If you're trying to claim that giving Chinese youth student visas to study at elite western universities will create a more liberal, pro-western intelligentsia in China, you are flatly wrong.
The Chinese who come here (to the US) are part of the growing Chinese middle- and upperclass and tend to be the most nationalistic of all. Talk to them next time you get a chance; ask them what they think of democracy and freedom, and they'll likely spout PRC government propaganda about how the "Chinese people need to be controlled." We make them into scientists and engineers without succeeding, and perhaps without even really attempting, to make them democrats. We are potentially creating big problems for ourselves and our western and east Asian allies down the road by equipping China with the skilled professionals it needs to produce the weapons of war to threaten the free world.
As for protectionism, if it really bothers you, perhaps you should complain about China's "luxury tax" (import duty) and government-mandated technology transfers for access to their production and consumer markets. China is easily the most protectionist member of the G20.
Regarding Chinese who will "likely spout PRC government propaganda", though there are possibly Chinese students who think this way, the ones that I've met (well over 40 students, and not all from one particular group to allow for some randomness and a slightly better sample of the general population) do not think this way. They do not believe the Chinese government is the ultimate form of government, and none of them felt that the "Chinese people need to be controlled". They value the same freedoms the forefathers of America valued, and they would like to see some of America's liberties in China as well. Given that, they don't believe that America's government is significantly better either, but at least they aren't blinded by the Chinese government's propaganda. Remember, today's youth has access to many sources of information. They aren't in cocoons, shielded from outside opinions. The "Great Firewall" isn't as effective as the American media would like you to think it is.
equipping China with the skilled professionals it needs to produce the weapons of war to threaten the free world.
Do you think they really need technology? They have a population of plus one billion, and the strongest industrial capacity in the world plus just enough oil reserves. If they wanted to go to war, they could already very well do so as is and cause a really big bloody mess.
Look at Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan. All of us mistakenly believed the US's "superior technology" would make those missions a cakewalk. Technology doesn't win wars. People do. People we can reach.
And its not Germany vs France at the opening of WWII anymore. China already have machine guns, tanks and nukes (the horror if either "side" ever used one in anger). Diplomacy through cultural exchange is the best option we've got to prevent a cold war style escalation - and luckily the openness of both our cultures is the end goal we want to achieve anyway, right?
I used to work with someone from China and, like you say above, she viewed the government as the same kind of benevolent infrastructure provider as I do mine. I think its overambitious to expect someone to completely turn their back on their view of their country in a few months after they have spent 20+ years of their lives in what they see to be a functioning society. It took two hundred plus years after the Enlightenment for all of our oh so Great Countries to finally rid themselves of kings and colonial rule.
As cabalamat says, I don't think there is anything more you can do to teach someone from China about Western values than having them completely immersed in our civilization. Some of our values must be crossing the waters, mustn't they? - if they really are self evidently superior?
I think collaboration is the best we can do - with the scientists and business men themselves, the people that actually matter, who's opinions people over there respect, not through the government. This kind of ban on collaboration hurts that.
There is nothing secret in science anyway. The US governments secrets on the other hand... - I would cynically agree there is always concern there. Both by US people themselves and the Chinese government:)
> I don't think there is anything more you can do to teach someone from China about Western values than having them completely immersed in our civilization
It's not that much immersion. I spend a fair amount of time in a college town, and the Chinese nationals, with very few exceptions, work play and live exclusively with other student visa holders from China.
If, as proponents of Western civilisation argue (and which I personally believe, FWIW), Western ideals of freedom are universal and every society will eventually want them, then by definition some Chinese studying in the West ill pick up some Western ideals.
If the West is wrong about our ideals being universal, then our society is no better than others anyway and it doesn't matter (in the long run for the overall good of humanity) if the Chinese conquer us.
> "If the West is wrong about our ideals being universal, then our society is no better than others anyway and it doesn't matter (in the long run for the overall good of humanity) if the Chinese conquer us."
If our ideals are relative or subjective, wouldn't that make it all the more important to speak out, as to do otherwise would be conceptual-suicide?
Even if other cultures don't hold my values, I still must value them.
I don't disagree about educating foreign students, by the way. Barring empirical evidence to the contrary, my feeling is that exposure to foreign cultures ought to dampen nationalism in the long run.
The fact that working in a sweatshop 16 hours a day at age 6 is a terrible life is not contingent on any particular "western" philosophy being correct.
>by equipping China with the skilled professionals it needs to produce the weapons of war to threaten the free world.
I don't get this constant fear we Americans always have that as soon as a country sees a chance they're going to invade us. Mainland USA hasn't been attacked in more than a century. The only place this irrational fear could possibly come from is assuming other countries will all behave as we do.
Completely correct. The Chinese are fiercely protective. Just try to buy a Harley Davidson in Shanghai. Chinese are the most protectionist country in the G20 without a doubt.
The Chinese who come here (to the US) are part of the growing Chinese middle- and upperclass and tend to be the most nationalistic of all. Talk to them next time you get a chance; ask them what they think of democracy and freedom, and they'll likely spout PRC government propaganda about how the "Chinese people need to be controlled." We make them into scientists and engineers without succeeding, and perhaps without even really attempting, to make them democrats. We are potentially creating big problems for ourselves and our western and east Asian allies down the road by equipping China with the skilled professionals it needs to produce the weapons of war to threaten the free world.
As for protectionism, if it really bothers you, perhaps you should complain about China's "luxury tax" (import duty) and government-mandated technology transfers for access to their production and consumer markets. China is easily the most protectionist member of the G20.