China Punishing Students In U.S. Who Speak Out Against Regime | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Ashe Schow.

    Chinese students studying at America's college and universities are not safe from the authoritarian surveillance of the Chinese Communist Party.

    ProPublica reported on the story of Zhihao Kong, a student at Purdue University who expressed dissident views about the regime publicly, prompting a backlash against his family back home. As ProPublica explained:

    In a rush of adrenaline last year, the graduate student posted an open letter on a dissident website praising the heroism of the students killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

    The blowback, he said, was fast and frightening. His parents called from China, crying. Officers of the Ministry of State Security, the feared civilian spy agency, had warned them about his activism in the United States.

    "They told us to make you stop or we are all in trouble," his parents said.

    Then other Chinese students at Purdue began hounding him, calling him a CIA agent and threatening to report him to the embassy and the MSS.


    When this started, Kong had accepted an invitation to speak at an online commemoration for the Tiananmen massacre. He told ProPublica he was unsure whether he would ultimately participate, but joined in rehearsals on Zoom anyway. Kong told the outlet that within days of him participating that rehearsal, MSS officers went to his family's door again. His parents then begged him to stop speaking out against the regime or attending any rallies.

    "I think that the Zoom rehearsals were known by the Chinese Communist Party," Kong told the outlet. "I think some of the Chinese students in my school are CCP members. I can tell they are not simply students. They could be spies or informants."

    As ProPublica reported: "As the regime of Chinese President Xi Jinping reaches across borders to control its citizens wherever they are, its assaults on academic freedom have intensified, according to U.S. national security officials, academics, dissidents and other experts. Chinese intelligence officers are monitoring campuses across the United States with online surveillance and an array of informants motivated by money, ambition, fear or authentic patriotism. A comment in class about Taiwan or a speech at a rally about Tibet can result in retaliation against students and their relatives back home."

    Mike Orlando, who leads the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the outlet that people who don't adhere to the Chinese Communist Party's line "risk being targeted for harassment."

    It is not just Purdue facing this issue, Chinese students at Brandeis University last year sabotaged "an online panel about atrocities against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region." A graduate student at the University of Georgia was pressured by a Chinese intelligence officer to spy on potential dissidents. The student publicized the conversations, and his family was harassed by the regime. A law student at St. John's University in New York told the outlet that a dissident chat group was hacked by Chinese officials.

    "If there are more than three or four Chinese students in the same class, you are scared to talk. A Chinese student is definitely seen in good favor by the Chinese government for reporting someone." Chen said.

    The Daily Wire is one of America's fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Nevada Will Charge Unvaccinated State Workers $55 A Month More For Health Insurance Daily Wire, Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics Crabs are latest victims of offshore wind turbines


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024
Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.

HbAD1

Gov. Roy Cooper seeks a temporary restraining order to block a law changing the composition of the State Board of Elections.
X owner Elon Musk mocked a news segment from ABC News this week that promoted President Joe Biden’s talking points about the Democrat-led Senate’s failed border bill, which critics and many experts have said would make the situation on the border worse.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.
The University of Florida has fired all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employees and shut down its DEI office.
Hot on the heels of its highly publicized television performance on New Year's Eve, the pop-punk band Green Day announced the release of an edgy new album titled Get the Vaccine, Climate Change Is Real, and Trump Is Bad.
Glenn Beck: 'When the United States government can come after individuals, that's when you know our republic is crumbling.'
Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reportedly blasted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “stonewalling” details about the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia college student.
Financial asset manager BlackRock said in its annual report that environmental, social, and governance policies could hurt its bottom line after Republican state officials cut ties with the company over its ties to China and climate activism.

HbAD2

 
Back to Top