Confucius Institutes

Harvard Arrest Puts Focus on Chinese Espionage and Propaganda Centers in U.S.

By Janet Lorin

They’re called Confucius Institutes, and for about 15 years these centers for Chinese language and cultural education have proliferated at U.S. universities, drawing students eager to learn about the country.
Now, the Chinese government-funded organizations face more scrutiny as U.S.-China tensions over intellectual property and espionage intensify.
The arrest this week of a Harvard University chemistry professor for lying about his ties to China is shedding renewed light on the institutes and ratcheting up pressure for colleges to close them.
“This is a blatant attempt by the Chinese to infiltrate and both steal American ideas and co-opt students, but also to monitor and influence the behavior of Chinese students who are studying here in America,” Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton said in an interview Wednesday.

Confucius Closings

University of Missouri closed its center in January 2020

University of Massachusetts/Boston closed its center in January 2019.

University of Michigan closed its center in 2018

Texas A&M closed its center in 2018

Penn State closed its center in 2014

University of Chicago closed its center in 2014

Source: National Assn of Scholars, Bloomberg 

Moulton, a Democrat, plans to introduce legislation that he said would better protect U.S. technology from being stolen by researchers including academics who are being paid by China or other adversaries.
There are about 80 Confucius Institutes at U.S. colleges, including Stanford University and Savannah State University in Georgia, according to the National Association of Scholars, a non-partisan research group that has studied the centers and opposes them.
The institutes teach humanities classes in Chinese culture and language and steer clear of history, politics and current affairs, according to the Confucius Institute U.S. Center website. 

They are run by their host university faculty and administrators with assistance from faculty at their Chinese partner universities.

Chinese peril
Of the 550 Confucius Institutes around the world, the largest concentration is in the U.S., according to the Washington-based non-profit.
The Scholars association opposes them because their funding lacks transparency and topics sensitive to China are off limits.
“As it stands now, they’re more of a threat than they are a friend,” said Chance Layton, a spokesman for the group.
Some schools shut the institutes after passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, legislation that partly seeks to police China on a range of matters. 

One provision prohibits the U.S. Defense Department from funding Chinese language programs at colleges with the institutes unless schools obtain a waiver.
More recently, universities have come under pressure from U.S. lawmakers. 

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has urged schools in his state to terminate their agreements with Confucius Institutes.
Moulton sent letters in 2018 to several schools demanding that they close their institutes or not allow them on campus. 

In his state, the University of Massachusetts/Boston closed its center in January 2019.

American Quislings

Harvard scientist lied about academic, financial ties with Chinese
Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, lied about contacts with a Chinese state-run initiative that seeks to draw foreign-educated talent.

By Ellen Barry

Charles M. Lieber at an award ceremony in Jerusalem in 2012.

BOSTON — Early Tuesday morning, F.B.I. agents arrived at two of the most protected corners of Harvard University’s academic cloister, raking through a gabled house in the suburb of Lexington and a neoclassical brick building in Cambridge.
By afternoon, one of Harvard’s scientific luminaries was in handcuffs, charged with making a false statement to federal authorities about his financial relationship with the Chinese government, and especially his participation in its Thousand Talents program, a campaign to attract foreign-educated scientists to China.

The arrest of Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, signaled a new, aggressive phase in the Justice Department’s campaign to root out scientists who are stealing research from American laboratories.

For months, news has been trickling out about the prosecution of scientists, mainly Chinese graduate students and researchers working in American laboratories. 

But Lieber represents a different kind of target, a star researcher who had risen to the highest reaches of the American academic hierarchy.

Lieber, a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, has not been accused of sharing sensitive information with Chinese officials, but rather of hiding — from Harvard, from the National Institutes of Health and from the Defense Department — the amount of money that Chinese funders were paying him.
Lieber’s lawyer, Peter Levitt, made no comment after a preliminary hearing in federal court in Boston on Tuesday.
His arrest sent shock waves through research circles.
“This is a very, very highly esteemed, highly regarded investigator working at Harvard, a major U.S. institution, at the highest rank he could have, so, all the success you can have in this sphere,” said Ross McKinney Jr., chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges. 

“It’s like, when you’ve got it all, why do you want more?”
McKinney described anxiety among his colleagues that scientists will be scrutinized over illegitimate sources of international funding.
“We worry that, slowly but surely, we’re going to be criminally charged. This is a big deal. We all could end up in jail.”

Lieber, 60, was charged with one count of making a false or misleading statement, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. 

He appeared in court on Tuesday wearing the outfit he had put on to head to his office at Harvard: a Brooks Brothers polo shirt, cargo pants and hiking boots. 

He appeared subdued as he flipped through the charge sheet. 

Levitt, his lawyer, said it was his first opportunity to read the charge against him.
Harvard said Lieber had been placed on indefinite administrative leave.“The charges brought by the U.S. government against Lieber are extremely serious,” said Jonathan Swain, a spokesman for the university. 

“Harvard is cooperating with federal authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, and is initiating its own review of the misconduct.”
Lieber was one of three scientists to be charged with crimes on Tuesday.

Harvard Chinese criminals

Zaosong Zheng, a Harvard-affiliated cancer researcher was caught leaving the country with 21 vials of cells stolen from a laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, according to the authorities. 

He had admitted that he had planned to turbocharge his career by publishing the research in China under his own name. 

He was charged with smuggling goods from the United States and with making false statements, and was being held without bail in Massachusetts after a judge determined that he was a flight risk. 

His lawyer has not responded to a request for comment.

The third was Yanqing Ye, who had been conducting research at Boston University’s department of physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering until last spring, when she returned to China. 

She hid the fact that she was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, and continued to carry out assignments from Chinese military officers while at B.U.
Yanqing was charged with visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy.

She was in China and was not arrested.
Prosecutors made it clear that the charges announced on Tuesday were part of a bigger crackdown on researchers working with the Chinese government.
“No country poses a greater, more severe or long-term threat to our national security and economic prosperity than China,” said Joseph Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Boston field office. 

“China’s communists’s goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world superpower, and they are breaking the law to get there.”
He called Massachusetts, with its cluster of elite universities and research institutions, “a target-rich environment.”

Charging documents in the case describe Lieber’s growing commitments in China, and efforts to hide them from his employers in the United States.
In 2011, the documents say, he signed an agreement to become a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China, entitling him to a $50,000 monthly salary, $150,000 in annual in living expenses and more than $1.5 million for a second laboratory in Wuhan. 

In 2013, he celebrated the founding of a joint laboratory, the WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory.
He was informed in 2012 that he had been selected to participate in the Thousand Talents plan, the China-run program.
In 2015, Harvard officials discovered that Lieber was leading a laboratory at Wuhan University, and informed him that the use of Harvard’s name and logo was a violation of university policy. 

Lieber then distanced himself from the project, but continued to receive payment.Then in 2017 he was named a university professor, Harvard’s highest faculty rank, one of only 26 professors to hold that status. 

The same year, he earned the N.I.H. Director’s Pioneer Award for inventing syringe-injectable mesh electronics that can integrate with the brain.
Investigators from the Defense Department — which had extended $8 million in grants to Lieber — began questioning him in 2018 about secondary sources of income, prosecutors said.
Lieber told them that he was aware of China’s Thousand Talents program, but had never been invited to participate, prosecution documents say. 

Two days after that conversation, the documents say, Lieber asked a laboratory associate to help him identify web pages in which he was named as the head of the Chinese lab.
“I lost a lot of sleep worrying all of these things last night and want to start taking steps to correct sooner than later,” he wrote in an email to a research colleague that was cited by prosecutors. 

“I will be careful about what I discuss with Harvard University, and none of this will be shared with government investigators at this time.”
Last year, Harvard was required to submit a detailed report about Lieber to N.I.H., which had provided $10 million in grants for his research projects. 

He told university officials that he had “no formal association” with the Wuhan University of Technology, prosecutors said, and that he “is not and has never been” a participant in the Thousand Talents program.The campaign to scrutinize scientists’ foreign funding is a relatively new one.
Late in 2018, Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, announced that the United States was “standing up to the deliberate, systematic and calculated threats posed, in particular, by the communist regime in China.”
As a result, researchers are adjusting to a higher level of scrutiny about foreign funding than they faced in the past, said Derek Adams, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in civil fraud.
“The problem here, in my view, is that in 2018 there was a material change in the way the F.B.I. and the agencies were approaching this issue,” said Adams, now a partner in the law firm Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell.
In many cases, he said, “they’re looking at conduct that occurred many years ago. For an individual that may have had an obligation to disclose, it may not have been front at center at that time.”
Frank Wu, a law professor and former president of the Committee of 100, an organization of communist Chinese-Americans, has criticized the recent prosecutions as “potentially devastating to American science, because the number of people who have some connection to China is so vast.” Until recently, he said, such collaborations were considered healthy.
“These rules are new rules,” he said.

Academic Prostitution, Harvard Style

China’s $360 million gift to Harvard
By Bill Gertz

A rower paddles down the Charles River near the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, March 7, 2017. 

China is providing Harvard University with $360 million that a former military intelligence analyst says appears to be part of an effort to influence one of America’s most important educational institutions.
Anders Corr, a former government analyst who specializes in foreign influence operations, stated in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence that a Chinese military-linked company, JT Capital, gave $10 million to Harvard in 2014, the same year the family of Ronnie Chan, a Hong Kong real estate mogul with ties to China, announced it is giving $350 million to the university. 

Both donations were “relatively opaque” and raise questions about the purpose of the funds, he said.
Mr. Corr, who received an international relations doctorate from Harvard in 2008, said the Chinese donations appear to be an attempt to introduce biases among the university’s professors in a bid to influence U.S. policy or public opinion in China’s favor.
“Allowing such donations does not appear to be in U.S. national security interests, and it does not appear to be necessary for Harvard’s research and teaching (it already has an endowment of $36.7 billion),” he said. 

“Perhaps there should be legislation against Chinese-linked money in U.S. politics, including think tanks and universities.”
Harvard professors also give paid speeches in China, are paid for publishing work in China and enjoy all-expenses-paid travel to China, Mr. Corr stated in his letter.
“These are all potential avenues of influence upon professors, who do not usually broadcast these pecuniary benefits as they could diminish the perception of their impartiality,” he said.
The U.S. government gave Harvard $600 million in 2016, and over the years has provided billions of dollars for research and education, he noted.
Mr. Corr then asked the vice president, who met recently with Harvard President Drew Faust, to look into whether the China-linked donations violate U.S. foreign agents’ registration laws, and whether Harvard may be providing valuable U.S. technology to China in exchange. 

The $350 million donation also should be examined by the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS.
“Harvard is not unique in being a soft but influential voice on China that has a conflict of interest because of China-linked pecuniary interests,” Mr. Corr stated.
“The way in which China-linked pecuniary interests percolate through elite-level U.S. policy discussions on China on both sides of the aisle, and in supposedly bipartisan think tanks and universities, should be a concern to all U.S. citizens who depend on places like Harvard for unbiased political analysis.”
Mr. Corr said that given the substantial government support for Harvard, American taxpayers deserve greater transparency.
“Harvard is but one example, I think, of a much bigger problem of bias in U.S.-China policy analysis,” he said. 

“I hope the problem can be addressed by the enforcement of existing law, new law or at least someone with sufficient stature to improve transparency of China-linked donations and get some answers.”

A spokesman for Mr. Pence said the vice president was traveling and had no comment.

Report on China’s religious abuses
The State Department this week outlined the death, torture and abuse of religious adherents in China as part of an annual report on religious freedom.
“Throughout the country, there continued to be reports of deaths, in detention and otherwise, of religious adherents and that the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” the report states.
The report states that among China’s 1.4 billion people, there are an estimated 657 million believers — far more than the official Chinese government estimate of 200 million. 

The faith community includes 250 million Buddhists, 70 million Christians, 25 million Muslims, 301 million observers of folk religions and 10 million observers of other faiths, including Taoism. Jews number around 2,500.
China’s constitution contains a provision ensuring “freedom of religious belief” for citizens. 

But in practice religious activities are suppressed through government controls on officially approved groups and harsh repression of unofficial groups.
The report notes that members of the ruling Communist Party of China and its People’s Liberation Army “are required to be atheists” and banned from practicing any religious faith. 

“Members who are found to belong to religious organizations are subject to expulsion, although these rules are not universally enforced,” the report said.
Chinese authorities continued the practice of bulldozing unofficial “house churches.” 

The government also continued its yearslong crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, estimated to number at least 70 million. 

The group reported that dozens of its members died in Chinese detention.
“A pastor of an unregistered church and his wife were reportedly buried alive while protesting the demolition of their church; the wife died while the pastor was able to escape,” the report said.
“There were also reports of the disappearance of a Catholic priest, and the death of a rights activist for Hui Muslim minorities and others that the government said was suicide.”

Chinese Fifth Column At Harvard, And The Proposed Pro-China Unified Korea

• Professor Allison states that the crisis could be solved by first, China removing the Kim regime, and unifying North and South Korea under a pro-Beijing Seoul, second, removing U.S. troops, and third, ending the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
• It is revanchist appeasement on a grand scale. It is a realism ready to throw international law, democracy and human rights away for a fleeting moment of safety.

By Anders Corr

Graham Allison at Harvard University mooted a solution to the North Korea conflict in the New York Times on May 30. 

Allison starts by scaring us with a high likelihood of war, about 75%, in similar conflicts between a major power and a smaller rising power in history. 

That I believe. 

He implies a 33% chance that the North Korea crisis, like the Cuban missile crisis, could spiral into a nuclear war. 

That I doubt.

A photo taken on May 21, 2017 shows an art installation featuring propaganda loudspeakers arranged to read: 'Peace', at the Peace dam, north of Hwacheon near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. Contruction of the 'Peace Dam' was intermittent from 1987 to 2005, reportedly as a response to the threat of accidental or intentional flooding from the North Korea's Imnam Dam which lies further up river, across the DMZ. North Korea on May 22 confirmed the 'successful' launch of a medium-range ballistic missile, Pyongyang's state media reported, adding the weapon was now ready to be deployed for military action.

After shocking us with the threat of catastrophic war, Allison uses that risk to justify his proposal to avert the crisis. 

Allison states, in a manner that sounds like he has first-hand knowledge, that “some people in Mr. Xi’s circle” say the crisis could be solved by first, China removing the Kim regime, and unifying North and South Korea under a pro-Beijing Seoul, second, removing U.S. troops, and third, ending the U.S.-South Korea alliance. 

Like Xi reportedly provided to Trump, these “people in Mr. Xi’s circle” even give a historical justification to buttress the Chinese proposal for China’s administration and shaping of Korean unification. 

In the core of his argument, Allison says, “Had North Korea not attacked the South in 1950, the United States would never have intervened. So if China were to assume responsibility for removing the Kim regime, denuclearizing the country, and reunifying the peninsula under a government in Seoul friendly to Beijing, would the United States remove all its bases from the South and end its military alliance?”
In other words, Allison appears to advise, or at least uncritically repeat Chinese advice, that China and North Korea are threatening us with nuclear war, so give in and give up South Korea. 

That advice is buttressed by an ostensible lack of U.S. historical presence on the peninsula. 

Allison’s proposal dovetails nicely with Trump’s understanding after Xi’s history lesson, in which “Korea actually used to be a part of China.”
These questionable interpretations of history lead to Allison’s surprising proposal for what amounts to capitulation. 

It is revanchist appeasement on a grand scale. 

It is a realism ready to throw international law, democracy and human rights away for a fleeting moment of safety.

That is not the America of Paul Revere and George Washington, who risked it all for liberty. 

And, what of other proposals, such as an election in North Korea, or economic sanctions against China until China forces the North to stop its nuclear weapons development? 

If China can remove the Kim regime and unify the peninsula, surely it can remove North Korea’s nuclear weapons. 

Surely tough economic sanctions against China would not result in nuclear war.

These options are not mentioned by Allison, who focuses his opinion piece on fear and allied concessions.
China has taken slivers of territory in the Philippines, Vietnam and India, and since 1972 the U.S. has shown acquiescence, fear and a lack of resolve to defend that territory, and along with it democracy and international law. 

Given demonstrated U.S. fear, why shouldn’t China go for an entire nation like South Korea? 

In the process, did “some people in Xi’s circle” nudge a Harvard professor to write an opinion piece in the New York Times to soften up public opinion beforehand?
What I will call Allison’s proposal, because he is the first I know to make it publicly, lacks any mention of democracy and human rights in South Korea. 

And what of democracy and human rights in the North? 

Would Allison’s proposal mean that the North Korean police could, with support or as part of his “government in Seoul friendly to Beijing”, root out democratic opposition in the South? 

Does Allison really think that China would disassemble North Korea’s police state apparatus, which appears much more like Beijing’s government than does South Korea’s democracy? 

If China is really to make Seoul pro-Beijing, which appears to be a nondemocratic Chinese condition in Allison’s proposal, then one should expect Kim Jong-un’s regime to be transported to Seoul, with or without Kim Jong-un, rather than democracy transported to Pyongyang.
Don’t expect Beijing to deal fairly with pro-democracy South Koreans, or even to honor any protections for South Koreans in this telling Chinese future for the Korean Peninsula. 

We learned our lesson in Hong Kong, where China violated its promise to respect democracy after it took over from the U.K. 

China cannot be trusted. 

Hong Kong citizens who thought they would get democracy are now literally ground into the pavement as Hong Kong police, who answer to mainland authorities, suppress their brothers and sisters in pro-democracy demonstrations with arrests, pepper spray, tear gas, and beatings.

People watch a screen showing news coverage of the Pukguksong-2 missile rocket launch at a public square in central Pyongyang on May 22, 2017. North Korea declared its medium-range Pukguksong-2 missile ready for deployment after a weekend test, the latest step in its quest to defy UN sanctions and develop a weapon capable of striking US targets. 

The proposal from Allison is contrary to principles such as democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech that I, as a graduate of Harvard University, thought my school represents. 

I was frankly shocked when I read the opinion. 

But perhaps I should have expected this. 

Harvard gets significant revenues from Chinese students, including Xi Jinping’s daughter, who graduated in 2014. 

Harvard has a lucrative Harvard-branded school in China itself, and a Harvard China Fund that is seeking $50 million to support Harvard’s presence in China. 

Only four of the Fund’s Web pages actually mention democracy or human rights. 

The Belfer Center at Harvard, which Allison directs, gets millions of dollars annually in corporate and other funding, including from what appear to be Chinese, Saudi, and Singaporean sources. 

The 2013 announcement by the Belfer Center of a new focus on China completely disregards human rights and international law, applauds an authoritarian leader, mentions democracy only once and tangentially, and appears flippant or even accepting of the prospect of China replacing the U.S. as the number one power in the world.
It is unclear whether Harvard, in its engagement with China, is following the United Nations principles on corporate social responsibility. 

They are outlined in the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 

Robert Precht writes that U.S. universities operating in China have a duty to follow them, according to which, “an enterprise’s corporate responsibility entails making a clear and public policy commitment, implementing due diligence processes, and providing or cooperating in the creation of remedies for human rights violations. 

Due diligence requires assessing risks of human [rights] violations by both the enterprise itself and by its business partners.”
While my pointing to authoritarian funding sources will be called a “cheap shot”, or the equivalent of an ad hominem attack by academics who benefit from corporate and authoritarian funding, I think that as Chinese influence in the U.S. increases, it is increasingly important for elite institutions of foreign policy to refuse authoritarian funding and return to pure foreign policy research driven by professors not donors. 

It is my belief that corporate and foreign funding of elite institutions lull their foreign policy analysts into a somnolent approach to defense, democracy and human rights, especially when it comes to China. 

The optics of corporate and foreign financial entanglements hurt Harvard’s image of rigorous academic impartiality.
Given that the Harvard Kennedy School of Government is one of the top U.S. foreign policy establishments, we should all be very worried that Allison’s proposal issued forth from those hallowed halls. 

If this pro-China approach is on the surface at Harvard and elsewhere, what lurks beneath? 

I believe the same applies to other foreign or corporate-funded elite foreign policy establishments in the U.S., such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Asia Society, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

While all of these establishments have great people, and elements within them that are pro-democratic and pro-human rights, there is a palpable defeatism and lack of emphasis on these liberal topics, and an acceptance of authoritarian realist arguments, that I find disturbing. 

Realism is not tough when it promotes appeasement, it is weak. 

By showing fear, it invites attack. 

Appeasement actually increases the risk of war.
Elite foreign policy think tanks like the Belfer Center are environments largely devoid of the oxygen of the billions whose human rights are violated, and who yearn for more democracy. 

In these institutions, pro-authoritarian proposals such as Allison’s can be made, unopposed. 

Human rights and democracy can be largely ignored while enjoying Champagne and canapés with corporate and authoritarian Chinese donors. 

By falling over themselves in search of ever greater funding, these establishments are out of touch with the people. 

But they are very much in power. That is a threat to democracy.

Their elite myopia causes a bias toward corporate preferences in international relations. 

And these corporate preferences are for a symbiosis of peace, trade and profit. 

Prima facie, that sounds splendid. 

Academics and policymakers alike applaud, even luxuriate in, this positive effect of international trade on keeping the peace. 

But their elision of billions of humans who suffer under the “peace” of increasingly authoritarian governments is inexcusable. 

In Allison’s proposal, for example, the Chinese-manufactured risk of nuclear war with North Korea leads to the implied conclusion that peace should be purchased at any cost, including the cost of suspending democracy and human rights for South Korean citizens, because they would lose those rights under a stipulation of rule by a pro-Beijing Seoul. 

This begs the question. 

If South Korea is not worth fighting for, what is? 

Japan? 

Hawaii? 

America west of the Mississippi? 

In his panicked embrace of peace, that has been left unanswered.
Allison has written a piece that I have made a case in point for a much larger issue of increasing Chinese dominance through violence, threats of violence, and economic influence. 

The increasingly global dominance of China is no minor threat. 

Allison’s proposal is a testament to that. 

China uses violence and economics to seek territorial expansion and increased global influence, and does so through direct attacks on our values of liberal democracy, even in the heart of our most prestigious universities.
Allison makes China’s argument, with absolutely no mention of costs to democracy or human rights. 

He focuses on the threat of nuclear war as if we should run scared at the very mention of this horrific outcome. 

No. 

We and our values must stand resolved before such threats. 

The U.S. and our allies are far more powerful than North Korea and its allies, including China. 

It would be foolish to allow North Korea and China to threaten us with nuclear weapons, and then give concessions as a response. 

That will only encourage more threats down the road, and more concessions. 

That is not peace, it is the failed strategy of appeasement.

The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, including the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), operate with the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group including, USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships in the western Pacific region June 1, 2017. 

It is time for Harvard to stop allowing professors to take corporate or foreign funding for foreign policy research. 

With an endowment of $36 billion, Harvard has enough money to fund these projects. 

If Harvard truly cares about education, Harvard should encourage donors to give to other far less fortunate universities where dollars will stretch further and cover education, not catering and the compensation of its fund managers. 

Seven of them made a total of $58 million in 2015. 

Perhaps the decrease in political bias, or appearance of such, that results from a principled refusal of foreign and corporate money will help clarify education at Harvard. 

Clarity is all-important during these dangerous times.
The motto of Harvard is Veritas, Latin for “Truth.” 

The Chinese government methodically suppresses truth through disinformation and draconian restrictions on freedom of speech. 

Harvard, per its motto, should take a far more principled stand against the authoritarianism that China, and especially Xi Jinping, is increasingly attempting to foist upon not only Asia, but the world. 

There can be no place for elision or appeasement. 

If you are not against China’s aggression and violation of human rights, you are not Harvard.