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FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

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Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#111

Post by geofft »

allthenews wrote: post #17
Larrikin wrote: post #5

I'm not sure I understand the argument of the article. Yes my graduate classes have many Chinese students in them, but why exactly is it bad that they are furthering their education and doing research in the US? The biggest issue I see is that many of them want to live and work in the US after graduation, but basically have to leave it up to luck in the visa lottery system.

The FBI is not warning about students, but about government agents posing ad students, I.E. "operatives". Here, they have access to learn and potentially influence our culture from within. Most importantly, if the FBI is correct and they exist, they most likely do not have your interests in mind. That said, I don't know how one would deal with this without causing McCarthy style hysteria and sweeping up innocent stud…

> The FBI is not warning about students, but about government agents posing ad students, I.E. "operatives".

What is the distinction here?

I do not generally expect international students on a student visa, with no intention of becoming citizens, to forget about the interests of their home country and prioritize the interests of the country they're visiting. They're here because the school is good, that's it.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#112

Post by noobermin »

rhizome wrote: post #64
PricelessValue wrote: post #48

Isn't this well known fact? It isn't a secret that the chinese, along with the israelis, russians, british, french, japanese, koreans, canadians and even the saudis have operatives in academia, government, business, etc. And of course we have operatives in all those countries as well.

Not to mention that "operative" has a specific meaning in the Intelligence Community. While the intent of this report appears to imply that operatives are under official control, they are mostly people who might be relied on to support or instigate a policy preference. Contrast with "agent," "handler," etc.

That includes then a lot of Chinese academics who are sympathetic to their country's ideology. A national being sympathetic to their country, imagine that.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#113

Post by geofft »

rdtsc wrote: post #44
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #8

Wow, this seems like straight-up racist fearmongering. The Chinese have "infliltrated" our schools by attending and starting culturally oriented studies? What's wrong with setting up classes for studying Mandarin, the #1 most popular language on the planet?

What if these were Russians and the title was "FBI Says Russian Operatives..." would you have said it's straight up racist fear-mongering? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...

"Xenophobic" is probably a better word than "racist" in both cases, but yes, if it's about students it's fearmongering.

The OPM problem was not about students, and in one case it was about people physically located in China, unlike students who are visiting the US. If you're giving unrestricted access to a database of personal info on Americans to grad students, you have bigger problems regardless of their nationality. Find people where you have a documented history of them being trustworthy. And if necessary, require them to get clearance, that's what clearance is for.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#114

Post by thephyber »

mc32 wrote: post #47
Cyberdog wrote: post #25

Australia has of late had its own issues involving accusations of Chinese espionage as well as good old-fashioned palm-greasing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence... If the US starts clamping down on this sort of thing, expect China to accuse the US government of xenophobia, since of course "we'd like to stop so many Chinese agents and toadies from infiltrating our governmental and educatio…

Can you imagine if Russians were a another "race". They'd be able to throw the racism card all over dems for having the temerity to accuse them of all sorts of political interference and other meddling... Alas, they cannot make such accusations. At most they can use "xenophobia".

> Can you imagine if Russians were a another "race".

> Alas, they cannot make such accusations.

Why not? Can you prove that Russians are "another race"?

Is there such thing as a scientific definition that states unambiguously where any one race ends and another begins? I don't doubt that populations of humans commonly share family lineage, phenotypes, and genotypes, but the concept of "race" escapes any sufficient definition or real world testability.

US state laws and culture had for a long time considered the "one-drop"[1] (of blood of a different race) a disqualifier for being considered a White American. The implication is that if you can't prove your pedigree back infinitely far, you are more likely that not to not be white.

In fact, using some inductive logic, it's almost perfectly likely that every person is "mixed-race" if you search back far enough.

This is all to say that "racism" is a description of how people see (and treat) other people. It's rarely been about actual pedigrees and almost entirely been about mental classification of others.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#115

Post by sushid »

DanAndersen wrote: post #32

During my undergrad university days (at the University of Utah), I took some Mandarin classes. There was a local Confucius Institute which provided various free materials in Chinese to the campus library. The extent of my direct contact with them was receiving a couple hundred dollars for doing well in a Mandarin speech contest they held for my class. It was obvious that there was a certain propaganda aspect to this…

I think the Confucius Institute is fairly open about promoting Chinese culture and they're not going to bite the hand feeding them.

It's an example of China gathering soft power, similar to how the Peace Corps does good things with the backing of the US government.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#116

Post by noobermin »

coliveira wrote: post #81
DanAndersen wrote: post #32

During my undergrad university days (at the University of Utah), I took some Mandarin classes. There was a local Confucius Institute which provided various free materials in Chinese to the campus library. The extent of my direct contact with them was receiving a couple hundred dollars for doing well in a Mandarin speech contest they held for my class. It was obvious that there was a certain propaganda aspect to this…

All countries have some kind of educational projects like this. The German, for example, have the Goethe Institute that is active around the world. It seems now that the US now wants to criminalize this kind of diplomatic activity just because it is coming from a commercial competitor.

And to be honest, capitalism doesn't always need directly paid operatives. People whose livelihood depends on low taxes, less regulation, free trade, etc, will glady fund think-tanks, politicians, and media that espouse these values, not to mention, making TV appearances and op-eds themselves. It has the same effect of government funded propaganda, in my opinion.

I do agree it is a little more nefarious to have a foreign government fund these efforts, but how different is it from wealthy business owners funding think-tanks and academics who align with them politically? It's probably not as nefarious but it's just a matter of degree.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#117

Post by AdeptusAquinas »

noetic_techy wrote: post #88

And we continue to tolerate those who wouldn't tolerate us... Even the Chinese have a word for these people who naively defend and turn a blind eye to this sort of thing: "Baizou". From Wikipedia: "The word baizuo is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western "liberal elites". He further defined the word "baizuo" with the definition "People who only care about topics such…

Sounds fake to me. Any actual Chinese to confirm this? Just going by the "they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”" comment; China is a communist country, its about as far on the spectrum left past welfare state as you can go.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#119

Post by noobermin »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #117
noetic_techy wrote: post #88

And we continue to tolerate those who wouldn't tolerate us... Even the Chinese have a word for these people who naively defend and turn a blind eye to this sort of thing: "Baizou". From Wikipedia: "The word baizuo is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western "liberal elites". He further defined the word "baizuo" with the definition "People who only care about topics such…

Sounds fake to me. Any actual Chinese to confirm this? Just going by the "they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”" comment; China is a communist country , its about as far on the spectrum left past welfare state as you can go.

It's communist in name but it sounds to me closer to state capitalism in practice.

Re: FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities

#120

Post by GuiA »

BeetleB wrote: post #79
GuiA wrote: post #19

Reminds me of this story from last year: But those [Chinese] students often bring to campus something else from home: the watchful eyes and occasionally heavy hand of the Chinese government, manifested through its ties to many of the 150-odd chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations. The groups have worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Wes…

I'm torn. On the one hand, I do think people should be aware of it. On the other hand, I don't see the fuss. What you describe is the norm for many groups - not just the Chinese. >At Columbia a decade ago, the club mobilized students to protest a presentation about human rights violations in China, urging them to “resolutely defend the honor and dignity of the Motherland.” This is normal for many groups and many issu…

You make a reasonable point.

That said, all the countries you mention have strong track records of human rights violations. So really China's not surrounded by good company on that issue, and maybe the takeaway should be more that we should be cautious regarding these countries and how they might try to influence discourse on US campuses rather than saying "well a bunch of corrupt governments are all doing it, what's the big deal?".

As far as "what's so special about China"- the sheer volume of its population (and thus of its population studying abroad) as well as the fact that it is (or is close to being, depending on how you want to draw your lines) the world's leading economy are good starting points.

I'm French, went to grad school in the US, and did not see any of my countrymen protest on campus because the history department was teaching about the war of Algeria and they weren't happy about it (nor did I see Catalonian students protest that the geography department treated Spain as a single country... you get the point).

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