The Harm of Studying Abroad

His point on the nature of Western style debate and argument rings true.

If what he says is true, it also means that the creative thinking at the graduate level of many American STEM degrees has been limited. My friends who are professors in American Universities tell me that in a lot of their courses, there isn't an American student in their whole class; their classes are mostly Chinese. So if their whole group has gone through a hazing-education-process, conducted in a foreign language, they will have suffered the kind of spiritual harm described by the author. If they stay in the US to do their graduate work, chances are they won't be thinking out of the box.

Talk about someone projecting their own experiences as universal truths for everyone, LOL

...and then trying to use Heidegger as an excuse for intellectual laziness is pretty silly too. The more languages you know, the more you really understand the true meaning of words in your "own" language. (Certainly with Latinic languages and English, for example.)

There's also a point to be crossed at which you can dream in another language and there's a bit of a desert to be crossed before that happens.

Overall, it was a challenging and somewhat thought-provoking read, but I feel that

1) the author approached the subject superficially and in a flippant manner

2) the author is young and has much to learn about LIFE on earth, whether it be China, or any of the other 180 something "countries" we have divided our planets human societies into.

That said: I've noted that large nationalistic nations (China, the USA, Brasil, Russia...) tend to know less about the outside world and navel-gaze more, whereas smaller nations with many different neighbors (most of the world) tend to be aware of the cultural framing on almost any issue, even if they defer to local customs or beliefs. This is obviously a gross generalization, but a flavor one nevertheless is imparted with due to:

1) A tendency towards being linguistically bound in thought. (I will propose that the author here is dead wrong, Martin Heidegger notwithstanding, and that languages bound thought possibilities by their grammars and biases)

2) A tendency to not have experienced any foreign nationals in rural areas, or certainly none that are deemed to be equal human beings by a significant part of the local society.

3) A tendency to believe the local media and governmental narratives at the cost of being completely un-aware of other narratives, regardless of belief or resistance to such narratives.

Could just be a resume building puff piece to help him rise in the party machinery.

(These articles might be politically motivated.)