Grandstand. 1er June, three days after President Trump's statement, a ban on Chinese students and researchers working for the Beijing government came into effect.
Although the decree only targets nationals of the Middle Kingdom, there is no reason to speak of a “China bashing” since it barely concerns 3,000 Chinese – while the American campus has minus 360,000 – many of whom are from seven prestigious Chinese universities of science and technology, particularly aeronautics, commonly known as the "Seven Sons of National Defense".
Soft protests
Such an act could have sparked an outcry against the anti-racism that American academics love. Except that in these times of coronavirus, the image of China under the presidency of Xi Jinping is so degraded – according to a poll by Pew carried out at the end of March, two-thirds of Americans now have a negative opinion – that it n 'has provoked only a few soft protests from the Democratic camp, since the desire to better secure the campus is part of a series of responses led by the White House to counter the future security law that Beijing has imposed to muzzle Hong Kong opponents.
It would be tempting to see it as a retreat of the first world power, given that the conviction of the superiority of the market rhymes with the transfer of technologies, exclusively in one direction with regard to China and the United States, since the start of globalization. However, it is more a matter of blindness than of the myopia of those who transfer technology but ignore the intention of those who receive it.
Thanks to the technologies it has bought, or sometimes stolen if we believe Washington's accusations, China has succeeded in the space of forty years, the challenge of industrialization that "Developed countries have taken several hundred years to complete", as proudly proclaimed in November 2018 Xi Jinping, who recently had a lifetime mandate.
Happy globalization applauded the "Chinese miracle" that lifted millions of Chinese people out of poverty, while others murmured that people with a wealthy wallet might not have the word "freedom" in their hearts. The technologies of the digital age exported by democracy have contributed to the rise of a "Frankenstein State" which no longer just controls its own people but also seeks to counterattack the democracies themselves.
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