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Ivy for the Great Wall(Hartford Courant, The (CT) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 20--NEW HAVEN -- On a trip to China five years ago, the president of Yale extended an invitation to the then-president of China: Why not make Yale a stop on his next tour of America? Richard Levin renewed the offer a few years ago to Hu Jintao, shortly before Hu assumed the presidency. "We got our oar in the water early," he said. The years of diplomacy paid off. Hu will speak at Yale University on Friday, becoming only the second Chinese president to address an American college campus. The trip is a mark of prestige not only for Yale, which wants to raise its global profile, but also for Hu, who faces increasing dissent at home. In an unprecedented move, his appearance will be broadcast live in China, giving the president a chance to demonstrate the respect he is paid at an institution as storied as Yale. His four-day American tour comes as the gap between rich and poor in China widens and unrest over corruption, censorship, pollution and other problems in the communist nation is on the rise. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, spoke at Harvard University in 1997, the first visit to an American college by a Chinese president. On his maiden trip to China four years later, Levin met Jiang and encouraged the president to consider Yale next time around. Levin renewed the invitation when Hu became chief of the Communist Party in 2002 and president a short time later. Hu was scheduled to speak at Yale in September but his visit was canceled after Hurricane Katrina. Hu is expected to talk about education to a crowd of about 650 at Yale's Sprague Hall. New Haven is his last destination after stops in Seattle where he dined with Bill Gates, the billionaire who founded Microsoft, and Washington, D.C., where Hu will meet with President Bush. A block of seats has been saved for Hu's advisers while the rest have been reserved for professors, students and administrators hand-picked by the university. In a private reception before the talk, Levin and Hu will exchange gifts; Hu will donate books from China but Levin is not saying yet what he will give. Hu has tried to ease anxiety about America's $202 billion trade gap with China by pushing China to buy more American planes and software. China recently ordered 80 jets from Boeing and several Chinese computer makers have pledged to buy $1.6 billion in Microsoft software. The managers of Yale's $15 billion endowment also received a gift. China announced this week it will allow Yale to trade Chinese stocks and bonds on China's domestic stock exchange, making Yale the first foreign university to have access to China's restricted securities market. Trade issues have not eclipsed China's poor record on human rights. In New Haven, protesters will greet Hu as his entourage comes into town. Most will be confined to the town green for security reasons but Levin recently gave students permission to gather a block away on Old Campus, a quadrangle bordered by freshman dorms. Hao Wang, a junior at Yale, will demonstrate for an end to China's persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement combining exercise and meditation. Jiang banned and denounced the Falun Gong as an "evil cult" in 1999, when the group's numbers surpassed those of the Communist Party. Since then, the Falun Gong has accused the government of jailing and torturing its followers. Recently, the group alleged that the government has killed up to 6,000 followers in a concentration camp in Liaoning province to harvest their organs -- a claim the Chinese government has denied. "I think the Communist Party just can't tolerate any belief or any meditation that is outside the communist doctrine," said Wang. "I think they want to control everything people think and do." In the past, some Chinese graduate students and scholars doing research at Yale have criticized Yale about working conditions. Yet, they were unwilling to discuss their president, possibly afraid of the repercussions their families at home may face. Wang has been living in the U.S. since he was 10, the son of medical doctors working as researchers at Harvard. He said he and his parents don't dare go back to China unless the ban on Falun Gong is lifted. The Yale Falun Gong Club, which practices on campus each Sunday morning, will present Levin with a petition today asking him to call for an investigation into the Chinese government's alleged killing of Falun Gong practitioners. Club members will be joined on Friday by hundreds of followers from New York and Boston, including Wang's parents. Yale has long historical ties with China. In the 1830s, a doctor educated at Yale opened China's first Western-style hospital. In 1850, China sent its first student abroad, Yung Wing, to study at Yale. Today, 300 of Yale's roughly 11,000 students are Chinese, the largest contingent from any foreign country. As an economist, Levin sees the importance of building a strong China relationship. He said he's impressed by the country's investment in its universities and encouraged by its low labor costs. China's economy is growing up to 10 percent a year, lifting millions in a country of 1.3 billion out of poverty. Levin has made six trips to China and the university now has more than 80 academic collaborations, from medical research to legal reform. "There's no university president I know of who's made that as high of a personal priority," said Paul Gewirtz, a Yale professor who heads the China Law Center. Yale launched the law center in 1999 to aid China in establishing a rule of law -- a vital step if China is to maintain its economic edge, experts say. "China cannot lead or be recognized as a leader unless it is viewed as abiding by universal standards for human freedom," said Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School. Protests have been steadily rising in China, hitting 74,000 in 2004, by official estimates. Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit based in New York, says discontent is brewing as the disparity between rich and poor grows and workers, farmers and victims of police abuse voice their dissatisfaction. The government has responded by cracking down on demonstrators, jailing journalists and blocking websites that provide independent news. Internet companies such as Yahoo and Google have allowed the Chinese government to censor the Web, creating what has been dubbed "The Great Firewall of China." Mickey Spiegel, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, says she supports Yale's decision to engage a controversial leader like Hu rather than isolate him. But she also thinks the trip will fuel the propaganda at home. "It's very prestigious for him to be able to speak there," she said. "The image of him being well received is very important to the Chinese government." It will be nearly midnight in China when he goes on the air. "It's not quite prime-time but I think the audience in China will be huge," said Deborah Davis, a Yale sociology professor. "It will be over 300 million people, at least." Levin said China is making progress and that Yale, in allowing peaceful protest on campus, can set an example. "I'm an optimist about China," he said. "It's a remarkable country. The Chinese people have a great commitment to education and a real capacity for creative thinking." An Associated Press report is included in this story. |