Jiang Yurong's Harvard Speech Stirs Global Reactions

“We don’t thrive by proving each other wrong. The way we rise is by not letting anyone go,” Jiang said, emphasizing the need to cling to one another despite global divides. Her remarks came on the same day a federal judge blocked efforts to curb foreign student enrollments at Harvard.

The first Chinese woman to give a Harvard graduation speech, Jiang described how learning to study with friends from different countries had taught her to “dance through each other’s traditions” and “carry the weight of each other’s worlds.” “If we still believe in a shared future, then we are not going to forget: those whom we call enemies – they, too, are human,” she said. In essence, in seeing their humanity, we see our own.”

Online Attitudes in China and the US
The speech soon went viral on Chinese social media, with many saying it was profoundly moving. One said her words made them cry, while another praised how Jiang articulated the feelings of Chinese students on an international stage. On the popular online forum Red Note, another person wrote, “You may not have changed them, but they’ve heard you … As more and more people speak out like you, you will eventually move and change others.”

Yet some Chinese users wondered if Jiang’s privileged background made her more the exception than the rule as representative of the general student body. Other commenters jeered at her and sarcastically advised her to stay in the US: “So smart should stay in United States” and “I wish she can keep shining for overseas and keep away from us.”

At the same time, some of her critics in the US questioned her purported links to a group that has been described as being backed by Chinese Communist Party. One of Mr. Jiang’s father works for a group that serves as a diplomatic arm of the party, which has been active in mobilizing students in China for the party, according to a person familiar with the plans for the speech, and conservatives have used that connection to accuse Harvard of having invited a speaker who is tied to a “CCP-funded and monitored” organization. The same account has previously published other controversial and politicised content. Some Chinese users replied that the organization is actually supported by leading American companies and foundations.

International Students and Harvard’s Global Community
Jiang studied at Cardiff Sixth Form College in Wales during her final high school years and received an undergraduate degree at Duke University before entering Harvard. Part of the reason for her speech was no doubt personal, but it was also made at a time when some in the US have become more suspicious of Chinese students.

Today, Harvard enrolls approximately 6,800 international students who make up more than 27 percent of the University’s total student population. About a third are from China, more than 700 came from India.

Jiang’s message of one humanity reverberates to the present day as an inspiration for believers and as a source of ire for detractors—demonstrating the murky quagmire of education, politics, and international relations.