ចិន​មិនត្រូវ​បិទទ្វារ​ផ្លាស់ប្តូរ​វប្បធម៌​ជាមួយ​អាមេរិក​ឡើយ​។

Self-imposed isolation could exacerbate misunderstandings

Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Harvard University recently announced that it will relocate its summer language program next year from Beijing to Taipei.

The ostensible reason given by Harvard was the difficulty it was having arranging student accommodation at its host campus, the Beijing Language and Cultural University. But there is more to the story.

As bilateral ties between Beijing and Washington have steadily deteriorated in recent years, the cultural ties that bind the two nations are also fraying fast.

Right-wing American politicians have terminated the Peace Corps program in China and proposed legislation to bar Chinese graduate students from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs in the U.S. On the other side of the Pacific, Chinese authorities are also curtailing once-thriving Sino-American cultural and educational exchanges.

It turns out that Harvard University's language program in Beijing not only faced housing difficulties but was also encountering restrictions on other activities. In 2019, for example, the host of the program informed Harvard that it could not hold a small celebration to mark U.S. Independence Day on July 4.

Harvard's decision to switch its prestigious language program to Taiwan will obviously be a boon for Taipei and a major loss for China. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Several other events in recent years suggest that, instead of trying to preserve Sino-American ties amid escalating geopolitical rivalry, the Chinese government is doing exactly the opposite.

In May this year, Sichuan University in the city of Chengdu declined to renew its contract with New Yorker magazine writer and former Peace Corps volunteer in China Peter Hessler, who had been teaching nonfiction writing there for several years.

In March last year, China expelled journalists working for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in retaliation for Washington's restrictions on Chinese journalists. Signs of trouble in China's cultural exchange with the West, in particular the U.S., emerged earlier.

In July 2018, the University of Nottingham Ningbo, a joint venture between the British university and Ningbo, a wealthy port city in Zhejiang, fired a Western academic from its management board for writing a critical essay about the Chinese Communist Party.

In the same month, an American academic who had taught in China for nine years lost his job at Peking University's HSBC School of Business in Shenzhen for criticizing the country's censorship.

These reported instances most likely represent only a fraction of the damage done by Chinese authorities to their plan to project Chinese soft power. Word of Beijing's unwelcoming attitude toward cultural exchanges spreads fast, and many activities or programs may already have been cut back or canceled altogether due to the fear and caution of their sponsors without public knowledge.

Some Chinese officials may believe that restricting or cutting off cultural exchanges with the U.S. serves the interest of the Chinese Communist Party because they can prevent Chinese people from being influenced by subversive liberal ideas and limit the outflow of damaging information about China.

For local officials, whose overriding interest is to avoid any problem caused by foreign-related programs, the surest way of self-preservation is not to have such programs at all.

But a China with decreasing cultural and educational contact with the outside world will pay the price of self-imposed isolation. The drastic reduction of the number of American journalists in China has resulted in much less coverage of China in the U.S. media outlets.

The growing information deficit about China could exacerbate misunderstanding about China and fuel anti-Chinese sentiments, especially in the U.S. As Americans have fewer opportunities to interact with Chinese people, they are more likely to be influenced by caricatured portrayals of China.

The decline in Sino-American educational and academic exchanges will have even more far-reaching adverse consequences. Typically, such programs enable future leaders in American politics, business and academia to develop an early interest in China and cultivate social ties critical to their professional development.

Participants in these programs also acquire invaluable skills, such as cultural appreciation and language, that help them form a deeper understanding of China's complexities and support a more nuanced and pragmatic approach toward Beijing.

The Chinese government has been eager to tell the "China story," but its officially sanctioned efforts have been disappointing, even counterproductive. Beijing-sponsored programs to influence Western public opinions, such as an expanded official media presence and the Confucius Institutes, are treated with suspicion, even restrictions.

There is a better way to tell the China story -- not through official mouthpieces but through Western journalists, academics and students who can interact freely with ordinary Chinese citizens. Indeed, China does have a good story to tell the world.

It is not the official narrative of the superiority of its one-party system but a story about how ordinary Chinese people live and cope with the same challenges as people elsewhere. Humanizing China is possible only through unfettered exchange between ordinary Chinese and Americans.

The good news is that China still has time to repair its damaged cultural ties with the U.S. The first thing China might want to do is to tell Harvard that it is prepared to do everything possible to keep its summer language program in Beijing.

Nikkei Asia