Do US-China educational exchanges serve American interests?

well good morning good afternoon good evening uh for those of you who have not had the honor of meeting i'm john allen and i'm the president of the brookings institution in washington d.c on behalf of my colleagues here at brookings in particular the john l thornton china center i'm pleased to welcome you all to this event which aims to provide a venue for sharing perspectives on the current state of u.s china educational exchanges and the future direction of these programs i'd like to begin by offering my profound thanks to the distinguished guests who are joining us today who represent the best of both the diplomatic and the higher education establishments we know how busy you all are ladies and gentlemen especially given the many many challenges facing every institution throughout the country today and around the world means a great deal uh to us for you to join us in this important event thank you sincerely this great group of thoughtful leaders from universities and educational institutions and the policy sector have deep experience establishing and sustaining educational exchanges and they'll help provide us an understanding of how changes in the u.s china relations have impacted these programs we also invite them to offer their thoughts on the benefits of such exchange programs and provide some concrete suggestions for imagining such programs and exchanges as we go forward under this current geopolitical environment for our part here at brookings we've had a long championing of educational collaboration uh both in the united states and around the world for more than 60 years brookings has partnered with sister institutions uh one in particular washington university in st louis which was also founded by robert s brookings to educate the public in the private sectors and i'm so pleased that this long-standing partnership is reflected today with the participation in the presence of wash university's vice chancellor kurt durks furthermore for the past 50 years brookings has hosted an exchange visitor program with the u.s department of state to that end i'm also delighted that we're able to be joined this morning by my friend richard stingle who oversaw many of these people-to-people exchanges as the under secretary of state for public policy and public affairs ambassador stapleton roy ambassador julia bloch chang and susan thornton three more of our distinguished guests have also worked in the diplomatic sphere to ensure international exchanges and 15 years ago brookings and xinhua center brookings established the xinhua center as the first of its kind platform to promote exchanges between a u.s think tank and a chinese university and to that end i am thrilled that we are joined by higher education leaders who formed similar partnerships in china including columbia university president lee bollinger new york university shanghai vice chancellor jeffrey lehmann an american council and the american council on education president ted mitchell since the revival of people-to-people relations with china a half century ago these and other bilateral exchanges have sustained the u.s china relationship forming countless bonds across the pacific that have endured many ups and downs and in fact supported the relationship when other aspects seemed so much under strain indeed it has become clear over these years that at the core u.s china relations are not just determined by each national government they're defined by individuals by mayors and school administrators and teachers and scientists artists athletes entrepreneurs and so many more that have built people-to-people relations between our two great countries but we face the reality that china u.s relations have grown strained in recent years and are often characterized by confrontation the people-to-people relations have also been impacted uh even before the covet 19 froze travel last year some recent incidents in both countries have raised serious concerns in the united states racial profiling and rising anti-asian violence and in china growing anti-american nationalism this also occurs against the backdrop of increasing american and global pressure on china's human rights record against the uyghurs and hong kong democracy and the increasing frequency and intensity of threats against taiwan by bringing these thoughtful leaders together today we hope to begin looking ahead to where exchange programs that promote understanding and respect in both societies can go from here and in so doing our discussion will build on the efforts of those that have laid this past path for us in the past the u.s signed its first fulbright agreement with any nation with china in 1947 in the words of senator fulbright whose namesake program has allowed thousands and thousands of students and scholars to study and work abroad over the past 75 years i quote him now by saying we must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom empathy and perception and there is no way of doing that except through education unquote unfortunately the fulbright and peace corps programs in china were canceled in the past couple of years i nevertheless hope that fulbright's powerful words can guide our discussion today as well as our collective efforts going forward in this evolving environment serious discord is courses needed to determine what policy adjustments might advance american interests in the years to come and we at brookings are pleased to offer a forum to contribute to that discourse today so now i'd like to turn the program over to the moderator of the first panel of my friend and colleague senior fellow chungley who is the director of the john l thornton china center here at brookings he'll introduce our first guest our first panel of distinguished guests again ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us into the audience thank you as well chung lee the floor is yours sir thank you john for your passionate and insightful opening remarks the quote by senator fulbright not only provides a historic perspective on public diplomacy but also illustrate the far-reaching impact of educational and cultural ties when top chinese and american leaders launched bilateral educational exchanges in washington dc in january 1979 really 42 years ago they explicitly linked sino-us educational exchanges with broader exploration for world peace and regional stability deng xiaoping told the international media i quote it is my belief that extensive context and cooperation among nations and increased inter changes and understanding between people will make the world we live in more safe more stable and more peaceful end quote in response president jimmy carter proclaimed our aim is to make the kind of exchange between to our countries no longer the sec exception but the norm no longer a matter of headlines and historians but the routine part of every day that everyday life of both the chinese and american people end quote over the past four decades u.s china education exchanges have indeed become so commonplace that people tend to overlook the depths and the breadth of these exchanges and this transformative impact on the educational system in both countries and beyond in 2019 about 370 000 prc students were enrolled in american schools marking the 10th executive year that chinese students represented the largest proportion of foreign students in the united states accounting for about 34 today however the pervasive view in washington about educational exchanges with china is no longer one of hope for positive change through engagement but rather one of fear that these engagements may undermine american supremacy and american security such a fear led the trunk administration to attempt to decouple with china these policy initiatives include sensationalizing china as a whole of society's threat to the united states targeting chinese and chinese american scientists claiming that beijing is weaponizing chinese students enroll in u.s universities cancelling the peace corps and fulbright program in china as john just mentioned and restricting members of the chinese communist party and their families about 300 million people from visiting the united states noticeably the bipartisan legislation proposed last week on the senate floor the strategic competition act of 2021 is very much in the same spirit of course these u.s initiatives could be seen as response to controversial conduct and restrictions made by chinese side yet one can reasonably argue that what is at the state is not just the grooming uh outlook of four decades of education exchange exchanges coming to an end but worse the dark prospect of disastrous confrontation between two superpowers the violent situation administration is reviewing its china policies while president biden's official ban on using phrases like a china virus chinese virus or gongflu and his executive order against the racial profiling of asian americans are sound policy moves the new administration's rhetoric on cooperation is short in specifics including on educational collaboration for the foreign policy community same tanks and education institutions serious discourse is needed to address the key question do u.s china education exchanges serve american interests we need to have a clear minded and fact-based evaluation about the past present and the prospect of these exchanges our first panel will look into educational ties and their impact from the government and ngo perspective we are honored to have with us three legendary figures all of them have served as a senior u.s government officials who have had substantial uh experience in educational engagement and all have been instrumental in promoting public diplomacy ambassador stephen lloyd was born in nanjing and grew up in shanghai in his various roles from his participation in the secret negotiations leading to the establishment of diplomatic relations to his service as ambassador to china from chairing the advisory council of the hopkins 19 center to directing the kissinger institute for chinese u.s studies he has always viewed u.s china relations it's not limited to state to state affairs but also include people-to-people ties richards think that uh single a rhodes scholar and a time magazine editor was the longest serving under secretary of state for public policy for worker uh diplomacy in u.s history in the obama administration when he oversaw educational exchanges including the fulbright program his 2019 book information wars how we lost the global battle against this information and what we can do about it is based on his experience as under secretary of state richard was a member of the joe biden presidential transition agency review team to support transition efforts related to the u.s agency for global media last but certainly not the least ambassador julie chen block was born in san dom and grew up in shanghai as ambassador to nepal appointed by president george h.w bush julia was the first u.s ambassador of asian descent in american history early in her career she was a peace corps volunteer in malaysia and went on hold many leadership posts in the public and private sectors julia is the founder and president of the nonprofit u.s china education trust each panelist will offer brief opening remarks which will be followed followed by a discussion in the q a as we begin our discussion i invite our viewers to submit uh submit questions by email to events at brookings.edu again events at brookings.edu and join the conversation on twitter at hashtag u.s china with that i would like to first turn to ambassador roy the floor is yours good morning or good evening depending on where you are uh thank you chung i was 45 years in the united states foreign service and i am a great fan of educational exchanges because it is a premier example of mutually a mutually beneficial program uh i confess i am prejudiced on this subject my parents were educational missionaries in china uh they worked in education in china over a period spanning over 40 years my father was on the staff of the university of nanking in in nanjing china from the early 1930s until the communist revolution but we stayed on after the communist takeover and my brother and i uh spent a year in china until the korean war broke out when the korean war broke out my parents sent my brother and me back to the united states but they stayed on it was a bad decision the climate had turned far more hostile than the current situation in u.s china relations my parents were under house arrest for six months culminating in a public trial and my father and mother were expelled from china as imperialist agents in 1976 as a as an american foreign service officer i began to again visit the people's republic of china you would think that the entire missionary educational endeavor in china had had no impact there wasn't a sign anywhere of anyone who had been exposed to the u.s educational experience but in 1978 and 1979 when we established diplomatic relations all of a sudden it turned out that participants in american educational programs were like 17-year cicadas they had gone underground and you saw no indication of their presence and all of a sudden you encountered everywhere you went in china people who wanted to boast about the fact that they had attended american educational institutions so it's hard to think of any other type of program that can have that type of deep long-lasting impact on a country when relations have gone from friendship and wartime alliance to hostility and and actually physical combat between our forces and yet the impact of the educational exchanges that we had engaged in with china were a lasting factor if you had asked me in 1979 whether we would have tens of thousands of western educated especially american educated chinese officials and people embedded in leadership positions in the chinese government in municipalities in the educational system in the legal system in the cultural life of the country i would have said that was laughable and yet that's in fact what has happened the majority of the chinese who come to the united states for education are here because of the quality and the prestige of an american academic degree in 2015 the undergraduates actually for the first time exceeded the number of graduate students who were coming to the united states so this idea that all china does is to send students to the united states to study hard sciences and steal our secrets is a wild distortion of the reality in in fact the undergraduates come in some cases because it's easier to get into american premier educational institutions than it is to go through the horrendous higher education exam in china necessary to qualify for the top universities in china but in 45 years of dealing with foreigners as a us government official i have never encountered a negative example of foreigners who had gone through a u.s educational experience in every case it made them easier to deal with and they had a better understanding of why we americans behave the way we do that's the background i would start out with thanks chuck thank you so much ambassador roy i mean your personal story is profoundly i mean uh revealing and inspiring actually when you refer to students coming to us i was one of them and um in the early early years and i'm you know grateful forever and uh thank you for that put in the historic perspective and with your very um key observation about the impact so next speaker uh richard floyd is yours uh thank you chung um i want to thank brookings it's great to be here thank my friend uh john allen and my even older friend john thornton uh so i'm i'm delighted to be here like ambassador roy i'm a gigantic fan of educational exchanges and people-people diplomacy i think it is one of the it's the golden end of uh american soft power um you've heard the statistics uh already but i mean i remember when i was going through my confirmation hearing i was drummed into me to say that foreign students in america is one of our largest exports it brings in nearly 40 billion dollars to our gdp in fact the chinese students alone bring in 15 billion dollars and uh of course the idea of these educational exchanges is not monetary it's not about dollars and cents it's about communicating our values it's about reciprocal altruism it's about things that benefit both sides of the equation and um again i've also never seen a a a negative example of it so of course the answer to the question that we're here to discuss today is do u.s china exchanges benefit america the the short answer is yes i mean they're in our interests uh they comply with our values the question though um and by the way i'm the only non-china expert on this panel so i'm looking at it more or less as a civilian but if i were looking at it as a policy maker i guess what i would look at is you know some of these questions is it a good thing that one third of all of the students studying foreign students studying in america are chinese this idea that people come to the u.s and somehow are imbued with an understanding of american values and american ideas is a good thing but are there some students that come here that are inoculated against that i don't know these are all questions that that policy makers should um should look at and address i also uh john i sent someone sent me a copy of chung's new book which is about shanghai but there's a tremendous amount in it about um educational exchanges and and there's an amazing statistic and it relates to what ambassador roy was saying when when china opened up again about you sending uh chinese kids abroad in 1978 there were nine chinese students studying in america in the last year that we measured it there was 370 000 it's an extraordinary change and the other thing that is also interesting is when we look at these numbers um uh of chinese students here it's actually even though it's a third of the students here it's decreasing as a proportion of where chinese students are going more chinese students are now going to australia they're going to other places to use for read zakaria's line even though higher ed for us is a big strategic advantage there's been a rise of the rest people are going all over the world so again if i were a policy maker i'd look at what is is there a difference between chinese students studying here versus french students or malaysian students or students from from any other country and then i would look at what what is there any policy changes that we should make i did check with my with my old colleagues at eca at the state department and yes there's a few a handful of chinese students mostly researchers that may come with a with a different purpose than the lion's share of chinese students most of whom are funded personally 90 of whom are but again my largest point is this we have a soft power advantage over china over everybody and one of them is our openness and yes there are people that can sometimes abuse our openness but we at the end of the day we always have to rely on our values we have to rely on our openness otherwise we're not americans so so i would i would restore all of the exchanges with china uh i would continue to rely on our openness and i'd have policy makers uh as the another policymaker once said trust but verify when it comes to exchange students richard is so well said you rightly emphasize value soft power and um also to a great extent also uh regional stability and the world peace this is um you know also uh zhang said early on so uh again thank you so much for uh sharing your insights and certainly that it's not about the economic and financial incentive which is relevant but it's not the center piece at all thank you so much so uh um julia floyd is yours we cannot hear you you should you should emu okay sorry about that i said thank you son and thanks to brookings for organizing this very important uh discussion uh you have a unanimous panel of course i'm a fan of education exchange as well as the other speakers the united states has benefited immeasurably from education exchange by attracting the best and brightest from china and around the world long the preferred destination of international students for decades the u.s valued education exchange as a powerful tool of soft power as bruce stengel said to create understanding and influence with other nations beginning in 1978 when china launched its reform and opening up education exchange has been a pillar of u.s china relations promoting mutual understanding fostering trust encouraging research and innovation u.s china education exchange today however as others have mentioned has become enmeshed in the bitter state of relations between the two countries china's new geopolitical aggressiveness and america's alarm about the potential of china to out competed economically and technologically which is now nationally entrenched and bipartisan as shown by the recent introduction of the strategic competition act of 2021 that son you mentioned um all of this has thrown a web of suspicion over chinese exchange students and scholars as well as chinese scientists and entrepreneurs in the u.s amid charges of academic espionage ipr theft and influence operations the tip for chinese response has been to threaten detaining americans in china if their scholars with ties to the military are prosecuted it's no idle threat as in 2018 china detained two canadians days after canada arrested huawei cfo manuenzo to comply with a u.s extradition request the two canadians have now been charged with espionage-related crimes and held without access to counselor or legal support the securitization and criminalization of education exchange has deprived both countries of the most effective tool for lessening tensions when it is needed the most it has moreover stigmatized asian americans contributing to the rise in anti-asian hate crimes by nearly 150 percent mostly in los angeles and new york in 2 2020 alone we need to understand the counterproductiveness of undoing education exchange as a fundamental pillar in u.s china relations the costs far outweigh benefits by making chinese students unwelcome in the u.s we are just shooting ourselves in the foot times constraints allow me to make four points as to why we should reset the trump administration's u.s china education exchange policies i shouldn't say we i should say the biden and this administration should do so um first the american economy you say money is not important but it is important for some people the american economy is taking a big hit the commerce department estimates that international students contributed 44 billion dollars to the u.s economy in 2018 15 billion of which came from chinese students students student visas fell by 61 in the first nine months of 2020 with the biggest drop from china which fell by almost 70 percent cover 19 has kept many chinese students away but chinese students also cited uncertain visa policies and anti-asian racism as their main concerns nafsa the association of international educators reported that the continuing decline in international student enrollment since the fall of 2016 has cost the us economy 11.8 billion dollars and more than 65 000 jobs second more than money i agree with the others more than money international students bring incalculable academic and cultural benefits to our classrooms our communities and our country international students and scholars create jobs drive innovation enrich research diversify our university and become our best ambassadors and allies when they return to their countries or when they travel around the world third the biden administration has yet to roll back the trump administration's restrictions on student visas and academic exchanges including the cancellation of the peace corps and fulbright programs as mentioned in china time is not on our side as international students studying in the us have been declining canada has seen a 68 increase in international students this year in 2020 the united kingdom for the first time has overtaken the us as the top destination of choice for chinese students fourth while allies and competitors alike are piling on incentives to attract international students the u.s is squandering our edge and losing our advantage particularly with chinese students we are diminishing our access and influence with chinese policymakers thought leaders and the general public and weakening the global preeminence of u.s university systems at the same time while worrying chinese actions have pushed washington to rightly adjust its china policies let me conclude with a quote from then president of the association of american universities mary sue coman and peter mcpherson who is on you set's advisor counsel and president of the association of public and land-grant universities and let me quote we can safeguard ourselves from foreign threats without damaging the very open elements that have made our university-based research enterprise the best in the world i quote the united states should not be so afraid that's my what my comment there is an interdependence between china and the us and we are bound together in many ways we will have to find ways to deal with each other and we need the normalization of education exchange to do that so thank you very much well thank you so much julia yeah you cover some of the you know very unfortunate events um in the united states in uh you know uh uh the world uh the even china canada relations and also u.s channel relations and also provided uh really a very uh important recommendations now um thank you and also thank you all three speakers for your thoughtful remarks now i would like to ask a few questions as a moderator to begin our conversation also including questions from the audience the first is a general question you each of you are already covered but i just want to very concise language one two two sentences answers now what would you tell the by the administration as it reviews the u.s policy toward china in the area of educational exchange exchanges what should be the top priority to bring uh exchanges back to the right track and what miss steps should be avoided again you already talked about that um that is these issues but use a very strong word i think a lot of people listen to us uh including you know people in the administration including medias and etc so please just one or two sentences start with you uh probably ambassador roy what i would say is don't drive chinese students into the higher education arms of other countries that denies us the many benefits we have derived from their presence here and does not control the fact that they will get access to higher education in sensitive areas in other countries let's remember the soviet union stole our nuclear secrets without the benefit of educational exchanges so our secrets are vulnerable and we need to protect them but restricting educational exchanges is not the best way to do it my final sentence comes from deng xiaoping he said he was criticized for the openness that china was going through in 1986 that was a encouraging student unrest in their universities and he said and i quote there are those who say we should not open our windows because open windows let in flies and other insects they want the windows to stay closed so we all expire from lack of air but we say open the windows breathe the fresh air and at the same time fight the flies and insects that would be my advice thank you loud and clear although longer than two sentences uh i'm not gonna deal with insects and flies at all um the very short answer is we we should restore the peace corps program we should restore the uh fulbright program uh unbalanced the the benefits way outweigh the costs of our uh exchange programs with china as as julia said and the other reason is as ambassador roy said exchange programs are a big strategic advantage for us and the chinese are spending a lot of money on their own public diplomacy and soft power another statistic and i'll leave it at this from from chung's book there are now more african students studying in china then in the united states that ain't a good thing thank you so much when we talk about the competition that's the area of good competition and uh thank you for uh raising that issue julia i wanted to say what state and bruce said but in the interest of time i agree stop driving chinese students into the arms of other countries diminishing our own self power but let me add a new element i think the biden administration has within its power to begin to reshape the criminalization and the securitization of education exchange do not look at chinese students as a whole of society threat against the united states we derive tremendous benefits one of which is to retain and send this is from your book 90 of the phd students who study stem they join our laboratories rather than going home now they can't stay they're going home and guess what china is welcome coming them with open arms and we are losing a tremendous a brain power and asset thank you so much and um now i will also combine some audience questions there's a lot of good questions i would combine them together in my uh you know i wanted to just address because i'm concerned that uh restraint that i will ask each of you one question and please make sure your answer is about the two minutes or less now ambassador roy you mentioned uh service union and you are not only an expert on the history of u.s china engagement but also on the history of u.s russia relations the difference between the u.s ties with china and russia is that there are few uh uh more um you know far more uh students from china studying the us and many of those chinese students have returned to china and are playing a very important role in all works of life you know uh some have even rising to become high-level leaders in the chinese government like you know a graduate of the harbor uh candidate school now is it short-sighted for u.s to overlook this difference between u.s relations with china and russia short answer to less than two minutes yes it is short-sighted there is an enormous difference in terms of the role that the united states has played in education in china and the almost non-existent role that we have played in education in russia this has consequences one of the advantages of educational exchanges is it provides people who understand how other societies think one of our major errors post-world war ii was in failing adequately to anticipate the russian reaction to nato expansion and the reason for that was some of our top officials who had so-called soviet russian credentials misread the chinese of the the uh russian reaction but george cannon and my generation of soviet specialists all anticipated that russia would react the way it did in georgia first and in ukraine secondly because we had lived in the soviet union and had a better appreciation of how russians looked at the question not the way that we had academically studied russia as an academic subject which didn't necessarily give insight into how russians themselves thought about the question this is an enormous advantage that we gain from educational exchanges and chinese now have a much better understanding of how americans think about issues than we have about how chinese think and that's a strategic uh negative on our side which educational exchanges can help to address thank you so much i mean um ambassador this is really a very very important message and now richard thank you first of all thank you for mentioning my book your latest uh best-selling book information wars extensively discusses russian disinformation campaigns a u.s intelligence report released uh in middle uh in mid uh march months ago concluded that it was russia not china that interfered in the 2020 u.s presidential election and to certain extent to echo what uh you uh your book uh of course not to mention about that not compare these countries but largely focus on russian uh this information now that finding differs from some remarks made by senior officials in the trunk administration during the campaign that level accusations against china some critics consider these force accusations to be disinformation that has contributed to the increasingly negative views among the american public regarding china rightly or wrongly and uh reinforce the hawkish approach toward china in washington how can we how can you know we help you know especially from your expert's expert view help confront this kind of disinformation at home as well as abroad richard yes thank you chung and thanks for mentioning my book by the way john allen is a is a character in my book and um the portrait of him is maybe overly flattering but you can read those sections uh on him if you like um so yes the the i also called donald trump in my book the disinformationist in chief a person who in many ways was the font of disinformation which is the definition of which is is false information used to deceive in that dni report that was released by avril haynes the new um head of director of national intelligence about what happened in the 2020 election says that the chinese considered interfering in our election but decided that it wasn't worth it and they're much more strategic than the russians they they realize we're not that good at this and it could backfire um uh the russians are um as someone wants to fight to find russian artillery strategy they by they fire wildly in all directions um that's what the that's what the russians tried to do um but let's also remember we have to be careful and strategic about it i remember when i was in the state department in 2015 the u.s office of personnel management announced that uh more than 22 million personal files had been stolen from their database by chinese government um uh officials who do uh who do that kind of kind of work so the chinese have capabilities they're just much shooter and more strategic uh in how they use them very sobe analysis and um but one thing also um you said really are very important that uh we americans also openly critical about some of the issues that uh our leaders and et cetera so this is also a very important yes we have some problems we will try very hard to fix this problem and um uh you know uh julia one of the main objectives of your non-profit u.s china education trust is to promote american studies program in chinese university it's very much that ambassador roy mentioned that there's a lot of you know much better understanding from chinese side and u.s china largely because of educational exchange now these programs in my observation help chinese students and researchers better understand the american political system economy society and foreign policy including its long-standing value on rule of law civil society media supervision and transparency and the inclusiveness of governance of course america has a lot of problems a lot of challenges to overcome but that's the things we wanted to uh uh you know have a conversation with chinese while some of these programs are appreciated by chinese sentiment in china today is dominated by growing cynicism criticism about the united states and anti-american nationalism is this observation too superficial or premature the chinese sentiment temporarily or have chinese elites become arrogant forgetting american long-standing generosity and good will toward china and the chinese people or is it more to do with what's going on in the u.s how would you reconcile is competing contending explanations two minutes you took more than two minutes i think okay yeah please move to the next panel i would say this it's neither superficial nor premature i personally and then and the u.s china education trust through our program have seen a rise in chinese i would call self-confidence and pride in their country's achievements over the last 40 years and why not some of us even in america have called it a miracle the transformation of china's economy perhaps at the expense of the united states but still it's their achievement and why is it not superficial because it's visible everywhere i mean just look at shanghai we're both from there i went back to china in 1977 for the first time when china was just opening up and i went with the american council of young political leaders i was young then anyway our plane landed there was hardly an airport there were hardly any lights and when the point stopped they put bricks underneath the wheels and when we got on the bus it was a decrepit bus we went to town there were street lights were there hardly any and where there were some lamp posts there were men playing cards or whatever underneath the light obviously they didn't have electricity in the homes not in all the homes and when we woke up the next next morning over 10 ammon square you only heard the bells of bicycles there were no cars look at shanghai today i don't like the traffic but look what they have a accomplished with theirs you know elegant and you know brilliant skyscrapers they're highways they're they're they're they're streets without potholes like in washington dc and their airports are state-of-the-art and let's not even mention trains i would love to go from washington dc to new york post pandemic in one hour they have those kinds of smart trains or bullet trains we do not okay good yeah so is that enough for you well what are your favorite things but certainly you can see the multi-dimensional impact of educational exchanges economic social uh even political to a certain extent it's of course china is not moving towards democracy but there's a lot real change in chinese society yeah very important and i agree uh of course that the the in term of climate change the concept climate change civil society they all emerge you know uh in uh in china by chinese uh uh some well some educate the u.s some not now there's a question just coming in but uh probably we will not have time to discuss but maybe it's good for the next panel actually it is good for the next panel it's from peggy brunson at the institute of international education uh her question is will students and scholars from china still want to come to united states or will they prefer canada or uk or australia as also richard mentioned earlier so i will leave it to whether the next panel will have time to discuss that question um now i know that we could continue this uh you know really stimulating conversation for much longer by the way we have to end uh the first panel discussion now thank you uh to uh our three distinguished panelists um from whom we have learned so much in such a short amount of time and for me i know a great deal uh staple uh richard and julia we are so grateful for your ongoing work to advance people-to-people relations now it's time to turn to our second panel featuring uh perspective from the higher education uh arena which will be moderated by my good friend and colleague susan santon after retiring from her position as acting assistant secretary of state for east asia and pacific affairs after almost 30 years in the diplomatic corps we were thrilled that she accepted our invitation to join the brooke's jungle southern channel center as a non-resident senior fellow two years ago by the way she is not related to our namesake susan is one of america's greatest source of sources of knowledge and insight on u.s china relations today susan over to you thanks so much chung for that very generous introduction and i've been listening to my former colleagues with great interest and admiration and thanks to all of the former panelists for being with us today it's such an important topic the previous panel spoke to us from the perspective of kind of government policy making what are we looking at in terms of potential policy remedies and actions but uh the second panel here today is assembled from a number of luminaries from our academic community and it's really america's universities that have been on the front line in trying to deal with all of the tumult in the policy making surrounding u.s china educational exchange over the past few years and those who have the best lens on exactly what our u.s interests in these u.s china educational exchanges so i'm really pleased today to have to be able to introduce to you and have shared comments with us uh four distinguished uh academic representatives first we have lee bollinger who is the president of columbia university he's the longest serving ivy league president since 2002 he is also a member of the law school faculty at columbia and one of the nation's preeminent first amendment scholars which really warms my heart as i'm also on the a fellow at the yale law school in the china center there so i really appreciate that perspective he's got a number of books out uh most recently uh national security leaks and freedom of the press which is probably timely for our discussion today we also have with us kurt dirks who is the vice chancellor for international affairs and the director of the mcdonnell international scholars academy at washington university in saint louis the mcdonald international scholars academy is a an academy that brings together a number of different uh foreign students in academic disciplines and from a diverse set of countries to develop leadership abilities and uh and connections with each other we also have jeffrey layman with us he is the vice chancellor as john allen mentioned of the nyu shanghai which is the first sino-american joint university he is also a chair of the border board of governors of the amcham in shanghai and he's also a former president of cornell university but he has been living in china for the last 13 years so he'll be bringing his on the ground experience in addition to all of his other previous experiences and then we also have with us ted mitchell who is the president of the american council on education and ted has a very rich background in academics in uh he's currently working in a in a ngo sector but he's also formerly the ceo of the new schools venture fund which was a national investor in u.s education innovation he's also served in leadership roles at ucla and was the president of occidental college so we're going to hear from each of our panelists their perspectives on what are u.s interests in u.s china educational exchange what why are why are these exchanges important what does the future look like and what have they been grappling with in trying to deal with the policy changes there so why don't i start please with you uh president bollinger for uh your thoughts on the subject so uh thanks uh very much for having me uh i um i mean i think i should say uh at the outset that i have a very limited uh perspective on all of this that is uh over the past several years there's been a claim that chinese the chinese government was using exchange programs faculty and students coming from china to u.s universities to steal ideas and to steal secrets and and so on then and i cannot speak i don't feel capable of speaking to the sort of underlying uh problem that is how serious is it and and the like what i can say is that american universities have become the greatest system of higher education in the world over the past many decades precisely because uh we have invited the best people the most talented people from all over the world including from china and we have thousands of students who come and faculty every year to colombia and this happens all across the united states and we just benefited enormously as a society and as a world by having uh having these students and faculty come so so there is let's assume there is a problem uh the fact of the matter is uh it has to be put in a context of something that is just of great great value to the country great value to our universities the second thing i'd say is that um we really as a country lack knowledge about china we lack knowledge about lots of parts of the world have a way to provincial sense of of international affairs in the united states but with china in particular it's striking to me how little uh we know uh in this country about china and that's in part the fault of american universities because i i think we have not built up adequate research uh programs uh on china of course we have some great ones that's not the point the point is how much and i think it's insufficient so the exchange programs we have are enormous benefit on the kind of search for knowledge that we uh we emphasize but it is also the case that we need to learn more uh about china and the rest of the world and student faculty exchanges are a way to do that great thank you so much for that those are terrific introductory comments and i think it gets right to the heart of this uh sort of dilemma that we've kind of been talking about already in the previous panel which is the you know the fact that our education base is such a huge comparative advantage for the united states and a lot of people have talked about this and and our ability to attract talent from all over the world the best and brightest from everywhere is what has made it so and so we can't take this kind of zero risk attitude toward bringing people in to that system if we want to keep the comparative advantage thanks very much let me go please uh to you uh vice chancellor dirks for your for your thoughts on the matter you're right at the heart of this at washu um working with people from all kinds of different countries and leadership programs i'm sure that uh you have a really interesting perspective there on this well thanks susan and thanks to the brookings institution for hosting day what uh hard to imagine the more timely topic that we're dealing with there are a lot of timely topics but this is amongst them um so at washu we have like all the panelists here a lot of academic commerce if you will um with china and uh i guess the short stories you know we think it adds value not only to us watching university but also to the us and frankly to to society at large which i'll talk about in just a minute um our our engagement with international institutions including china they really obviously have have uh two sides of the ledger of it uh costs and benefits and a lot of the costs have been been mentioned and documented well in the news already so if you think about the three big um costs or challenges um that have been mentioned uh one is national security issues um second they're related about the loss of intellectual property particularly the intellectual property funded by u.s tax dollars since the nih and then third you hear certainly a lot about immigration or at least that have in the trump administration and to some degree now also those are issues that uh students mentioned issues have been grappling with and i think frankly we as a at least watch you and i think most institutions have largely dealt with those perhaps not completely they're they're impossible to completely stamp out but i think we actually manage those those pretty well um and then you think about let's take a look at that other side of the ledger and there are also three important issues there most of which have been mentioned i'll just highlight those um one is that intellectual capital uh that we get bringing the best and the brightest as i think susan mentioned in their opening comments here uh to the us is is is hard to underestimate what you know having that brain power and that talent uh with us that in the us brings to us and what it can do for the economy the second asset is just thinking about the research collaboration so we talked about some of the concerns about ip high intellectual property but there's a lot most of it most of the research it's done i don't think faces that challenge and so you think about and in fact is really important to the problems we face in the globe so i just look at the faculty at washu and the type of work they're doing with our colleagues in china issues around water quality around air quality climate change aging children social skills you know all those are really important problems that we face as a society and that experts here in the us and experts in china can deal with better than trying to deal with them alone and then the third asset is uh so it's a longer longer run one and that is it's been mentioned and that is this notion of bringing students and faculty together builds relationships and understanding amongst people which is like when you bring young people together uh to develop that understanding that is a long run asset that's going to help us work through conflict to collaborate with an interest alliance all kinds of things and so at the at the mcdonald international scholars academy you mentioned what we do is we'll bring students from not only beijing but also hong kong taiwan and tokyo many other countries from korea as well as south america and africa and you really i think then develop that you need to understand i don't think you're changing people's values this is a question from the prior panel it's that's a that's a harder thing to do but building understanding your relationships is going to pay off i think for us in the long run so in any case those i think that that balance of the ledger i think very clearly weighs uh on the side of these u.s china relationships so look forward to talking talking more about that in the discussion yeah thank you very much that's really a great uh lay down of the sort of the the challenges that we face and also the on the other side of the ledger the advantages and benefits and i do want to dig into some of those and how universities are balancing those when we get into the uh discussion but let's turn uh now to vice chancellor jeff lehmann who um not only has been dealing with the struggles that we're having on these exchanges on the u.s side of the ocean but also no doubt um in in in china itself and the experiences of this sort of joint venture university which you know must must be both breathtakingly stimulating and also frustrating jeff over to you uh thank you susan um i think uh your audience is is sensing uh strong consensus among all the panelists from both sides uh and i'm not gonna disagree with what anyone else has said uh so far i'll just uh probably frame very similar points in slightly different ways to me when i do my balance of the ledger i focus on four benefits from u.s china educational exchanges and balance them against this one risk of espionage and i'll just talk about them very briefly on the first benefit what i frame is talent recruitment i guess others have spoken about the importance of bringing talent into the u.s um i i would just also flag um the the the fact that um not only are we bringing talent into the u.s and exposing them to american values we are dramatically increasing the likelihood that talent will move to america um we on the last panel we we had uh julia and we had chung who are both examples between 1980 and 2020 the total number of chinese immigrants to the u.s grew from about 350 000 to about two and a half million uh more than half have become u.s citizens uh citizens with higher than average educational achievement uh and employment status um second others have talked about this point about talent development um and and and lee bohanger really uh uh stressed how uninformed america is about the most important foreign country in the world right now which is china we need americans who know more about china in all its complexity um than the rather one-dimensional stories that one can get just from from reading the times um u.s china educational exchanges help american students require acquire that knowledge i don't think we've talked enough about this word exchange we've talked about 370 000 chinese students coming to america we've not talked about uh how few americans come to china and study here and nyu shanghai of course was designed to do that but the total number is is only about 10 000 americans who come each year and that uh as ashley stressed is a terrible uh underdevelopment of american intellectual capital um the third point is is discovery um we really do need innovative responses to global challenges and opportunities and and without question today's best scientific research whether you're talking about covid vaccines or cobia about diagnostic tests often probably usually engage transnational teams and these educational exchanges help students learn how to participate effectively as members of transnational teams like that um the fourth uh benefit uh others in the last panel especially talked a lot about soft power until very recently china's most influential citizens invariably had the highest regard for america largely because of our universities whether they studied at them or their children did the truth is that today those very same people are asking what on earth has happened to america the covid problems gun violence anti-asian racism coup d'etat all of these things are have led to this shift towards the uk it's critical that we restore uh educational exchanges that we reopen our borders so that more chinese students can actually come and get an on-the-ground experience of america to protect our image as a competent honest nation that aspires to live up to our ideals um on this this point that others have mentioned this this uh warning from the justice department in 2018 that universities must not be gullible that china is conducting economic espionage using so-called non-traditional collectors like professors and students it's been two and a half years now the prosecutions that have come forward do not to my mind in any way suggest that america should be foregoing the benefits of academic exchange with china there have been a handful of charges they mostly involve professors who allegedly failed to properly disclose research affiliations with chinese universities obviously those affiliations should always be properly disclosed but they're not uh these charges have not suggested that american universities are a a significant vector for theft of state secrets i i would just conclude with just one important point here which is that american universities the research that we conduct on our campuses very little of it is proprietary we publish our research in journals for the whole world to read and even among the small amount of research that we keep secret only a tiny fraction involves national security so it's really important that we not allow distorted portraits of what goes on at american universities what students visiting students do what visiting researchers do uh to prevent us uh from initiating or maintaining these exchange programs that do provide huge benefits to america so in conclusion i i just have absolutely no doubt that the operation of nyu shanghai over the past eight years and comparable programs at other universities have actually been enormously beneficial to the united states thank you thanks so much jeff and thanks for digging into a couple of these areas that have been raised by people as potentially problematic and sort of talking about what are the strategies for dealing with them and how serious are these problems um i'm so glad you mentioned anti-asian racism and i think that um you know we have to um you know take a sober look at how this is impacting not just the applications of chinese students coming to the u.s but we all know that broader asian communities have been targeted in this as part of the fallout from the deterioration in u.s china relations and this is something i think too that policymakers have to think about more deeply and be more responsible about frankly um but you also mentioned and thank you for bringing this up the um distinction between basic research and applied research which i found that is you know is is very hard uh it's it you know there's a lot of that to unpack there and there's a lot of nuance but this is one of the most misunderstood distinctions about what's going on at universities and you also mentioned that a lot of the prosecutions are about failure to disclose not about the various problems that were raised earlier by uh vice chancellor uh dirks so you know espionage and theft and these kinds of things they're about much more mundane matters in fact one thing we haven't talked about that does come up a lot is academic freedom so i would like um in the question and answer period if we don't get to it before then to to talk about that because that's come up in the context of confucius institutes etc but first let's go to president mitchell you know you've come at this from a sort of a different perspective than running a university and i know that you've been working on the overall issue of u.s china education exchanges and dealing with the government policies in this area so we look forward to to hearing from you your perspective on it thank you thank you susan and thanks to brookings for setting us up it's a terrific set of panels uh and um you know i will agree with uh with everyone who has come before me in articulating the importance of u.s uh china educational exchanges i think that uh those exchanges are probably more important now than they've ever been and i want to talk about the two domains that that we've talked about so far one research and the other uh student enrollment and student exchanges and i think we've we've gotten to a very good point in talking about the research issues there is uh certainly a wide difference between basic research and applied research the the differences across disciplines are extraordinary but the fundamental part and maybe i can tie in the academic freedom part susan is that the growth of of intellectual activity is not limited by national boundaries it's not limited by political ideology it really is worldwide and it is global it's inevitable and it's desirable and so as we think about research engagement between the us and china the the trick isn't to ask the binary question of whether it's good or not or whether there are some dangers or not the question is how can we best encourage uh intel free intellectual activity the exchange of ideas international collaboration uh vice chancellor dirks i thought that your your point about water quality for example is a really good one uh the the covet virus itself is another extraordinary example of how international research collaboration is not just desirable but is essential uh and so what are the what are the stipulations what are the guard rails what are the ways we can strategize about that that protect against the downside and maximize the upside and we've been working at ece with institutions and with security agencies to develop guardrails around research collaborations around joint institutes around joint research degrees that seek to limit the potential for espionage which i agree with uh um with jeff or likely over over wrought but we need to we need to protect uh protect intellectual property and and i think that we are developing with institutions leadership really strong ways of thinking about memorandum of understanding contracts and you mentioned transparency uh transparency is absolutely essential in these in these relationships so i think we can we can get to the point where we are developing strong positive research relationships with our colleagues in china uh that will benefit everyone second domain is student engagement and i think that we uh certainly understand that america for a very long time was the destination of choice for chinese students the very best chinese students and the very best students from around the world i share the concern that's been expressed in both panels that we are losing our edge in that competition and want very much for us all as institutions and as a as a government to reach back out to those students to those families those countries to once again say that we're not only open for business but we are hospitable engaged stewards of the very best undergraduate and graduate education that's possible you mentioned a moment ago the anti-asian bias on our campuses anti-asian violence let's be clear in addition to reopening america for higher education business in addition to processing visas in a timely way we need to pay attention to the quality of life on our campus for our international students and until we do that we will be facing a headwind around what it really means to come to an american university are we really as open as a society as we claim to be and i think that we need at this point to recommit to the very highest standards not only of education quality but of democratic inclusion that our students from around the world are are looking for so in both in both domains in research and in student engagement we have a tremendous record of progress and achievement to build upon but we need to get busy to re-establish those to create guardrails and to move forward to engage the world in ways that we have avoided for the last several years wow thank you very much for those comments and i think we've really had just a very rich panoply of comments here and hitting on almost all of the essential issues um i i would like to uh kind of we have a few minutes left not too many but i would like to dig into a couple of issues this issue of academic freedom you know i suppose that some people might say with the disproportionate numbers of students from mainland china in our universities or particularly in some of the universities or in some classes maybe waiting so heavily in the student body might impinge a little bit on academic freedom or political correctness i mean these are issues that are so red-hot right now in our society at large and on our campuses but there's also the issue of confucius institutes which you know policy makers have determined have some potential nefarious impact on curriculum and academic freedom i just wonder maybe president bollinger if you wouldn't mind maybe commenting on this and also maybe president mitchell is there how do you view this issue of academic freedom in the context of so many chinese students being involved in our higher education in the u.s and are there i mean what are the what is the risk benefit uh and what should we be doing about this if anything so um i mean i think any time one talks about academic freedom you you have to acknowledge it's very very complex so it's uh let's unpack it just a bit i i can say i have never uh found it a problem that chinese students come to american universities at least not to colombia or michigan which i also know and somehow chill the academic freedom on the campus because they come from a more authoritarian or authoritarian country and quite the opposite i mean i find chinese students incredibly invigorated by the presence of openness on the campus and so that's one um i i think it's really important to recognize the tension that is present in deciding how much we should do in china and how much we should do with china so there is a obviously a serious denial of academic freedom and human rights happening in china there's just no no doubt about that the next question is what should be our response as academic institutions in the united states in engaging with china students faculty other partners that we have because of that it's not irrelevant but does that mean we should have no engagement with any part of china because china is engaging in violations of human rights some people would take that position i do not i think of universities as having an incredibly important role to play discovering truth educating people just like i think the new york times has an incredible important role in helping us understand what's going on day to day and they have or would like to have bureaus all over the world and and the bureaus helped them achieve their purposes so my uh my sense is you have to be prepared to make complex judgments are we in fact aiding and abetting being complicit in the denial of academic freedom which is i think unacceptable or on the other hand are we being so pure about any kind of engagement with the world as it is that we simply cannot effectively do what we are supposed to be doing which is to understand the world and to help educate the world so that's a that's a tension i balance more towards the engagement than the withdrawal or retreat the last thing i want to say is that i have a very strict rule we will not at columbia and i know other presidents deans feel the same way all across the united states compromise our academic freedom to do things so you know that's a that's a red line for us so we're not going to change our values in this the last thing i say very quickly because i want to make this point there is this idea which jeff has mentioned and ted has mentioned people somehow talk or have been talking as if chinese students and faculty and exchange brother come and steal our ideas the point is we are completely open we don't have state secrets that people come and you know practice espionage we take foreign students we take domestic students we take faculty and we go right up to the boundaries of what we know and we tell the world what we know and that means that international students and faculty can take what we have discovered go back to their countries and do what they can with it that's that's the system we have developed and it's incredibly powerful and good we do have intellectual property you know that's something that universities have that's a small part of the overall problem and we monitor violations of intellectual property but on the basic mission of universities we have to be careful not to compromise what we're doing by some kind of misperceived notion that people are coming and stealing our ideas thank you very much and you remind me of a comment i heard from a policy maker in the former administration who wanted to sharply diminish this kind of educational exchange and raise the specter of people coming and learning things in the united states and then taking them back to strengthen their own countries exactly right um as competitors to the united states and i think this is the real um you know tension i guess in in some of what you you refer to but i think it's already been mentioned by numerous people that if we are going to change our open model and our quest for education and truth then we we won't have this uh wonderful innovation uh platform that is our university complexes and gives us a comparative advantage and brings in all the talent so i think it's pretty fundamental and i'm really glad that you brought it up because i was going to and i now don't have to but please um you know uh president mitchell i'd love to get your thoughts on this also and um i mean with respect to the confucius institutes there's a lot of policy coming out of congress still on all of this um there's of course the fbi's china initiative uh which we don't know what the fate of that will be but um you know in educational institutions we say you know anything worth doing is worth doing well but in washington we say anything worth doing is over worth overdoing um and i'd just like to get a little bit more granularity if we could on what's the balance here and how far have we tipped in the you know too far direction can we bring it back and what are the practical kinds of things that universities need to be doing and what is the role of congress and the government and the fbi and all of this in in looking at these issues i'm great and we've got three minutes to do that yes thanks thanks susan so i i want to start i want to start where uh where where lee uh was which is that there is a needs to be a bright line around academic freedom that it it really is why american higher education is different it is why our research productivity is so extraordinary it's why we are an engine of innovation across across the world and so we we cannot uh we cannot compromise that uh i think that in its search for uh uh guardrails i've called them earlier uh in our search for guardrails there is there is an attempt i think and and it is a it's a it's a washington uh it's a washington dilemma i know that i i certainly felt it when i was under secretary in the education department uh to over to over regulate uh to solve problems with sledgehammers rather than scalpels and i i worry that we are we're there in our deliberations about about china policy and i hope that as the discussions go forward i know that even today there are discussions in the senate uh on on several different funding bills one one of which i think is critically important to create hundreds of billions of dollars more in research funding for for the national science foundation and and that effort uh really does seek to reinvigorate uh science uh in in domestic science in in the us um but uh you you mentioned confucius institutes i think the confucius institutes are a good example of uh ways in which we can overreach and we can try to oversolve problems uh confucius institutes have played different roles on different campuses we worked with the security agencies we worked with congress to develop guidelines for confucius institutes published those uh about a year ago and as a result of that institutions have either decided to stop their confucius institutes or to rewrite their mouss to make them sturdier to make them more transparent and to really address this issue of how to preserve academic freedom while at the same time engaging china in important cross-cultural exchanges thanks so much i want to go to also vice general chancellor dirks and vice chancellor layman for your thoughts on any of these um issues and also i just want to mention before closing there was a question that we got in uh from uh um uh i think a yeah the program director at boston latin thomas canelli talking about high school exchanges i don't think a lot of people realize how many high school students from china there are in the united states i live in new england there are all of these private schools that are no longer populated um at full uh capacity by american students and so they brought over a lot of foreign students and chinese are among um you know the highest attendance rates at these uh places and they're wondering what the connection is and there's a wonderful show since i'm in maine i'll just advertise it called it's a documentary called mainland with an e about chinese students at a high school in maine if you're interested in u.s china educational exchange it's a fascinating portrait on this cultural exchange that happens but um jeff and uh um uh um kurt if you wouldn't mind making a couple quick comments we have about one minute left so kurt first to you so in terms of thinking about the future and the role of high school students uh to go to an undergraduate program chinese students start preparing you know many years ahead so so what i think we have to be concerned about now is uh is those students who are making plans today in the context of a very tense relationship between us and china and i know uh hearing from our students our faculty this is a big issue and so i hope the us government is able to address those challenges if not we as universities have to make it very clear about how welcoming we are for chinese students along with all the issues of uh bias and things like that so i think that'll be on our plate to fix to make sure that we continue these exchanges great thank you jeff last word yeah just a point on academic freedom it's one of the questions we often get at nyu shanghai since we're based in shanghai and we were you know we're now finishing our eighth year of teaching uh we were promised and as as lee said it's a red line for universities like ours we have to be able uh to talk about anything uh and not worry about uh political incorrectness or were being silenced um and that promise was made very explicitly by the government and that promise has been fully kept for for uh eight years now uh going strong everybody understands that that that we can't operate we can't be the kind of university that our chinese students want and our international students want uh without academic freedom and and so i i do think it's it's absolutely critical uh for these uh educational exchanges to be valuable for everyone uh that that core principle be honored great no thank you so much for that and it's really interesting to follow this uh you know nyu university in shanghai and to look at this issue of what's able to be taught on that campus is really stunning and i really want to thank all of our panelists today this has been a really thoughtful um illuminating exchange for me and i hope for for all of our audience we didn't get to all of their questions unfortunately but i think we did touch on a lot of different issues that were raised in some of those questions so i appreciate very much everyone being with us i think we will have a lot of work to do still going forward but this is the quintessential as the chinese call it win-win kind of policy and uh issue that we can work on and i hope that we can get everything that we need to do done so that we can continue this really important area of cooperation thank you very much to everyone to my colleagues at brookings chung lee uh john allen and all of the other panelists that were here before and to our audience thanks for joining us very much for this important conversation thank you bye all [Music] thanks for watching be sure to like and subscribe for more videos from brookings [Music] you

Channel: Brookings Institution

Views: 1,712

Keywords: Brookings Institution

Id: kQssBXA_4Ts

Length: 92min 57sec (5577 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021