Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

This dude wants to, and I quote the article, "dedicate his career to improving China's underdevelopment of the application of advances to point-of-care technology in the field of public health".

He's not being denied that because anyone objects to his aims. The problem seems to be his parents, culture and where his family comes from. Now I'll agree with you that the standard for racism is a bit fuzzy these days, but this is clearly going to meet the bar for being called "racist" when it comes to a university education in North America.

View on HN

His stated aims are irrelevant, as are his parents and culture. The relevant point is that he is a Chinese national who can be recruited or coerced by the Chinese government.

These is this entity called the People's Republic of China that is independent of Chinese people culture. That entity is the problem here.

> The problem seems to be his parents, culture and where his family comes from.

The problem aren't his parents, but the known history of what his government may do to his parents to force him to comply, and yes, the culture that normalized this sort of thing as being ok. You're seriously reaching by calling this racism. Even if "universities" might call it that, that doesn't make the classification sensible or coherent.

Would the government ban:

- A Taiwanese student

- A Chinese student who grew up in America?

- A Chinese student who grew up in Canada?

- A Chinese student from a Chinese family that immigrated to Mexico?

No? The ethnicities and race are similar for all the above cases. And I don’t think anyone doubts Canada would them in. Showing - race has nothing to do with this equation.

Also, in many ways, it is possibly a mercy to the Chinese student himself; because then he won’t be put in a situation where the Chinese government puts his family (quite literally) at gunpoint.

If any of the above have relatives in the PRC that could be used as levers to coerce the student into spying for China, then that's reason to be wary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com