Opinion

YANG | Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me: On the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak

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As I was packing up on Friday, preparing myself for an unusually tiresome journey back to Ithaca totaling about three days on the road with three layovers, my phone buzzed: the U.S. Center for Disease Control announced that it would begin screening passengers arriving from Wuhan, China at Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco airports. Given my first layover in L.A.— lasting an unbelievably long twelve hours and giving me an excuse to visit Santa Monica for a bit— I was quite worried. For one, though I did not visit Wuhan this winter break, I was reminded of the panic after the West Africa Ebola epidemic back in 2013, when an overreaction caused a public health crisis in the United States, putting many African passengers under duress. Given the tense political climate between the U.S. and China, who knows there won’t be a repeat? A second, perhaps more foreboding concern, underlies my thoughts: Is the outbreak really this bad?

Opinion

YANG | Chinese People Are Allies, Not Enemies, in Fight Against Chinese Government

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The Sun’s investigative report last semester on Cornell’s lucrative, undisclosed links with the shadowy Chinese tech giant Huawei should ring alarms everywhere. Beyond what The Sun’s editorial laid out, as a dissident Chinese, I am particularly bone-chilled by this news. My college, one of the few places in this foreign land that I see as a place of refuge, might very well be a lion’s den. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Chinese government’s influence reaches far above Cayuga’s waters. This influence comes in many forms. Recently, keen journalistic attention has been put on an intercollegiate student organization called the “Chinese Students and Scholars Association,” a Chinese embassy-connected student organization on campuses around America.