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The China Threat

7/31/2019

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            We will be at conflict with China, hopefully not in any kind of shooting war.  Many people would argue that is already the case given the 1 year trade war we’re experiencing with China.  Also, some more astute readers may be aware of the rampant threat of intellectual theft property from the US by China.  This is a major stumbling block on current trade negotiations.  In his book, The Great Zoo of China, Mathew Reilly quotes Adam Fischer in his book, China vs the World.   The following is a paraphrase:

             It is setting records that no other country can match, and at every opportunity the Communist party reports these achievements to the Chinese people through State-controlled media.  China desperately wants to be number 1, the pre-eminent nation on earth.  They have given it a name, “The China Dream”.  But to achieve that dream, China must replace the United States and it must match America’s 20th century achievements in war, space and industry, it must put a man on the moon and it must create companies that are known worldwide.  AND then-then-to truly replace America as the world’s most dominant nation, it must do something even more difficult; it must replace the United States as the Cultural ruler of the planet.    
 
    After leaving Bentley, I went to my alma mata, UNH, to teach.  During my 1st year at UNH, I taught 2 sections in the “Navitas Program”.  This was a program for foreign students (if I was politically correct, I would have said international students), who’s English wasn’t sufficiently adequate to be admitted to UNH.  After 1.5 years of classes, given good grades and passing an English as a second language test, they would matriculate into the University system.  At least 80% of the students are from mainland China.  On a national scale, there are approximately 1 million foreign students in the US and 360,000, 36%, are Chinese.  I have not been able to find how many US students are currently studying in China, but the numbers are low.
      The year and half I spent teaching Chinese students was, to say the least, enlightening.  Chinese students are very polite.  However, they are brought up to fend for themselves.  In other words, your success depends on you.  This includes getting a US education and whatever it takes, which includes cheating.  Cheating is generally accepted, and it is widespread.  Needless to say, I was extremely strict in this area.  Some of the actions I took:  only one student to the bathroom at once and they had to leave their cell phone (this was instituted after the 1st test when there were an exodus of students that suddenly had to take bathroom breaks); I would get a grad student to help proctor and on occasions, I followed a student out the classroom only to find that they carried a second cell phone to contact someone for the test answers; I would not only spread the individual desks apart, I gave 3 separate test, with the same questions but in a different order.  In spite of this, there was still cheating, and I had 5 students either flunked, suspended or expelled. 
   One of the courses I taught outside of Navitas and in the business school was a 1 credit online course in Computing Essentials which was required by all business students.  In this course students had to do various projects and submit them via the Pearson Software.  The software coded each project and if a student copied another students project and submitted it as his/her own it was detected by the software.  The 1st semester I taught the course, over 800 students took the course, and unfortunately, there were 25 students who cheated despite my warnings on how accurate the software is on detecting plagiarism.  Of the 25 students who cheated of which 13 were Chinese students.  To put it in perspective, Chinese students comprised less than 3% of the students taking the course, but accounted for more than 50% of those students who cheated.  Needless to say, all students who cheated flunked the course.  What I found very disconcerting amongst the Chinese students was when they were interviewed by one of the Deans of the business school, 4 of them alluded that I had let some of the “white American” students off.  Fortuitously, the Dean knew that this was clearly not the case.
    Word quickly circulated amongst the close Chinese UNH community that I was very strict on cheaters.  What I found interesting was that in the last 3 years I taught at UNH (prior to retiring) I did not have 1 Chinese student in any of my classes except for the required computer essentials (I was the only prof teaching that class). 
     CNN has also carried a story on Chinese students cheating:    https://money.cnn.com/2014/07/01/pf/college/chinese-students-cheating/
  What I have find particularly disconcerting about Chinese students is the report from the FBI that 10% of Chinese students in the US are in fact spies and reporting to one of China’s intelligence agencies.  This was a story that was also covered by NBC and can be seen at the following link:
​  https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/education-or-espionage-a-chinese-student-takes-his-homework-home-to-china-1284568131569?v=railb& 

   This story was also picked up by CNN  https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/politics/us-intelligence-chinese-student-espionage/index.html
 
   As I stated in the beginning, we are already in a conflict with China, and given the number of Chinese students in the US, they are getting to know us better than we know them, and this will be to their advantage in the future.
     

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    John Tommasi is a retired Senior Lecturer of Economics & Finance from Bentley University and  the University of New Hampshire.

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