China ramps up exchanges with U.S. youths, including NYU teams
China ramps up exchanges with U.S. youths, including NYU teams
At the Henry Fok Stadium in Shanghai, some 1,800 spectators gathered to see the U.S. and China face off on the basketball court.
The competition in mid-August between the men’s and women’s teams from New York University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University was billed as friendly, but it was not an ordinary sports event.
VIP guests included the president of the government-linked Shanghai friendship association, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the U.S. consul general in Shanghai, Scott Walker.
“We believe that sports have a unique power to bridge divides and bring people together in ways that transcend the game or match that is played,” Walker said.
NYU basketball’s weeklong trip, with 26 student athletes and 15 staff, is part of an outreach program by Chinese President Xi Jinping to stabilize relations with the United States. Last November, he said China was ready to invite 50,000 young Americans for study and exchanges.
The U.S. and China are divided over many issues, including Chinese support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, America’s tariffs on a growing list of Chinese exports and U.S. export controls on cutting-edge semiconductors to China.
While there are about 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S., fewer than 900 Americans are studying in China, which is a significant drop from a decade ago when some 15,000 American students were in China, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
For nearly a year, groups affiliated with the Chinese government have ramped up exchanges. In September,100 teachers and students from Washington state high schools visited China, which included a chance to sing with their Chinese counterparts in front of the country’s first lady, Peng Liyuan. At least one exchange earlier this year was fully funded by China’s government and later criticized by an Iowa lawmaker who worried China would use the trips as political propaganda.
NYU basketball’s China trip, according to the school, had multiple co-sponsors, including U.S. and Chinese businesses, and the Shanghai friendship association, which is managed by the Shanghai municipal government. The basketball tournament was broadcast across China and on ESPN’s college channel in the U.S.
“It’s a great opportunity to come to China, experience a new culture. Probably would have never come here without the team, but it’s exciting,” said NYU men’s basketball player Alan Mashensky, who hopes to work on Wall Street. “I’m having a great time.”
The tournament was the highlight of the trip — Shanghai Jiao Tong University won both games, defeating the NYU men’s team 73-56, and the women’s team 69-64.
The NYU teams played other local squads and participated in activities such as watching an acrobatics show, visiting the Ming Dynasty Yu Garden and getting suits made at the fabric market. They also visited two of the most successful American brands in China — Shanghai Disneyland and the NBA’s China office.
On Day 6 of the trip, the morning started on NYU’s Shanghai campus with the athletes given a choice between a lesson in the traditional martial art of tai chi and a Chinese knots tutorial.
Yasmene Clark, a player on the women’s team and a chemical engineering student, chose to do tai chi and said the lesson was “amazing.”
“I felt like one with the Earth,” she said.
Her teammate Kelsey DuBois, who is studying public policy, was also impressed by the lesson.
“I keep saying everything was really cool, but [tai chi] was by far the coolest,” she said.
The athletes also tried more modern aspects of Chinese life, like e-payment.
“I’ve been using Alipay. It’s really easy. You just pull up your QR code and they scan it,” Clark said, adding that she found it even easier to use than Apple Pay in the U.S.
Teammate and nursing student Chloe Teter said another player who had been to China before gave them a tip: don’t jaywalk.
“Or else you could get severely injured,” Teter said. “I thought [in] New York the traffic was crazy, but it’s a lot more fast here.”
Another teammate, math major Caroline Peper, also noticed something “weird” about the traffic coming into the city center from the Shanghai Pudong International Airport:
“Everyone is going the same speed limit. No one was speeding,” she said. “That doesn’t happen in the United States.”
Taxi drivers told Marketplace that there are traffic cameras on the highway that automatically fine them if they speed. Plus, some drivers said ride share apps also monitor their driving and penalize them for speeding.
Given what Mashensky has read about the U.S.-China tensions, he expected a little hostility from locals for being American.
“But I found it very surprising [that] everyone is very welcoming, super eager to help,” he said. “They’re kind of excited about us being here.”
Weeks before their arrival, four instructors from an Iowa college on a teaching exchange in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin were stabbed at a park, as was a Chinese national who tried to intervene. A local man was arrested with no motive announced.
Negative U.S.-China relations also weighed on a Chinese student who was sitting in the stands at the NYU-Shanghai Jiao Tong University tournament.
“I hesitate to visit the U.S. because there’s a possibility I could encounter racism or discrimination,” the student, a pharmacy major, said.
When asked for her name, she said, “Do I have to?” In the end, she gave her English name, Jodie Ji, which is not registered with the Chinese police. Like most people in China, she is self-censoring, she said, in case of official retaliation.
NYU students, according to Mashensky, were able to “do and say whatever” they wanted. “There’s obviously this understanding of, ‘Hey, be careful,’ but we didn’t get a fully pre-planned thing of what to say and what not to say,” he said.
American and Chinese officials have said they want more exchanges, but they also put up obstacles.
The U.S. has a “reconsider travel” warning on China because of arbitrary law enforcement, among other things. At the same time, Chinese citizens invited to U.S. government-organized events in China are harassed by local security officials, Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to China, told The Wall Street Journal.
It is also not easy for citizens in both countries to keep in touch. The NYU students said they mostly communicate using Instagram and Snapchat, which are banned in China, along with many other Western apps. The basketball players also use Apple’s iMessage, which is useable in China, but it only works on Apple products, and iPhone sales on the Chinese mainland have fallen, partly because of the tensions with the U.S.
Chinese nationals use WeChat, which is an app scrutinized by the U.S. government for potentially allowing the Chinese Communist Party to collect the personal information of Americans.
As the NYU trip neared the end, the basketball players listed off all the Chinese food they’ve eaten, including pork buns, crab roe noodles, dumplings and the crowd favorite — Peking duck.
“The food has been incredible. I feel like when I leave here, I’m not going to eat another bite,” Peper said, adding that she intends to return with her family. She said her mom is keen to visit since she is in the textile industry and does a lot of business with China.
The exchanges, which are usually short, have sometimes been criticized for tiptoeing around tough topics. However, these trips still serve a purpose, Mashensky said after he returned to New York.
“It’s obviously better to go [to China], because as you spend time there and you immerse yourself in the experience and the culture and the people. You start to understand their cultural norms, what they want, how they act, even how they do business, obviously,” he said.
“I would definitely come back to learn more and experience more,” he added. “[I] would love to see Beijing and other bigger cities.”
Additional research by Charles Zhang
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