Neysun Mahboubi is a US expert on Chinese law and director of the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He spoke to the Post shortly after leading a group of Penn students on a 10-day tour of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou in May. The visit included wide-ranging discussions with Chinese students, think tankers, government officials and foreigners living in China. This interview took place before the announcement that the US State Department would “aggressively review” Chinese student visas and subsequent developments. A question was added later covering the strengthened international student visa vetting process.
Compared to your first visit to China 30 years ago, when you were your students’ age, what stood out to you this time in terms of what has changed – and what has not?
I feel relatively comfortable saying that there are many things about this moment that feel similar to what it was like 30 years ago.
Of course, China has changed immensely – beyond anyone’s imagination back then – but when I was here in the summer of 1995, foreign students, in particular American students, were just starting to come back to China after the disruptions of the 1989 moment.
And in the same way, we are just starting to see American students and scholars come back to China after the disruptions of the pandemic. So in both cases, for a student, it does feel like you are, in some ways, a pioneer in coming back to this context a little earlier than many of your peers.
And I think the reception that my students received in China on this trip, which was incredibly warm and welcoming, is some indication of how relatively rare it is for student groups like this – and American students in particular – to be coming back to China right now.
