Recently, off campus two foreign
exchange graduate students from China at USC were murdered. First of all, my condolences
go out to the family and friends who have been affected by this news. This
tragedy has created an interesting dynamic in how it is being perceived by American
and Chinese
news agencies. Nevertheless, the
situation may or may not strain Sino-US relations especially taking to account
that a murder of another countries citizens will undoubtedly bring about
foreign intervention.
In my opinion this situation is
grave in Sino-US relations because the Chinese invest a lot of money and
resources sending their brightest students to the US. This situation is very
serious for USC has a large foreign exchange student population and a third of
them are Chinese. Consequently, this event is going to damage USC’s image in
China as a unsafe destination for prospective students.
However, interestingly enough the
Chinese government is using this event as a political tool for propaganda. For
those of you who can read Chinese, while I was surfing the web I stumbled upon this article. It discusses that the Chinese
government is using this event to spin off another secret agenda of theirs: control
the masses. Rather than defending the students who were murdered, the Chinese
government somehow places blame upon them for getting murdered (if I’m
interpreting this correctly). The Chinese government is reminding its citizens
that the lesson learned form this horrible event is that when you’re abroad you
can’t be capitalist and showing off your money. News agencies in the mainland
have been putting too much focus on the vehicle the students were in.
Oddly enough in recent times
China is having an increasing problem with eliteness. Those who have wealth
differentiate themselves by driving luxury brand cars. As a result, many of
those who drive luxury brand cars are being stigmatized by society. The
association to those who can afford to drive these cars for the majority of
society do not have positive connotation. They are often those who feel
entitled and privilege. In response to these negative associations the Chinese
media has taken it to another extreme by arguably condemning the students who
were unfortunately murdered as somewhat contributing to it. This version is very
twisted.
American news agencies have also
contributed to this warped perception of what happened in reality. They have
all been contradicting themselves. At first they introduced that the vehicle
was new. Then changed their story to say it was a recently pre-owned vehicle.
New versus pre-owned vehicle makes a huge difference. Regardless, excuse my
French, the fuck up had already been made.
Anyways, the alternative response
from the Chinese government is to call for more liability and security
reassurance for their citizens from public and private institutions. Or the
other, other alternative will be for China to send their own private army to
protect their citizens. And in reality no country will allow that to happen
because it undermines their sovereignty.
Nevertheless, as for now at the
expense of the two innocent students Chinese society is learning an important
lesson: When you leave China, do not be a capitalist pig.