My exchange at Tsinghua University
I had this strange dilemma while on exchange at Tsinghua University: Should I buy a Tsinghua hoodie?
As my time in Beijing came to an end, there was something about this seemingly trivial question that prompted a heavy amount of reflection about how I felt about the institution with which our law school partners and my experiences there.
Was this a university that I was proud of having attended? One that gives honorary degrees to dictators like Vladimir Putin and removes law professors for writing about constitutional change?
This question began to mix with my desire for a unique memento to bring home from my time at one of China’s top universities. The Tsinghua name had already gotten me praise by locals and extricated me from some potentially sticky situations travelling in the police-state province of Xinjiang. It had clout in China and, after all, this was just a sweater. Was it different from buying something from NUS or the University of Copenhagen?
To be clear, my ambivalence about Tsinghua didn’t stem from the administrative difficulties I faced registering there, which seem to have become legend at U of T Law. No. My internal conflict about Tsinghua comes from the kind of institution it is, perhaps as a representation of the kind of place that China itself is.
I’ve travelled and briefly lived in China before and I had some idea of what I was getting myself into. I knew when I signed up that the lines in China between the ruling Communist Party and academic institutions are permeable at best. For example, the Party appoints Tsinghua’s Presidents, and the last President has since been appointed Mayor of Beijing, a post equivalent to a provincial governor. But the question of whether I would be proud of the experience didn’t confront me until I was directly faced with the facts on the ground.
During the first two weeks I was there, there was military training on campus for all freshmen. The chanting and blaring of patriotic Chinese songs at 7 am didn’t bother my sleep too much; I was up with jet-lag anyways. But seeing several thousand 18-year-olds in camo fatigues goose-stepping across the sports fields beside my residence and occasionally even drilling with guns was enough to make me feel more than a little unwelcome. It was an interesting move for a university that wants to attract more international students, and a clear reminder who was in charge.
It was also bizarre to look at the selection of English books available in the law library, wondering why some made it past the censors, and trying to recall what was conspicuous by its absence.
There was one time where a friend of mine showed me some copies of The Economist magazine in the School of Management and Economics’ library. I was surprised these even existed—one cannot usually find such Western media sources in China.
But the surprising liberalism didn’t last. My friend quickly opened them to show that pages were missing, with the index suggesting these copies once housed articles relating to topics such as the Tiananmen Square protests or corrupt Chinese officials.
There was also the classroom experience. The classes I took in Chinese law offered an incredible opportunity to learn about the laudable progression of law in China since the lawless chaos of the Cultural Revolution. But there was no denying that classroom debate was limited. While I felt like my position as an international student afforded me the ability to ask tough questions, there were palpable signs of pressure in the classroom. Professors were clearly uncomfortable with questions that challenged the status quo. And even if they were courageous in their academic writings, their more controversial views rarely featured in their lectures, which were occasionally attended by non-student observers who took notes at the back of the classroom.
While none of this should have been particularly surprising to me, I loathed these manifestations of totalitarianism in the institution. How could I walk around sporting the crest of such a place? Sometimes when I thought about it, it made even going to Tsinghua seem problematic.
Was I simply lending credence to an institution that is servile to the goals of the Communist Party leadership? Maybe.
But, perhaps, to focus solely on such revulsion is to lose sight of why I chose to go to Tsinghua in the first place—and to forget why the University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s Council has decided to renew and reinvigorate its partnership with that school.
Student exchanges have value that transcends the institutions at which they take place, whether in China or elsewhere. It goes without saying that they build cross-cultural understanding and facilitate the exchange of ideas. They also represent open mindedness and the humility of realizing that there is something to learn from everyone.
The opportunity to explore and probe Chinese friends’ and classmates’ opinions on their home turf was irreplaceable. Such person-to-person exchanges provide a greater depth of understanding than any reading can provide, even if reading is necessary to provide a full picture of the society one experiences day to day.
Moreover, these exchanges represent the optimism and gradualism which punctuate hopes for a better global future. Incremental though the contribution may be, when the host is a rising superpower, building these connections advances the causes of peace and multilateral cooperation in small ways that other channels often cannot.
This is something that I’m proud to be a part of and that I’m proud that this Faculty supports.
Looking back, I also realize that sometimes my focus on the negatives caused me to misjudge my professors, seeing them as automatically complicit in this system. Not only was this unfair to them in many cases, but it also almost caused me to miss that their staunch pragmatism often melded with immense courage to advocate for individual liberties and the rule of law in their private careers and academic writings. Today, I realize that it would have been an immense shame had I not seen this side of the school, which has done much to advance the rule of law in China, even if it coexists with the negatives I have pointed out here.
Keeping this complexity in mind, we must ask ourselves what the alternatives are: Where does it get us to draw lines in the sand and say that, because of the bad, we won’t engage with or recognize the good?
Disengagement is likely counterproductive, harming those who share common ground with Western students and faculty more than helping them. Even the most ardent China hawks would be better served to understand that country better and to be engaged with those shaping Chinese ideas for China’s future.
For these reasons, I’m proud that I went to China and proud that I attended Tsinghua, and the hoodie sits in my closet today. I almost didn’t buy it and I’m still not sure if I’ll ever wear it in public—after all, it took an article to explain what it represents to me. But maybe that’s OK—everyone knows I don’t wear hoodies anyways.