You’re listening to part three of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China interview with Elsa Johnson, student at Stanford University and managing editor for The Stanford Review, conducted by Dr. William Saunders, director for the Center of Human Rights. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
William Saunders: So what would you say to somebody, say, who’s at Purdue or Catholic University who’s studying Mandarin or whatever? What should they be on the alert for?
Elsa Johnson: Yeah, you know, I think, first of all, it’s very important that Americans are learning Mandarin. I think that we’ve sort of seen the number of people in America, American students learning Mandarin decreasing, which I think is concerning. I think China’s the most important relation that we have right now, and we need to be…
You know, obviously, learning the language is extremely important. I would encourage as many people who are interested in US/China relations to learn Mandarin. I think that’s important. But also, learning Mandarin and being aware of US/China relations also makes you a target.
In my experience, and friends at Stanford who are also interested in China and were targeted by Charles Chen, I think there is a sort of CCP propaganda arm called the United Front that is always trying to infiltrate universities and to give American students a very favorable opinion of China, trying to offer free trips to China, trying to encourage collaboration.
I don’t think collaboration is a bad thing, but I do think that the way that the CCP has been using these academic exchanges have actually not been beneficial to American students, and they’re oftentimes used as propaganda in China. But I think… it’s difficult to be someone who’s studying US/China relations because, if you ever want to have access to China, have access to information about China, you can’t say bad things about China, because it’s very easy for the CCP to cut off people’s ability to gain access to information about China.
But also, it’s difficult not to be critical of an authoritarian government. So I would say, as far as American students being targeted, just be on the lookout for weird emails, people approaching you, whether that’s physically or online. Be aware that some academic you know, if you’re reached out to to do some sort of academic exchange or collaboration that oftentimes these are run by CCP members.
I just think students need to be really careful. And also, another thing that I would say is, these interactions that CCP members try to have with American students are not uncommon. They happen a lot. And a lot of times, they just seem really scammy.
It’s very obvious that… it’s very obvious that the person doesn’t have good intentions, but I think it’s still really important for people to report that these events are happening. The FBI has ways to report these incidents, and I think the more we start to report these, the more we start to report on these events, the more aware we can be of how great the threat is, because it’s also not just students studying Mandarin or US/China relations.
It’s… They target students studying computer science, robotics, engineering, you know, pretty much every field, honestly. They just wanna know as much as they can. So, be, be on high alert.
W: So, you reported this, your experience, to the FBI, right?
E: Right. And the only reason I was able to do this was because the people that I was working with at Hoover had connections to the FBI. So, you know, I was lucky in that sense. I think the average student has no idea how to report on these incidents, and I also think the average student doesn’t even think to report on it because it might feel insignificant.
So that’s another thing that I really wanna emphasize is that even if it, again, even if it seems super obvious that whoever’s reaching out to you is not well-intentioned, it’s still really important to report on these events.
W: Yep. We need information. And one of the things we’ve covered on many of these podcasts, and I mention these so the listener, if you want to go back, we have everything archived on our website, which is humanrights.catholic.edu. And you can go to that website and you can find our past podcasts, and we’ve discussed on these podcasts for both Lawyer Gao, who I mentioned, and Guangcheng’s experience.
But we’ve also had people who discussed the influence of Chinese Communist Party is trying to make in America, and the kind of things it’s trying to do. And this is another example of it, because the CCP not only enforces totalitarianism within China, but it tries to advance totalitarianism or communist totalitarianism around the world, including the United States.
And it… Guangcheng has spoken often about how they tried to undermine American democratic institutions and the rule of law. So I think… and in fact, just I wanna say one thing additionally here, is I just spoke with an official from an African country yesterday who was telling me how the Communist Party in his country seeks to extend authoritarian control.
His country has an authoritarian government, and the Communist Party even… It educates them on how to maintain power in their country and to… how to stifle democratic institutions. So, did… I don’t know if you had any comment on that, but I just hope people can put this in a broader context of why it’s important that you report what’s happened to you, because there is an effort by the CCP to undermine democracy.
E: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I’ve… You know, I’ve heard stories as well of the CCP funding various far left, um, protest groups like Code Pink, for example. Or, you know, funding various groups within elections to sort of undermine the democratic process as well, which I think is very concerning.
And then at universities as well, beyond these direct confrontations, you see a lot of… I’ve seen and heard a lot of stories about Chinese nationals throwing these extravagant Chinese New Year parties that are clearly very well funded, and they sort of get up and give a speech about how China and Taiwan need to be united, and give away ten free trips to China.
These are the methods that the Chinese Communist Party uses, and even though it seems… Again, it seems very obviously a CCP front, that someone would throw this party and offer free trips to China. But I think we really need to take these situations more seriously and it’s not something to dismiss because China is constantly doing everything in its power to undermine the United States.
We’ve also seen Chinese nationals who are allowed to buy large amounts of farmland surrounding military bases. That’s obviously terrifying. In Silicon Valley, there’s also a lot of corporate espionage. So it’s really happening in so many different areas of American life, and… yeah, it’s very important that we take it seriously.
This has been part three of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China interview with Elsa Johnson. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.