Bang Xiao’s latest piece on China’s youth exchanges reads like it was ghostwritten by the ghost of McCarthy. According to him, sending young Australians to see the Great Wall or visit Tsinghua University is a high-stakes gamble as if one hotpot dinner and a photo op with a panda will turn them into Xi Jinping fanboys.
🧠 Australian students aren’t fools.
They’ve grown up in a digital minefield, where Instagram filters narratives, YouTube radicals peddle conspiracy, and governments of all stripes spin the truth. If they can survive Facebook algorithms, Russian troll farms, and Murdoch front pages, they can survive a week in Shanghai.
📚 They’ve already navigated tougher propaganda.
- They’ve seen through celebrity “sponcon” ads.
- They’ve called out tokenism in corporate Pride campaigns.
- They’ve debated Palestine, climate change, and AI ethics in high school.
And yet Xiao thinks being shown a Confucius temple or a high-speed rail demo is somehow dangerous? Please.
🤝 Engagement breeds understanding, not indoctrination.
Banning student contact out of fear isn’t safeguarding democracy it’s infantilising it. 🎓 If Bang Xiao thinks young Australians can’t handle a plane ticket, maybe he should spend less time warning about brainwashing and more time trusting the brains in the first place.
