University president calls out Chinese students he says ‘harassed’ their dissident peer

Logan Washburn ’24 | Michigan Campus Correspondent
21 December 2021

After a Chinese student at Purdue University spoke out against the Chinese Communist Party, fellow Chinese students at the American school allegedly threatened to report him to China for espionage.

Zhihao Kong told ProPublica that after he posted a letter condemning the Tiananmen Square Massacre, China’s Ministry of State Security began threatening him and his family.

“His family back home, in this case China, was visited and threatened by agents of that nation’s secret police,” President Mitch Daniels said in an email published by the Purdue Exponent.

Daniels explained that Ministry of State Security officers ordered Kong’s family to stop him from speaking against the regime. If Kong refused, his family said they knew they would get “in trouble,” according to ProPublica.

These threats didn’t only come from the Chinese government. After Kong criticized the Chinese Communist Party, his American peers allegedly began harassing him as well.

“One of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and others martyred for advocating for it, was harassed and threatened by other students from his home country,” Daniels said in a statement.

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