Chinese Communist Party Loyalists Are Stifling Dissent on College Campuses in America
“employing its repressive playbook of physical intimidation, social ostracization, and propaganda”
Republicans in the Senate were making significant inroads on this issue before they lost control of the chamber. They need to revisit it.
Isaac Schorr writes at National Review:
Chinese Student Associations Enforce Communist Party Line on American Campuses
When Cornell University student Kinen Kao decided to bring attention to the human-rights violations perpetrated against his countrymen back home in Hong Kong, he found that most of his classmates were supportive and even appreciative of his efforts.
Most, but not all. Even in bucolic Ithaca, N.Y., the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party was reaching for him — employing its repressive playbook of physical intimidation, social ostracization, and propaganda on the Ivy League campus — even as it tightened its grip on his homeland.
Kao, whose family is still in Hong Kong, helped found the Cornell Society for the Promotion of East Asian Liberty (SPEAL) amid the turmoil in his homeland in 2019 because he saw “young people, students like me going on the streets fighting for freedom and sacrificing their future, their bodies, and even their lives on the front line.”
“I realized I have to do something for Hong Kong, since I am also a Hong Konger,” he told National Review. After founding SPEAL, Kao began decorating campus with posters advertising protests and advocating on behalf of Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Tibetans. Like clockwork, they were torn down by students from mainland China.
On a few occasions, Kao found himself involved in verbal altercations with the vandals, but for the most part he just doggedly replaced the stolen materials. “I just wanted to keep putting them up, keep replacing those getting torn,” he said.
Tensions between Kao and the Chinese student community came to a head this summer after graduation, when Kao was assaulted by a student who was following him around downtown Ithaca, N.Y., as he put up posters.
“I took out my phone to record what he was doing, and then he pushed me onto the floor and tried to snatch away my phone,” recalled Kao. “Fortunately, some stranger stopped him, just like, came by and told him to stop attacking me.”
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