify the July 14 Executive Order by revoking the provision terminating the Fulbright program in China and Hong Kong.  Why would we put ourselves at a disadvantage?

To see our earlier essay recounting the history of the Fulbright program and its success in China, click here: Biden Should Bring Back the China Fulbright Program on SupChina.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, November 15, 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.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, November 11, 2020

Originally published in SupChina.

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. . . .

To read more please click to the original SupChina article (free number of monthly articles, after that paywall).

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, August 5, 2020

For the past couple of weeks, the Trump Administration has been saber-rattling about TikTok, a Chinese-based social media platform popular among America’s youth and full of silly short videos – relatives dancing together, kids lip-syncing, teens sharing beauty tips.  According to Reuters, 60% of TikTok’s active users in the U.S. are between the ages of 16 and 24.  The idea that TikTok is a national security threat and a danger to our democracy seemed preposterous.

But over the weekend, these seemingly preposterous ideas became very real, with U.S. President Donald Trump stating that he was going to “ban” TikTok from the U.S. market.  And on Monday, Slate’s What Next podcast took on the TikTok debate, interviewing Axios reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian on the reasons behind the Trump Administration’s desire for a ban.  While an informative interview on the Trump Administration’s justifications behind its threats to ban TikTok,  China Law & Policy came to realize that it’s time to take a deeper dive on TikTok.

Is TikTok A National Security Threat? 

Much of the What Next interview centered around TikTok as a national security threat, arguing that because TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is located in China, TikTok may have to share information with the Chinese government under Chinese law.  As China cybersecurity expert Samm Sacks recently noted, theoretically, this could happen.  But according to TikTok, it does not maintain any U.S. users’ data in China.  Instead that information is kept on servers in the U.S. and in Singapore.  Additionally, TikTok has allegedly cut off China-based engineers to TikTok’s source code and data.

Bytedance and TikTok founder Zhang Yiming

There is potential here for the Chinese government to obtain a large swath of U.S. users’ data, especially if the protections that TikTok has allegedly put in place don’t work.  But as Sacks points out, we have no evidence that this has actually occurred. But yet, the U.S. government is asking the American public to accept a forced a sale of TikTok to a U.S. company – something that feels more and more like a shakedown – without providing a scintilla of evidence that this song-and-dance social media platform popular among teenagers is an actual national security threat.  Our elected leaders owe us more than just conclusory statements. If they want us to forgo one of the core tenants of our society – a free and flourishing market economy – they need to provide us some evidence.

And as Sacks points out in her piece, if the Trump Administration is truly concerned about potential national security threats, it would be wise to develop a system to test the safeguards companies have put in place to guarantee that U.S. users’ data will not be used by any government:

The way to deal with this problem is to develop a country-agnostic set of criteria with robust rules not just for TikTok, but for how all companies collect, retain, and share their data. Instead of playing a game of whack-a-mole against a rotating cast of Chinese tech companies, the U.S. would be wise to spend more time developing legislation and standards for how all companies, regardless of country of origin, protect online privacy and secure data.

But such forward-thinking ideas that would actually solve the problem do not seem to be a part of the Trump Administration’s TikTok calculus.

Is TikTok A Danger to Democracy?

According to Allen-Ebrahimian, the Chinese government could use TikTok to wage a campaign of disinformation to influence our elections.  But that danger is not unique to TikTok.  Remember the 2016 election and Russian interference?  According to the Mueller Report, that election interference was largely done on Facebook through fake accounts and purchased ads.  TikTok is no more or less susceptible to disinformation than any other social media platform, be it FaceBook, Instagram, Snapchat, YourTube or Twitter.  There is nothing holding the Chinese government back from using those sites if TikTok is banned in the U.S.

But if you’re China, why stop there?  As Jeremy Daum recently pointed out, the best way for foreign governments to influence our elections is through limitless donations to Political Action Committees (PACs) by U.S. subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United  v. Federal Election Commission, this is perfectly legal.   By treating corporations the same as individuals, Citizens United leaves the door wide open for foreign influence in our politics. In the case of Chinese corporations, this also means foreign government involvement. Most multinational Chinese corporations, like Haier, China Telcom, and China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCE), have U.S. subsidiaries. These are companies incorporated in the United States: Haier’s U.S. subsidiary, Haier American Holding Corporation, China Telecom’s subsidiary, China Telecom Americas, and CSCE’s subsidiary, China Construction America, are all incorporated in Delaware.

Under Citizens United, all three of these subsidiaries are citizens of Delaware and enjoy the same political speech rights as any other citizen of the United States. Citizens United does not permit us to look behind their corporate veil to see their relationship to foreign corporations. Haier, China Telecom and CSCE are all officially government-run. While the Chinese government does not meddle in the corporation’s daily affairs, it will exert its influence if it suits the government’s self-interest. For example, in 1994, Haier, a manufacturer of washing machines and refrigerators, was pressured by the Chinese government into acquiring a pharmaceutical company, a venture that ended badly.  And while Citizens United forbids “foreign influence” on a U.S. subsidiary’s political donation decisions, how are we going to find that smoking gun in the complex and complicated world of multinational corporations?

TikTok is not the demise of our democracy.  We are.  In the past four years, neither Congress nor the Trump Administration has done anything to put in place structures that protect our elections from foreign interference via social media.  And a decade later, Citizens United still stands.

Conclusion

There are serious issues with TikTok. It is necessary to understand better what it does with U.S. user’s data and some of the examples of censored speech, especially if the speech is anti-China, are problematic and need to be looked into.

But in the end, these are insufficient bases for the extreme tool of divestiture for national security reasons.  Banning TikTok is not going to solve our problems.  Setting up smart laws, rules and systems that ensure that foreign tech companies are not national security threats nor a danger to our democracy will go a much longer way.  But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards with this Administration.

For Those Who Don’t Have TikTok – Three Fun TikToks:

@thearielleWhen your old jam comes on! 🔥 ##foryoupage ##fyp ##comedian @mattjcutshall♬ original sound – thearielle

@afrobysaraawho’s down for this challenge? ##familychallenge ##familygoals ##nobodydancevideo ##fyp ##foyou ##viral♬ original sound – sara.afro

@jalaiahharmonLike we hit the lottery 🆙🔥🥳 @addisonre @charlidamelio♬ original sound – _.xoxlaii