New York Times reporter Mike Ives covered the furor over Yang Shuping, a Chinese student who just graduated from the University of Maryland, praising the United States and criticizing her home country in her commencement speech: “Chinese Student, Graduating in Maryland, Sets Off a Furor by Praising the U.S.”
Yet Ives, who works in an industry that relies on free speech, comes off as almost apologetic on behalf of the Communist Chinese and the loyal social media thugocracy who harassed Shuping into making a meek apology. Ives’ report managed to totally leave off the “Communist” descriptor of the authoritarian China regime. Meanwhile, the Washington Post's coverage made clear the regime’s intimidation of the student for speaking her mind.
Speaking at the University of Maryland, Yang Shuping, a graduating senior from China, sprinkled her upbeat commencement speech with observations that drew warm applause: The air was far cleaner in the United States than in China, she said, and she could openly discuss racism, sexism and politics in ways that she had never before dreamed possible.
Growing up in China, “I was convinced that only authorities owned the narrative,” Ms. Yang, a theater and psychology major from the southern city of Kunming, told the crowd in a basketball arena in College Park, Md. “Only authorities could define the truth.”
The speech on Sunday drew harsh criticism, however, from some of Ms. Yang’s Chinese classmates in Maryland and from legions of social media users in China, many of whom accused her of selling out her homeland. Even the city of Kunming weighed in, saying in a message on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that her comments about the city’s air pollution were “not related to us.”
On Monday, Ms. Yang said she hoped the speech would not result in any personal attacks against her.
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The episode appeared to show how, as more Chinese study overseas, comments that they make about China or its one-party government can spread online and prompt taunts, even threats, from other students or social media users back home.
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The Maryland episode is hardly the first time that a student or professor at an overseas university has provoked complaints back in China. Earlier this month, for example, a lecturer from Monash University in Australia was suspended after a Chinese student complained on Weibo of a classroom quiz that had appeared to insult Chinese officials.
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In her speech on Sunday, Ms. Yang said she had been relieved to find that she did not need to wear any of her five pollution masks in the United States. She also discovered, she said, that the freedoms enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were not the abstractions she had once imagined.
“Democracy and freedom are the fresh air that is worth fighting for,” she said.
The Times took as truth random Facebook commenters, motivation unknown, and soft-pedaled the Chinese dictatorship’s obvious intimidation tactics:
But critics on social media skewered the address. Some took to Facebook and Weibo to challenge Ms. Yang’s comment about pollution masks:
One Facebook user, Sincerlia Yang, commented: “This is the real KunMing TODAY! Shuping Yang do you need five masks?”
Other users objected to Ms. Yang’s general tone.
“Our motherland needs a lot of improvements, but it’s still the motherland,” the Weibo user Guaishoukankan wrote in a typical comment. “There are different types of social issues and discrimination in the U.S., too.”
Still others cursed at Ms. Yang, or said that she would not be welcome in China.
Sounds a bit like America's Social Justice Warriors.
The Washington Post account, by contrast, made clear the Communist Party’s intolerance for criticism and the strong-arm tactics employed against the student:
When Yang Shuping spoke Sunday of her eternal gratitude to the University of Maryland for teaching her about “free speech” and showing her that her “voice mattered,” she may not have realized just how much it mattered.
A video of her eight-minute address at her commencement ceremony at the university went viral in China, attracting 50 million views and provoking hundreds of thousands of critical comments by Chinese netizens the following day. Even the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, weighed in, reporting on a crescendo of criticism of Yang for “bolstering negative Chinese stereotypes.”
Accused by nationalist netizens of flattering the United States and belittling China, Yang was forced to make an apology Monday.
“People often ask me: Why did you come to the University of Maryland?” she said in her speech. “I always answer: Fresh air.”
Dock a point from the Post for putting critics of Chinese Communism as "liberals," with no explanation as to how that maps onto U.S. politics, where the liberals are more sympathetic to Communist and Socialist aims and regimes than conservatives.
Yang majored in psychology and theater, leaving China five years ago. But the country she left behind is one where the only permitted truth is that defined by the Communist Party and where dissenting voices are silenced. Online, leading liberal commentators have been largely cowed, and nationalists dominate the debate on social media, many actively encouraged by the authorities. They swiftly rounded on Yang.
The Post also captured the hypocrisy of complainants, unlike the shallow coverage from the Times.
“China does not need a traitor like you. Just stay in the US and breathe your fresh air. No matter how bad China is, and even though you are speaking of your personal opinion, as a student representative, it is irresponsible of you to paint an inadequate picture of China,” said @Mengmengadezhican.
Another popular comment expressed disappointment in U.S. universities, suggesting without any apparent irony that Yang should not have been allowed to make the remarks.
“Are speeches made there not examined for evaluation of their potential impact before being given to the public?” the commentator wrote.
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The authorities’ delicate sensitivities also appeared to be hurt, with the Kunming city government posting Monday night on social media that the air in the city was “more than likely to be ‘sweet and fresh.’ ”
By Tuesday afternoon in China, the home address of Yang's family had been shared widely in the commentary sections of local media websites, on Chinese social media posts and even in replies to her social media posts. China’s normally hyperactive censors apparently found no need to suppress that information.
However, some Chinese said Yang was merely speaking the truth.
Again the Post made clear the source of much of the hostility and agitation against the student.
The Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA) at the University of Maryland, a student body loyal to the Communist Party, quickly produced a video posting pictures of blue skies in their home towns in China, titled “Proud of China UMD.”
