At her Harvard commencement ceremony in late May, Chinese student Jiang (“Luanna”) Yurong broadcast a message of unity—a call to look past divisions of nation and ideology. “Those who we label as enemies, they too are human,” she told her audience. “You may disagree with them, but hold onto them, as we are bound by something deeper than belief: our shared humanity.” There was more than a little of the New Testament in her philosophy; notably absent was any reference to the Chinese national pride that her compatriots habitually roll out at such moments. “Sit with discomfort,” she advised. “Listen deeply. And stay soft in hard times.”

Jiang’s comments came in the wake of the Trump administration’s feud with Harvard. In late May, the White House ordered the cancellation of US$100 million in government contracts with the university, having frozen more than US$2 billion in grants already this year. An attempt is now being made to cut off enrolment of international students, some of whom will of course be Chinese. No surprise, then, that the Harvard Crimson described Jiang’s speech as a “full-throated defense of the importance of international diversity as the Trump administration threatens the fate of students from abroad.”

Harvard has trained so many CCP officials over the years that the university is jokingly referred to in China as an “overseas Party school.” Its link to a totalitarian regime is just one of the many reasons the university is treated with contempt by its critics. But Jiang Yurong’s speech is now enduring heavy fire from all directions (save Harvard itself), and she is fast becoming the face of Western academia’s Chinese corruption problem. I believe her critics are missing something more important. Jiang’s address was not just a response to the immediate problems of Harvard University; it was a glimpse of how CCP brainwashing is failing for her generation.

This happy prospect has been obscured by circumstances; indeed, it was literally lost in translation. Video of Jiang’s speech originally appeared online under the title “Our Humanity,” but when her friends posted the clip to a Chinese streaming site, the title was rendered 人类命运共同体 (“A Community With A Common Destiny For Mankind”). That phrase is one of Xi Jinping’s favourite propaganda slogans—Party-speak for a global order dominated by the Communist Party.

That was enough for the CCP’s opponents in the West. A rightwing influencer account on X accused Jiang of “parroting” Xi’s rhetoric, and her speech was described by a Hong Kong lawmaker as “malign foreign influence.” Cyber-sleuths quickly identified Jiang in video footage from a Harvard Kennedy School event in April 2024. In the clip, a Communist Party ambassador’s address is interrupted by a student named Cosette Wu, who stands up and shouts from the audience: “You robbed Hongkongers of the most fundamental freedoms and devastated their democracy.” She is immediately manhandled from the crowd by a Chinese student. As Wu is dragged behind the stage, still shouting, Jiang can be seen for a blurry half-second, standing to one side. (The university would later discipline Cosette Wu, but not her CCP-affiliated assailant.) For many, Jiang’s presence backstage proved her role as a Party asset.