THE TALE OF TWO SPEAKERS

Chinese netizens are mercilessly slamming Luanna Chiang, the first Chinese student ever to give a commencement speech at Harvard. Instead, they are praising Megha Vemuri, a Indian student who hijacked her commencement speech to speak up for Palestinians.

They say in Chinese its comparison that does the real damage. And indeed the sharp contrast between Chiang’s self-congratulatory oratory and Vemuri’s stand for a cause she believes to be just was strong enough to cut through Chinese Hindu-phobia.

I’ll let the Netizens of Weibo speak for themselves in screencaps below. The automatic translation is crude but what comes through for me is their admiration for Ms. Vemuri as a principled elite, while they have nothing but contempt for Ms. Jiang.

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