Vice Premier Qian's Son Writes Book on the Experience of Chinese Students in the United States

A February 1997 report from U.S. Embassy Beijing

Summary. Chinese Foreign Minister Qian's son, Qian Ning, has written a best-selling book about his impressions of life as a student in the United States. Qian wrote his book upon his return to China after studying journalism and Chinese literature for five years at the University of Michigan. Studying in America, now a runaway best-seller in both legal and pirated editions, reflects the Qian Ning's very deep and fair-minded assessment of China, America and their relations. Far deeper and much more sophisticated than the recent wave of shallow, America bashing best-sellers, Qian's book is imbued with Chinese patriotism with a clear-eyed and fair-minded view of the good and the bad of Chinese and American society and traditions. Although only a small percentage of the Chinese students who went to the United States over the last fifteen years have returned to China, more and more are choosing to come back as economic conditions improve and political controls loosen.

The importance of this book is that it affords a vision of the U.S. as it is reflected in the Chinese mind and a vision of China through Chinese minds which have been profoundly transformed by their American experience. In this cable we present Embassy Beijing Environment, Science and Technology Section officer's extensive summary of Qian's work with page numbers from the first edition which also hold for the numerous pirate editions sold. End summary.

Studying in America -- It Didn't Start With Deng

Qian traces Chinese study in America and its importance for Chinese society back Yung Wing, one of the earliest Chinese students [1847] who persuaded Qing Dynasty General Zeng Guofan to support 120 young Chinese students for higher education in America. Qian examines the big surge of Chinese graduate students going to the U.S. after World War II and the difficulties U.S. government exit restrictions made for those Chinese students who wished to return to China after the founding of the PRC in 1949.

Studying Abroad Transforms Attitudes of Chinese Students

Qian writes [p. 50], "Most Chinese are used to living a life in which they don't make choices for themselves. They don't think living that life is terrible. On the contrary, they think it is an easy way to live. People living in that kind of society in which the freedom to choose is missing gradually, just like tamed animals, lose their wildness and vitality, and become imbued with a kind of "laziness". Just as study abroad changed the fate of many Chinese young people, so too did it change their attitude towards life."

Large numbers of the Chinese graduate students were privately financed -- the number of state or work unit supported students fell from 57 percent in 1979 to just 17 percent in 1985. By 1985 over half of the Chinese students were going to the United States with assistance from U.S. universities. The social and economic backgrounds of the Chinese students abroad reflect a cross-section of the Chinese in the Chinese domestic university system [p. 82] -- including according to a 1990 survey a significant number of students from poor and rural backgrounds [29 percent from small and medium sized towns, 8 percent from rural villages].

A Hundred Strategies for Going Abroad: Will the Work Unit Leader Say OK?

Some students had their study plans delayed or frustrated altogether not by the strict U.S. or Chinese government requirements, but by their own work unit leader. The work unit leader [p. 62] has such tremendous power over the lives of unit members, Qian remarks, that the attitudes of many Chinese students towards China depends largely on their work unit experience. This is because the work unit, a basic cell of PRC society, can greatly moderate the effect of restrictions sent down from the central authorities on the lives of its individual members. Conversely, a tough work unit leader can aggravate Chinese government controls, says Qian.

Work unit control on prospective students weakened when the State Education Commission in 1993 announced a new application procedure for study abroad [p. 92]. The new method allows individuals to apply directly [without work unit permission] in open competition for state support of studies abroad and provides for a contract between the individual and the state. Furthermore, the new regulations guarantees returning students the right to leave China again if they so choose.

Getting the American Visa

Qian recounts his own experience applying for a U.S. visa on July 26, 1989 [short interview, the consular officer was very polite] and gives a balanced account of the successes and tragedies of his contemporaries who applied for a student visa to the United States. He reported that the judgments of consular officers varied widely, some were very tough while others issued many visas. Qian repeated the story [p. 74] he had heard from a former American Embassy Beijing consular officer Qian met at the University of Michigan. The former consular officer said that one of his colleagues said, "We can't give them visas. None of them will come back." Qian commented, "Although the American Consul's words are painful to Chinese ears, what he said was true. For very many Chinese students at that time, the real goal wasn't to study abroad but to use study abroad as a way out of China."

An Alternate Way of Life: The Shock of Encounter with U.S. Culture

The great American highway system and the bright lights of the city impressed the first PRC students to come to the United States. Qian reports that the first meeting with America didn't make such a strong impression on the Chinese students of the 1990s, since as one student said "We see America in the movies and read about it in magazines, so we don't think it so special when we get there". For Qian, the peace and calm of an American campus in 1989 contrasted sharply with the post Tiananmen China he had just left. Qian wrote, "I realized a simple truth. We Chinese -- at least the younger generation of Chinese -- can make for ourselves a different kind of life. The political movements and counter-movements, the criticism sessions, the struggle meetings, the parades, the stirring up of the feelings of the masses in I-live-and-you-die struggles is not the only possible way for Chinese people to live their lives."

Qian recounts how one Chinese political science doctoral candidate, after hearing from his professor how Americans want a weak government so that individual freedom will be safe, questioned his old belief that "the dictatorship of the proletariat must be strengthened so that the government can "manage the people". Qian writes [p. 138] , "Our thinking is unconsciously restricted by the limitations of our society and of our culture and traditions. Just as human thinking cannot escape the limitations of the human situation, so too is it very difficult for us to overcome the limitations of our society and culture. All too easily we come to accept without question everything in our society as "normal". Our encounter with another society reveals to us the limitations of our own."

Chinese Ethnocentrism And...

For the Chinese, Qian writes [pp. 137 - 139], foreign things, no matter how attractive or new are not a part of Chinese tradition and so are put aside as strange or abnormal. This is a manifestation of the Chinese central kingdom perspective on matters barbarian. Insults to a weak China at the hands of Western imperial powers created a narrow and often unreasoning Chinese nationalism [p. 20] which strengthened a Chinese tendency to distinguish sharply between the foreign and the Chinese, and fear that Chinese were falling under undue foreign influence. For a century, Chinese have followed the principle "Chinese in essence, Western for techniques" [Zhongti Xiyong].

...American Ethnocentrism

Yet, says Qian, America has much the same problem. "One hundred years of domestic peace created the powerful economy, advanced science and technology, gradually perfecting democratic system and mass culture which Americans see as the model for the world. Americans believe that all the world should be judged by American values and seem never to understand that America is just one case, and perhaps a very special case, in the history of humanity's social development. This American prejudice appears throughout the work of American scholars who enjoy "academic freedom" and in the supposedly objective U.S. mass media."

Students Foreign Experience Will Make China a More Tolerant and Open Society

The idea that my group is right and the others are all wrong or, on a larger scale, that our culture is right and the foreigners are wrong, is the natural result of growing up in any culture writes Qian. In the extreme, these attitudes, lead to the suppression of independent thinking, cultural narrow-mindedness and dictatorship. Recent Chinese history shows that this attitude that a certain ideology is absolutely correct can be seen in campaigns to "unify ideology". Qian writes [p. 140] that most Chinese believe in both democracy and the necessity of unifying ideology -- yet never see the inherent contradiction between the two. Qian believes that the experience of hundreds of thousands of Chinese students living in seventy countries around the world will produce a group of people who will bring back to China the values of a more open and tolerant society.

Students Find America a Socially Mobile, Money-Oriented Society

The rich material life of the United States, in particular, the relative low cost of food and housing made a deep impression on the Chinese students. Many students found that they could get a job that would enable them to buy a house and a car and within just a few years "live as well as a Chinese vice minister." Some Chinese students focused on making as much money as they could right away. Qian sees this as a kind of culture shock. Qian describes American society this way [p. 112] : "America is a true money-oriented society. In America money is like an invisible hand that moves society. America has great social mobility: there aren't any nobles and commoners, there is no upper layer and lower layer. American society divides into people who have money and people who don't have money. But people who have money sometimes become poorer and poorer. And people who don't have money can earn more and more money and so become rich...In America, money not only influences politics and the economy but has also become the standard by which judgments are made. Money permeates the thinking of Americans."

Some Chinese Students Find Economic and Intellectual Freedom Hard to Take

Qian found that Americans could not understand how the Chinese government could repress the student demonstrators of Tiananmen because "American did not receive the collectivist education of the Chinese." Qian calls freedom a heavy burden which some of the Chinese who go to the United States cannot accept [p. 120]. They find that America is free but "nobody cares about you either." Qian found that depression and a feeling of being helpless and alone to be far more common in the United States than in Chinese society -- perhaps, Qian speculates, these feeling come as the price of personal freedom. Hardest and most shocking for Chinese students was "the seminar" -- which as Qian informs his readers, is the very best method for keeping up with a field and stimulating one's creativity.

Chinese Students Find Sexual Freedom Confusing But Enjoy It

The more open attitudes of Americans towards heterosexual and homosexual relationship [p. 128 ff] came as a great shock to many Chinese students. Most adjust quickly, however, and enjoy their new found freedoms. Homosexuals among the Chinese students found freedom and acceptance in America. One young Chinese woman had been expelled from her Chinese university after being discovered in her boyfriend's dormitory room, realized after coming to America that she wasn't a bad person but as an individual had legitimate feelings and rights despite the attitudes of Chinese society. Qian discussed several stories of Chinese women who cast off dependence on and subordination to men imposed by traditional Chinese social mores and moved on to new relationships.

Liberation of Chinese Women in America

Chinese women bear up better under the economic stress and culture shock of American society better than Chinese men, Qian has discovered. Qian writes [pp. 207 - 241] of many cases of Chinese women who have become much more independent after entering American society, even to the point of abandoning Chinese "intellectual" husbands who were too proud to work in a restaurant to make a living. Men had a difficult time accepting wives as the breadwinner in the family. Qian recounts story after story of how American experience has freed Chinese women from what Qian characterizes as the traditional patriarchal, father-domination which continues to characterize Chinese society despite the political changes of the past fifty years.

Economic Opportunity, But the Freedom to Fail as Well

While most students did well financially after initial difficulties, many others found it hard to support themselves and discovered the pressure of potential unemployment, poverty and even hunger they didn't know in China. Much more than in China, in America having a certain job is an essential element in the identity of the American, writes Qian. Few Chinese students fall into extreme poverty but some decide [p. 188] that "America is a pitiless society that has no sympathy for failures."

Perspectives on America: Violence, Crime and Racism

Qian writes [pp. 195 - 200], "Just as the shortcomings of the political system are the root of many of the evils of Chinese society, so too is racism the cause of much of the troubles of American society". Qian recounts incidents of white racism as well as racism against African-Americans amongst the Chinese students. Qian reports that many Chinese students in big cities such as Brooklyn have been mugged and some killed. "Crime in America has many causes such as unemployment, poverty and drugs... but the underlying cause is racism."

Chinese Students Acquire a Lively Spirit and Put Down Roots in America

American education produced in Chinese students a much more enterprising and lively spirit than they had in their own country. The Chinese student campaign for the Chinese Student Protection Act after Tiananmen in 1989, writes Qian [pp. 277 - 282], is one example. Qian notes that many of the Chinese students who petitioned for protected status returned to China [where they theoretically faced persecution] immediately after getting their green cards. Qian remarks that even before Tiananmen, many students were already managing to extend their stay in the United States indefinitely so Tiananmen green cards probably didn't greatly affect the number of students staying in the United States. The proportion of Chinese students who have returned to China from the U.S., at five to ten percent, is considerably lower than the 20 percent overall return rate of all Chinese students leaving China.

Student Attitudes Towards China

The attitude of Chinese students towards their country and their willingness to return depends to a large degree upon when they left China [p. 204]. Students who left China in the early 80's remain Chinese of the early 80's and don't want to return to that country. Students of the 1990s come to America with very different outlooks and views of China. Many overseas Chinese students have outdated views of the very rapidly changing reality of China today. Indeed, writes Qian, the thinking of most Chinese students abroad, who actually often live within a small, closed Chinese community, is not as open as the present rising generation of young intellectuals within China itself. Some of these students, having managed to study abroad as a result of vigorous competition, cherish a feeling of superiority over their fellow Chinese.

Chinese Students Understand Human Rights and the Rule of Law But Not Yet Democracy

Western ideas of the rights and duties of individuals in their relation to the state have altered the attitude of Chinese students in America towards their home country, Qian has observed. "No longer can they accept the unconditional sacrifice of themselves for the nation or the state which traditional Chinese "patriotism" demands." [p. 247]. The tragedy of the Chinese student democratic movement overseas [pp. 259 - 264] is that many of its members, having only a partial understanding of western thought, are filled with ideas and ways of acting they learned during the struggles of the Cultural Revolution. With this fatal organizational weakness and the self-seeking behavior of its leaders, the student democratic movement was never able to build an effective organization.

PRC to Students: Please Come Home, We Forgive You

The Chinese government strives to make returning to China more attractive. For example, State Council Administrative Bureau [Guowuyuan Bangongting] Order No. 44 of 1992 was a general amnesty for any acts of overseas Chinese students against the Chinese state or its interests. China, Qian writes, [p. 285] is unlikely to become very attractive to many Chinese students since low Chinese living standards and the social system offer less individual freedom than they have become used to in the West.

Freedom to Choose and the Rejection of Self-Sacrifice

The current generation of Chinese students rejects the self-sacrificing patriotism of Chinese tradition. Qian writes [p. 286] , "Nearly this entire generation of Chinese students accepts the freedom of choice principle in western individualism which holds that state interest is not sufficient reason to sacrifice the right of the individual to make a free choice. Very few Chinese students will admit that they are not patriotic, but they are determined to serve China in their own way...Yet in this world made ever smaller by science and technology, China cannot be said to have lost these students either. They will make their contributions to Chinese development in the future." Those students who do return to China are often asked "Why did you come back?" from their puzzled colleagues and relatives upon their return. Scholars who do return face poor facilities, inadequate libraries, professional isolation, and the sad feeling that they will inevitably fall further and further behind even the less able among their colleagues in America.

More Chinese Democracy and Prosperity Will Spur Return

If China is to attract these students back home, the Chinese government must provide much better facilities and Chinese society at large must provide them a better and more tolerant social environment... [p. 293] "Fundamentally, the return of the Chinese students, just as the basic problem facing Chinese society turns on the rapid development of the Chinese economy. The development of the commercial economy will create more individual freedoms for the Chinese people and further loosen up the rigid social system. Moreover, from commercial competition arises contests over the best human talent, which in turn make human talent highly prized by society. Only in this way will the work and living conditions offered to the students abroad improve. The economic trends which will create these conditions are already underway."

Why Return? Patriotism is Never Obsolete

Qian discusses the findings of an American scholar who asked Chinese students why they chose to remain in the U.S. or to return to China. The American found that Chinese had several reasons for staying such as better living conditions in the U.S. and the rigid social system in China. Returnees, however, nearly all said patriotism was their reason for going home. The result confused the American scholar, wrote Qian, since patriotism is considered quite obsolete in American society today.

Strengthening China, Not Cultural Exchange, is the Purpose for Sending Chinese Students Abroad

"Modern China has been a weak country. The poverty and weakness of China and the insults it has suffered over the last century make patriotism an idea that can never be obsolete for any Chinese. The Chinese have striven, through legal reforms, revolution, civil war, and nearly every method conceivable over the last century to make their country strong. Sending out the students to foreign countries was never for China a matter of cultural exchange. The goal is to make China a strong country -- a fact which the overseas students must face." Qian, echoing Voltaire, concludes his book, "The next generation may well have new ideas. The present generation of China's overseas students, however, must face the challenges of our time. After traveling far and wide, the most important thing is to hurry home and cultivate our garden."

End summary Translation