(Minghui.org) The Chinese branch of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), a mandatory test for non-native speakers to study in the United States, opened for 2021 registration at 10 a.m. on October 14, 2020. Within 5 minutes, all testing slots in Beijing and Shanghai for January through August 2021 were filled up.
The rush was partially caused by testing site limitations due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, filling up all slots in 5 minutes was still unexpected and stood in stark contrast to the intense anti-America propaganda perpetuated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the past few months.
Some netizens pointed out that many high profile anti-America warriors had sent their children to settle down in the United States. They include Yang Jiechi (director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office), Geng Shuang (Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations), Hua Chunying (Director of the Foreign Ministry Information Department), Hu Xijin (Chief Editor of the Global Times), and Jin Canrong (Dean of International Studies at Renmin University).
To summarize the conflicting characters of these officials, one post cited a phrase used by pro-CCP scholar Sima Nan. When he was seen flying to the U.S. to meet family hours after declaring the U.S. the “enemy of the entire world” and “a huge tumor,” he brushed it off and replied, “Confronting the U.S. is my job, and visiting/staying in the U.S. is my life.”
A Never-Ending Exodus
The CCP often incorporates extreme patriotism into its propaganda. One example is glorifying itself while denouncing Western countries, especially the U.S.
“Chinese people are rich now—they can eat whatever they want and have fun wherever possible,” wrote CCP internet army members online. “Why do some people still think the grass is greener on the other side [in foreign countries]?”
It is because of freedom, one netizen replied: Like air, you may not realize its importance, but when suffocating, you would know how precious it is.
“When you want to practice your belief, when your apartment is demolished by the government, when your child is disabled by a fake vaccine, when your boss fails to pay you, when you lose your savings in financial fraud, when you lose your loved ones in the pandemic, when flooding wipes out all your valuables... when you seek protection of your legal rights, you could see the real face of the CCP,” one netizen wrote. “You would lose all your dignity as a human being—you would be stuck on the lengthy journey of appealing your case, or you could be stopped by officials and end up in jail.”
The democracy, freedom of belief, human rights, legal system, environment, and sense of security in democratic countries are some main factors that attract Chinese people. In the past few months, the CCP has become more isolated as a result of its stream of lies and disinformation, as well as its attacks on Western countries. But Chinese people are still dreaming of immigrating to the U.S., as seen by TOEFL’s popularity.
Canada also attracts about 30,000 Chinese immigrants per year. After Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s deputy chair of the board and CFO, was detained in Canada in December 2018, although the CCP smeared Canada repeatedly, the immigration trend from China to Canada did not seem to slow down.
According to a 2018 report from the renowned Tsinghua University, only 19% of its graduates who went to the U.S. to pursue advanced degrees returned to China upon completion of their education. New Oriental (Xin Dong Fang), the largest English testing preparation company in China, published a white paper in 2019 saying that only 28% of Chinese students returned to China after completing their education overseas.
To explain this situation, a vice president at Tsinghua talked about differences in quality of life between China and other countries. In the U.S., for example, one can take out a mortgage to purchase a house after working for a few years. In China, it is much harder for younger generations to become homeowners because the average housing price is much more expensive relative to income levels. Furthermore, the U.S. also has relatively more price stability and lower cost of living.
Xu Chenchang, a professor of mathematics at Peking University, concurred. To do research in China is much more challenging than in Western countries, he said; besides difficulty in securing funding, the corrupt system and widespread data fraudulence are also intimidating for those who want to pursue a scientific career in China.
Lessons from Siding with the CCP
While many Chinese today choose to stay in Western countries, those in the early years of the CCP's rise who were deceived by the Party’s lies and decided to stay with the CCP often became victims in its political campaigns.
Hu Feng and Li Shenzhi, two prominent scholars in China and fervent supporters of Mao Zedong as well as the CCP in 1949, both learned their lesson a few years later. Mao targeted Hu in 1955 as a counter-revolutionist, and Hu was imprisoned until 1979, several years before his death. Li was also attacked as a rightist in 1957 and later became a strong critic of the CCP’s authoritarianism.
Many of these scholars had the freedom to choose their path. Before retreating to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, former President of the Republic of China, launched a plan in December 1948 to rescue about 1,000 scholars and arrange their travel to Taiwan. But very few intellectuals accepted the invitation and agreed to move.
Among 81 members of Academia Sinica, the national academy of the Republic of China, only 10 went to Taiwan, 12 went to other countries, and the remaining 59 remained in mainland China in 1949. In addition, among five thousand Chinese scientists who were in other countries, over two thousand returned to China by the end of 1956, hoping to contribute to society with their knowledge.
But what happened next was unexpected:
Wu Mi, one of the founders of Chinese comparative literature, was labeled as a counter-revolutionist for refusing to follow the Party line of attacking Confucius.
Qian Duansheng, one of the high-ranking officials praised by Chiang Kai-shek, was forced to criticize himself at Beijing People’s Congress in 1957 before being targeted as a rightist.
Zhou Shouxian, one of the pioneers of computer science in China, was sent to forced labor in remote Jiangxi Province. He developed a mental disorder and later committed suicide.
Qian Jin, an instrumental contributor to China’s nuclear weapon, missile and satellite technology, was targeted as a counter-revolutionist during the Cultural Revolution. “Those who know English are American spies; those who know Russian are Soviet spies,” said a slogan at the time. Qian denied being a spy and was beaten to death.
Dong Jianyi was born in Shanghai and graduated from Harvard with a MD degree. After returning to Shanghai in 1952, he became Director of the Urology Department at Huimin Hospital. In 1957 he was classified as a rightist and sent to Jiabiangou in Shannxi Province for forced labor. His wife Gu Xiaoying, also a graduate from a U.S. college, went to look for him, only to find that his body had been eaten up with only his head left hanging on the skeleton.
Jiabiangou was part of the Gobi Desert in Northwest China with strong winds and extreme cold. During the Great Leap Forward movement, however, more than 3,000 rightist intellectuals were sent there to grow crops and feed themselves. As food was depleted, they ate grass, rats, lizards, and even human waste, with some resorting to cannibalism. By 1960, less than 1,000 people were still alive.
What happened in Jiabiangou was only one of the countless tragedies in China caused by the CCP. Countless intellectuals’ wishful thinking of the CCP was met with harsh reality.
They include Chen Yinke (one of the best known historians in China in the 20th century), Ye Qisun (one of the pioneers of modern physics in China), Xie Jiarong (one of the founders of the Geological Society of China), Chen Mengjia (poet and archaeologist), Ma Yinchu (economist), the couple of Zeng Zhaolun (former Vice Minister of Education) and Yu Dayin (professor at Peking University), Wang Rongbin (key developer of China’s first-generation submarine), Feng Zikai (painter), Xiao Guangyan (petrochemist), the couple of Fu Lei (translator) and Zhu Meifu, Yu Guangyu (aerospace expert), and Zhan Antai (scholar).
The Class of Communist Elites
To further control China’s politics and economy, former senior official Wang Zhen proposed to have one of each CCP official’s children involved in politics and another in business (when average citizens were only allowed to have one child, high-ranking officials were allowed to have two children). With this setup, CCP officials' children were able to use their political connections to benefit their businesses. As a result, the princelings raked in large fortunes in the 1980s. A decade later, fearing that high visibility of these assets might smear the Party’s “glorious” image, top officials were encouraged to have their children go overseas.
According to a report by Radio Free Asia in 2011, about 74.5% of the children of CCP officials at minister or higher levels (including those who had retired) had obtained U.S. permanent residency or citizenship; this percentage was even higher to 91% for the officials' grandchildren.
A survey also found that 91% of the CCP Central Committee had family members who had immigrated overseas. Even for the auditing agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 88% of its members had family members immigrating overseas. For example, Jiang Zhicheng (grandson of former CCP leader Jiang Zemin), Chen Yuan (son of Chen Yun), Liu Chaoying (daughter of Liu Huaqing), and daughter of Yuan Mu are known to have become U.S. citizens. Bo Guagua (son of Bo Xilai) and Wu Guanzheng’s granddaughter obtained U.S. permanent residency. Zeng Wei (son of Zeng Qinghong) is an Australian resident.
According to an anti-corruption official, an investigation in 2014 discovered that more than 4.2 million officials were found to have committed corruption at some point during the past 30 years. About 10,000 of these corrupt officials had fled overseas, with about 7,000 hiding in the U.S. Other sources indicated that the 10,000 officials had transferred at least one trillion yuan or $149 billion overseas.
One report found that 3,220 people in China have assets worth over 100 million yuan (not including overseas assets). Among them, 2,932 (91%) are descendants of senior CCP officials, and their fortune added up to 2 trillion yuan ($299 billion USD).
Wikileaks also exposed that CCP officials have about 5,000 accounts in Swiss banks and that two-thirds of them are Central CCP-level officials. From vice premiers, bank presidents, and ministers to Central Committee members, almost every one of them has an account there.
One netizen once described the multifaceted nature of CCP officials:
Reading Communist Manifesto from Germany.Singing The Internationale from France.Pledging alliance to hammer and sickle flag from Soviet Union.Owning a bank account in Switzerland.Holding permanent residency in U.S., Canada, or Australia,while resolutely telling ordinary Chinese people,“We will never consider the Western system!”
Fewer Safe Havens
Chinese officials have been seeking EU citizenship by investing in a “golden passport” such as that of Cyprus. Anyone who invested 2.5 million euros could become a Cyprus citizen, and the passport would work throughout the 27 countries in the European Union. Reports have shown that nearly 500 Chinese people have obtained Cypriot passports this way since the program was launched in 2013.
Due to tightened regulations from the European Commission, Cyprus revoked 26 such passports in 2019, which included those of some Chinese-born passport holders. In October 2020, Cyprus announced it would stop the “golden passport” program on November 1, thus preventing CCP officials from abusing the program.
Similarly, the U.S. has also scrutinized its immigration policies related to China. One reason was concern for espionage and intellectual property theft. Statistics showed that 90% of economic espionage cases in the U.S. in the past 7 years were related to China, while two-thirds of intellectual espionage cases were related to China. FBI director Christopher Wray testified recently that the U.S. was filing a new espionage case related to China every 10 hours on average.
To curb infiltration by the CCP, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on September 1, 2020, that Confucius Institutes would be closed by the end of this year. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also announced on October 2 that it had updated its Policy Manual to enforce inadmissibility “based on membership in or affiliation with the Communist or any other totalitarian party.”
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