On a cold morning in Ithaca, I sat at CTB sipping coffee as breaking news flashed across my phone screen: a China-controlled Hong Kong court, citing the National Security Law, sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to prison terms ranging from 50 months to 10 years. Not far away, the Trolley Foot Bridge, faintly visible in the distance, is often covered with stickers and posters — a battleground for political tensions. Five years ago, in 2019, during the eruption of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong, pro-Hong Kong students at Cornell University put up posters supporting the cause. Those posters were soon deliberately vandalized and destroyed by unknown individuals.
In 2019, before I moved to Ithaca, when the protests in Hong Kong began to resonate within local communities and Hong Kong residents here started to speak out, many people with ties to China expressed sympathy for the Hong Kong community but were afraid to show direct support. Even a simple statement or a social media post felt too risky. This sense of distortion and dissonance has stayed with me over the past five years, growing ever stronger.
In June 2022, at the Ithaca Commons, a student wearing a Cornell University sweatshirt — believed to be a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party — was claimed to have violently attacked a Hong Kong student who was putting up posters advocating for Hong Kong and Uyghur human rights, leaving the student’s hand bloodied. A few months earlier, in March 2022, during a colloquium at the Cornell Institute of Public Affairs, Uyghur MA student and human rights activist Rizwangul Nurmuhammad was publicly bullied by dozens of Chinese students. Later, a leader of a Chinese student organization defended the walkout in a statement, astonishingly claiming that the Chinese students who disrupted the dialogue were the real victims, because “the atmosphere in that room was extremely hostile towards us.”
Labeling all criticism of the Chinese government as “Asian hate” is another form of imperialist co-optation of social justice discourse. Using the Beijing regime’s agenda to represent the entire Chinese diaspora — or even the broader Asian diaspora — erases the diversity within these communities and ignores the internal power dynamics. It silences the agency of Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders, burying their voices beneath the geopolitical narratives of the U.S.-China rivalry. This, in itself, is a true form of racism against Asian communities.
Criticism of the Chinese government is not an insult to the Chinese student community at Cornell University, nor can acting as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party fully represent all Chinese students. These truths should be self-evident. At Cornell, the critique and resistance against the political violence of the Beijing regime never stopped.
One example lies in archival item 37-6-1968, preserved by Cornell University — a T-shirt sold by the Chinese Students Association on June 6, 1989, in Willard Straight Hall, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre that had occurred just two days earlier.
According to The Sun, published on Oct. 2, 1989, in the wake of the massacre, hundreds of Cornell students gathered at the steps of Goldwin Smith Hall on the night of Sept. 30, 1989, organized by the newly formed Cornell China Study Group, to condemn the atrocities committed by the Beijing regime.
33 years later, on November 27, 2022, nearly the same location at Ho Plaza became the site of another candlelight vigil, organized by a group of Chinese students. This time, they mourned the victims of the Urumqi fire and protested the Chinese government’s Zero-COVID policy, which, under the guise of public health, had imposed severe social control and caused immense humanitarian suffering.
Movements have their peaks and troughs, yet the critique and deconstruction of political violence — whether from an academic perspective or through social activism — have never ceased over the decades.
How to maintain an independent approach when discussing China-related topics is a question the entire Cornell community should not shy away from. This is not just a distant story from the pages of a newspaper—it is deeply intertwined with our community’s academic freedom and public safety.
Current political uncertainties in both China and the United States present new challenges to the entire community. On one hand, under the looming shadow of a potential second Trump term, we can expect China to be exploited as a tool by a right-wing government to stoke white nationalism and xenophobia. On the other hand, the Beijing regime is likely to continue advancing its ultranationalist agenda. In such a context, the role of universities and academia becomes exceedingly delicate, and the slogan “politics beyond the ballot box” must not become an empty platitude. How can we ensure that critical discussions about China — especially critiques of the Beijing regime — do not become echo chambers for right-wing political agendas, leading us into the abyss of Asian hate? At the same time, how do we maintain the clarity and nuance necessary to reject the “leftist Orientalism” which romanticizes and idealizes China as a savior challenging U.S. imperialist hegemony and dismantling capitalist exploitation, while ignoring its reality as another brutal colonial empire practicing state capitalism?
Whenever I walk across the Arts Quad, I think back to the final day of last academic year’s encampment and the speech of a speaker whose name I can’t recall. She quoted a prayer from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to express solidarity with the people of Palestine caught in the fires of war. In a world where Beijing hypocritically offers lip service in support of Palestine while imprisoning millions of Muslims in concentration camps, and Washington openly disregards the safety of Palestinians while claiming the moral high ground on humanitarian issues, expressing sympathy for both Tibetans and Palestinians takes a certain amount of courage. It requires rejecting and challenging the dominant political narratives of two empires simultaneously. Yet showing compassion and solidarity with two suffering peoples—whether their suffering stems from the West or the East—is simply a matter of basic humanity. So, I ask: Is our Cornell University, is our community, ready to safeguard that humanity in the face of even greater storms to come?
I know this is a difficult balance to strike, but I believe that adopting a nuanced approach to discussing the PRC, navigating the political challenges it presents, remaining vigilant against both Western and non-Western imperialism, and rejecting Orientalism in its left- and right-wing forms are essential for preserving individual dignity and sustaining academic creativity within our intellectual community.
Iunius is an Asian diaspora & PhD student at Cornell who is dedicated to exploring radical justice and radical love.