do chinese students change when they go
overseas
by this i mean you know when chinese
people go to study overseas
do they integrate what's the deal
the reason i'm talking about this is
there's been a couple of incidences
lately where
you know chinese students have been
protesting and making a big racket
when they don't agree with something in
their universities things like that
and there was also a professor i believe
he was fired for
trying to ask chinese students to stop
speaking chinese
now before you think i'm going to start
this video by
insulting them and telling everybody
that oh you're
you're in america or you're in canada
you have to speak english that's not the
case
because i know a lot of foreigners in
china who refuse to speak chinese
i mean it's just human nature when you
travel to a strange place you tend to
try to find your own
you tend to try and stick together with
people that you're familiar with people
from the same culture that you can share
the same language
i think to a certain degree chinese
people are maybe a little bit
more like this because you can basically
go anywhere in the world and you'll find
a china town where
basically all the chinese people
congregate they still all speak chinese
many of them can't actually speak the
language
and they're not very good at integrating
i'm going to be honest i think chinese
people are
probably one of the worst groups of
people the chinese diaspora
when it comes to integration into other
cultures
however i think it's totally fine for
chinese students to be speaking chinese
when they're on a foreign campus
let's talk about some of the negatives
and some of the positives when it comes
to
chinese students studying overseas there
have been some crazy incidences as
mentioned before recently
you know the ethnic tibetan woman who
was
you know she was voted in as the class
president or whatever it was of her
association
led to massive amounts of effort from
the chinese student body at the
university to get her ousted and they
attacked her and they did all their
dastardly usual
little tricks and that's just not
something that you do
when you're overseas in another country
however it seems totally acceptable
within chinese especially student bodies
and little groups and communities
overseas
to disregard the local laws and put the
laws of china above
the laws of the local country that
they're living in whereas the absolute
opposite
uh is happening in china there's no way
that you could ever
put forth your laws your political ideas
anything like that in china because you
would immediately be censored
and shut down probably detained or
deported especially if you're
vocal enough about it um and i'm living
proof of that just by making videos
talking about you know basic things that
are a problem in china things that i
observe that
affect my life has led to you know
attacks against my wife
visits from the police attacks against
my family by nationalists all sorts of
nonsense
so if i were to go and try and i don't
know talk about something politically
sensitive like
taiwan or tibet or xinjiang and the
concentration camps anything like that
i can guarantee you 100 that my entire
extended chinese family would be
harassed
i would be detained deported etc etc
it's just the way it goes
however the mindset of chinese law and
the chinese idea
is carried pretty much everywhere around
the world with these big groups of
students and it's not broken up because
unfortunately they stick together which
is natural and normal and i have nothing
wrong with that like
like i said before i myself when i
studied in the chinese uh university
uh shenzhen university of course i used
to stick around with other people that
spoke english so you know i'd hang out
with the koreans and the japanese and
the
other spanish people various other
people from other european countries who
could speak english we used to hang out
together we'd go out and have barbecue
together
and very seldom would we hang out with
our chinese classmates and peers and
that's kind of how it works
the difference is we did not try to
impose our political views
and our draconian political government
messages on to anyone
in china because that's just not what
you do so
we've had a couple of these incidents
where the local chinese
student bodies have gone out and tried
to attack professors because they want
to talk about tiananmen square or
something
or you know attack an event where
there's a taiwanese food store being set
up at a university and they don't like
the idea that
taiwan the taiwanese food store can say
taiwan and have a taiwanese flag
you know it's one of those things where
they're like no no no that's not allowed
so they go and they complain
they even get the local chinese
consulate involved and things get
shut down and the problem is something
making it even worse
is the fact that the chinese government
is complicit in helping these student
bodies
you know on top of that all of the local
universities are so
dependent on the money coming in from
chinese students that they even turn a
blind eye or even allow these things to
happen
and support these actions against
free speech or just normal everyday sort
of occurrences
so it's a very bad sort of mixture of
nationalism uh failure to integrate
willingless willingness i should say a
lack of willingness to integrate
and um constant sort of government soft
power being pushed on the students
and sadly those who really do want to
integrate
are discouraged from doing so because if
they do try to stand up or if they want
to go and
try food from the taiwanese food store
the other chinese students will oust
them they will take photos they will
report them to their local student
councils chinese student councils as
being
traitors and they will get too much
hassle
and so it prevents them out of fear from
changing their mind or participating in
anything that's got anything to do with
tibet or anything that's got anything to
do with xinjiang or
you name it they'll stay away and so
all that's happening is this very toxic
sort of
closed off bubble of a circle of
political ideology and so on in the
universities when it comes to the
chinese students
and it's not their fault i'd like you to
know that it's not their fault it's just
the way the whole system has
turned against them and all of my
chinese friends who
share similar ideas to to me when it
comes to freedom of speech etc they
suffer the most because they can't
voice their opinions and when they talk
to me they tell me that they agree with
me but they just simply
cannot ever in public say that they
agree with what i have to say which is
such a shame and i'm so
tired of seeing people silenced for
having an opinion
you know it takes a lot of strength to
stand up to
a big giant like china
and as a chinese person who has an idea
that's different
to what the government pushes you will
be facing an almost insurmountable task
and you have to understand that someone
like myself
who's not chinese i'm able to voice my
opinions because no matter how much they
attack me and no matter how much i'm
tried they try to silence me
at the end of the day because i'm not
chinese i have that little out
i can escape in other words i can escape
from
complete control my passport allows me
to
move to another country where i'm out of
the reach of the chinese government
where they cannot
just detain me and grab me and censor me
and
do whatever they want to do but if you
are a chinese citizen
especially the way chinese families work
they have
so much control over those individuals
that it's just
unfair because if you were to say
something
that goes against the chinese government
and i'm not suggesting people do this
i'm just
using it as an example they then have
the option of going after your extended
family
and putting exit bans on them like what
happened recently to those two uh u.s
citizens you know their father is a
corrupt official
surprise surprise who fled china with a
lot of money
uh corrupt bribe money and so on and he
disappeared
and he has nothing to do with his two
children who you know
are now u.s citizens because they grew
up in america and they
travel back to china and china just
won't let them leave
the government i should say just won't
let them leave and it's this kind of
thing which scares people into silence
because
chinese families the way it works is the
children feel responsible for
for their parents that's just how it
works and their grandparents they feel
like they're beholden to them incredibly
responsible
and i think that goes for just about any
society around the world
you do want to care about your parents
and you know they brought you up they
gave you
you know an education at the very least
they made sure you survived through in
your infant stages etc so you feel
indebted to them
but it's so much more in chinese culture
and so if someone threatens you
to go after your parents threatens to go
after your extended family
it's probably the worst thing that could
happen to somebody
and so this is what keeps control
over all of the students and various
chinese people living abroad
is this fear that if they were to step
out of line
and change and integrate too much and do
something that
upsets the chinese government that their
entire extended family
would be at risk it doesn't it's not
conducive to people having an open mind
let's put it that way
and that's why you'll find a lot of
chinese students who are studying in a
different country
still think that they're in china they
still think that they have the same
rights and the same support of their
government and that everybody else
should listen to their rhetoric it's
kind of annoying it is what it is
and that's just the way it is and you
know what i know a couple of americans
and
other nationalities who come to china
who have the same sort of attitude
anyway so
it's not just the chinese anyway guys i
hope you enjoyed this
thank you very much for watching and
until next time you know the drill as
always
stay awesome and every single friday you
can catch another serpent today right
over here
wednesday another low 86 1pm eastern
standard time
and most importantly adv china every
single monday 1pm eastern standard time