Jack Beyrer and Matthew Foldi of the Washington Free Beacon detail a disturbing development on American college campuses.
Student groups backed by the Chinese Communist Party are using the language and tactics of far-left campus activists to advance the party’s agenda, a Hong Kong democracy advocate told the Washington Free Beacon.
Nathan Law, a member of the Hong Kong government until his expulsion and imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese regime, experienced this firsthand when a student group tied to the CCP attempted to cancel one of his talks at the University of Chicago. Using the language of American social justice activists, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) told the administration that hosting Law “falls outside the purviews of free speech.” The Chinese regime, Law said, is adept at exploiting power politics to silence critics. At home, they strong-arm dissenters; in the United States, they play the victim card.
“They want their narrative to be accepted by western communities,” Law said. “No matter what narrative or terms they use to conceive these facts, it’s easy to spot them once you understand what they are doing.”
Even with heightened scrutiny, the university rebuked the association’s pressure campaign. A spokesman for the university told the Free Beacon the university remains committed to free expression and intellectual diversity on campus. Law praised the university’s commitment to free speech but warned that other schools remain susceptible to the CSSA’s influence.
“They’ve done the right thing, but I suspect that for the other schools who are vulnerable to the influence of Chinese students … they could be more susceptible to these behaviors from CSSA.”
The University of Chicago CSSA did not return a request for comment.
The university was one of the first schools to shutter its Confucius Institute in 2014, an organization the Trump administration later condemned for intimidating Chinese students and acting as a listening post for the Chinese Communist Party.
