China Thwarts U.S. Effort to Promote American Culture on Campuses

This shouldn't be acceptable considering American universities are full of Confucius Institutes.

I think a lot of the time people don't really think about what racism looks like when the shoe is on the other foot.

All bets are off when you're not on home turf. Understanding and opinions of how to interact with and treat people of different races/ethnicities are at remarkably different stages of development around the world because not everywhere has the same levels of immigration and immigrants and so they just haven't spent time thinking about there things and in some cases consider them completely non-existant issues.

I find it helpful to perform the thought experiment of taking any person of any nationality and dropping them into any other nation randomly and have them try to assimilate into society and imagine the challenges they might face and the treatment they might receive. Some situations fare better than others when I try to imagine this but suffice to say, the more homogenous the population and the less of your specific kind are visible in society the harder a time you have.

The tribalism is real.

>> According to Mr. Stengel, who was in the conversation, Mr. Kerry turned to Mr. Cui and asked: “Have we ever limited where you can go?”

> Mr. Cui replied: “Not yet.”

That's an interesting reply. It seems the Chinese govt. doesn't shy from and would even benefit from a higher intensity conflict with the West especially US. So they are trying to ratchet it up a bit. They didn't give any official reason for closures, but it seems one of the reasons is to have US respond and close Confucius Institutes. Which in turn would elicit another response from the Chinese and so on, up until it gets to a level they are comfortable with.

According to the article, the centers were "offering English lessons, screening movies and hosting visiting music and dance performances".

However, there are plenty of unofficial sources for those in China, without the help of the State Department. For instance, pirated DVDs of virtually every American movie/TV series are widely available despite official censorship, etc.

Last week I saw a full page ad in our local paper, written by the Chinese government, "debunking" the stories of Falun Gong members being tortured. It seems they want it both ways.

It is a very strange thing to see the “we are as we tell you” and not “we are as you see us” outreach to communicate culture. American culture, above most others, is very wide spread in its reach. Whether it is movies from Hollywood, TV shows and reality show formats, music, food in the form of burger and pizza chains, the jeans and sneaker attire, language (including Americanized pronunciation), gadgets (iPhone and the like), online services (with China being a slight outlier – just slight, as many local services are heavily influenced by the American ones) like facebook, twitter or even GPS and Google Maps there are very few aspects untouched by American culture. Deliberate attempts to communicate culture from any country tend to, in my view, focus on the high-brow interpretation of culture. This is true of other countries when they try to portray their culture too – easily visible in opening ceremonies of major sporting events. I imagine that such portrayals are important but do they move the needle in how a country is perceived or how others understand its culture? Hardly.

American culture is so pervasive and widespread how is this not just a fan blowing against the wind of a hurricane?

Anyone who played Civilization knows how important culture can be in the Great Power geopolitical game. And of course, the US player is generating more culture points, so the damage they inflict on other players is greater than the other way round. Only a noob would ignore that.

Personally I laugh: China today is the most extreme implementation of USA business model. Actual "productive"/"developed" Asia is a push to the extreme before of the UK model, after of the USA one (witch is really similar)...

  The program’s start coincided with a rise in nationalist sentiment in China.
  Shortly after he came into power six years ago, President Xi Jinping rolled
  out a campaign against Western values, investing Communist Party members in
  academia with the power to redline even the most innocuous and apolitical
  expressions of American culture.
  And funding American culture in China became particularly unpopular in
  Washington as the Trump administration worked to distance the countries and
  anger built over Beijing’s propaganda in America.

Perhaps this is what the author was going for, I can't help but feel like I am reading about the development of Cold War 2.

HN: Please enable a feature that allows users to filter out articles of paywalled sites. The work around are gone.

So glad Iowa pawned Bumsted off on Trump.