Duke University junior Kyle Abrahm was about to shotgun a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the last day of classes in 2024—an end-of-semester ritual on the engineering quad—when his buddy, Matthew Rodriguez, asked if he had “signed up for China.”
Abrahm had not signed up, nor did he know what Rodriguez was talking about. But he found the email from the school’s campus in China—Duke Kunshan University or DKU for short—took 30 seconds to fill out the attached application form, and proceeded to chug his PBR.
The email encouraged students to apply for a week-long trip to Jiangsu province, with all costs covered by the Jiangsu Foreign Affairs Office. Dozens of other Duke students received the invitation from professors or friends. I was one of them. So was Sophia Lehrman, a close friend whose “how can we turn down a free trip?” energy pushed me to click the button. Chinese is my minor and I have spent more than a decade learning the language. A chance to visit for free in the summer before my senior year at Duke was too good to pass up.
By August, the four of us were among 70 students en route to China for the eight-day tour. Most of us had no idea what to expect.
My first clue that this wasn’t just a sightseeing opportunity was in an email full of disclaimers that arrived at 5:36 a.m. as I was sitting at my gate in LaGuardia Airport, knees propped on my carry-on bag.
“Notice: Media Coverage During Collegiate Immersion Bootcamp,” read the subject line.
The notice, sent from DKU’s Office of International Relations, alerted us that professional photographers and videographers from DKU and local Jiangsu media would join us on portions of the trip.
Some of the footage, it said, “may be utilized as part of our promotional efforts, showcased across our social media platforms, and shared through various communication outlets.”
I would quickly discover why Duke’s China campus sent this last-minute alert. Upon landing, we were met by our tour guide, Frank—and a camera crew. Like others on the trip, I would soon be hounded by Chinese TV crews.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Sophia Lehrman
“From the second we stepped into the airport, we were asked to hold a banner and there was a media crew of at least five people holding cameras and interviewing us,” Lehrman recalled.
I came to feel that the trip had two purposes: Yes, we were there to explore a mammoth country with a culture and government unlike the United States. But it also felt like we were helping promote the Chinese government. Many other students felt the same way.
Duke and DKU have since acknowledged mistakes in how they ran the program. They say they didn’t know the Chinese media would be bombarding us and will not let that occur on future trips.
“We were surprised at the media’s intrusive behavior, and we sincerely hope that it did not detract from the overall value of the trip,” said Lydia Jin, senior director at DKU’s Office of Communications & Public Affairs. “We intend to run the program again this year, but based on multiple inputs, we will set some boundaries on Chinese media access to student participants.”
The Chinese Embassy in Washington told me that although there was local coverage of our visit, the goal was “encouraging more people to learn, cherish and support the long-standing friendship between China and the U.S. and to better understand each other.”
The 50,000 Initiative
Looking back, obtaining visas, often a lengthy ordeal, had been surprisingly easy. The whole trip was that way.
“They’re planning everything for me,” Abrahm, now a senior, remembers thinking. “Like, I’ll bring 100 U.S. dollars and just see where this takes me.”
Hours after arriving in Shanghai, we traveled south to Kunshan and moved into the suite-style dorms at DKU’s campus, our home base for the first few days of the trip. The campus, a partnership between Duke in Durham and Wuhan University in China, features sleek glass buildings and tranquil water gardens covered in lily pads.
Duke is one of a handful of universities that have campuses in China. New York University has a Shanghai campus, and Kean University in New Jersey has one, too. When then-Duke President Richard Brodhead announced the plans for DKU in 2012, he said that “through DKU, Duke will play a leadership role in creating new models of world-class higher education in China, introducing students and faculty to Duke’s signature strengths of liberal arts education and the interdisciplinary study of contemporary problems.”
China has had strained relationships with several U.S. administrations, but student exchange programs have sometimes been a symbolic effort to open up the country. Recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “50,000 initiative” seeks to bring that number of young Americans to his country by 2028. An article inYibiao Magazine, a U.S. publication that focuses on human rights in China, said that at least five American student groups visited the country in January 2024, including students from Columbia University, table-tennis players from Virginia, and high school students from Iowa. The article said the motive for the group visits was to give students a positive view of the country.
Evan Osborne, an economics professor at Wright State University who co-wrote the article, told me, “People who are there are there to serve the interest of the Communist party—not willingly, or even knowingly, necessarily, but that’s why they are there.”
“There’s no genuine cultural exchange,” said Jeanette Tong, the other co-writer, who works at Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a pro-democracy group. “Everything has an agenda behind it.”
She said university students are seen as a good fit for such promotional tours: young, influenceable subjects, with deep pockets to fund these kinds of trips. Governments that host such exchanges are aiming for what she referred to as the “pebble effect.” One student comes back from their trip with a positive impression of the country and tells 10 friends. Each one tells 10 more. The impact is exponential.
Among the 70 students on our trip, 62 attend Duke in Durham. The remaining seven were from other American schools, including Columbia University and the University of Michigan.
Nowhere in Duke’s brief description of the program, nor the emails leading up to it, nor the pre-departure Zoom session, was the 50,000 Initiative mentioned. Duke’s website said we would “not only witness and experience the unique charm of Chinese culture firsthand but also gain insights into the groundbreaking advancements China has made in the field of technological innovation.”
In addition to giving us a rosy view of China, the Chinese media also sought to show their viewers a group of Americans who were impressed with their culture. It’s not clear how much Duke or DKU initially knew about this effort. But as DKU representatives became aware that the trip could become a week-long photo shoot, they alerted us with that 5:36 a.m. email.
“While DKU and Duke supported student recruitment and support, we weren’t involved in the media aspects and didn’t receive advance information on promotion or media presence,” Duke spokesman Frank Tramble told The Assembly. “We were surprised of their presence as well.”
In theory, our trip could have been a sincere attempt at mending decades of tension between China and the United States. But the lack of details from the start should have made us wary that it was more than an innocent tour of museums and canals.
“China is a totalitarian country where everything of consequence is controlled by the communist party,” said Osborne.
‘I Love China’
On our first steamy summer day in Jiangsu province, we were herded into a pristine DKU lecture hall for the opening ceremony, a mix of flag-waving and hand-shaking. Then, on a big screen: videos of Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams, who wished us luck and advised us to drink a Red Bull for the jetlag, and China’s ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, with a long message that welcomed us and urged us to build friendship between China and the U.S. On one side of the ambassador hung an American flag. On the other side, a Chinese one.
The ambassador?! I was sitting in the front row, neck crooked, wondering, Are we, like, important or something? Meanwhile, photographers dressed in all black prowled the aisles around me, snapping and clicking cameras in my face. Abrahm said that on the first day, “I remember looking around and being like, whoa, there’s 28 cameras and like five video cameras. This is crazy. This must be a really big deal.”
After the opening ceremony, we heard a lecture from an associate professor of environmental science at DKU, who gave us an account of the air pollution in the country. This would be one of many lectures, setting the tone for a trip stuffed with indoor activities like classes and guided museum tours and little time to explore outside. The professor told us that one time he was in Beijing, and when he sneezed into a white napkin, he looked down to find black soot.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Sophia Lehrman
After the lecture, we were swarmed by cameras. Abrahm was interviewed by a local TV station.
The woman behind the camera asked him about the climate presentation, Abrahm recalled, and he gave a detailed answer, sprinkled with phrases like “carbon intensive manufacturing processes.”
Abrahm recalled the exchange: “The people behind the camera were like, ‘Okay, you know, would you mind saying something more positive about China?’”
Abrahm responded, rewording a little to appease the woman behind the camera.
Oops! They only got the audio. He had to do it again. Abrahm, normally patient, was growing annoyed.
“And begrudgingly, just to be over with the interview, I said what they wanted me to say,” he told me later. He said something along the lines of “China is a leader in the movement to curb climate change.”
Like the rest of us, he found that being interviewed, which was exciting for a moment, grew old fast.
“By day two and, you know, the tenth person asking to do an interview, you’re like, okay, this is getting a little bit ridiculous,” he said.
Rodriguez, a Duke senior studying mechanical engineering, felt DKU’s alert about the media didn’t capture the scope of the horde he soon faced. “There was definitely more than a few,” he said. “There was a whole reality show’s amount of cameras.”
Some of the interviews were just plain weird.
Rodriguez said he was in an opera museum when a camera crew strapped him with a mic, showed him a video on TikTok of a woman singing Chinese opera, and asked him to sing along. Rodriguez waved his arms and tried to murmur the song.
“We were surprised at the media’s intrusive behavior.”
Lydia Jin, senior director at Duke Kunshan University’s Office of Communications & Public Affairs
Other times, the camera crews tried to coach us. Leading questions were common, like, “Would you be happy if you moved to Jiangsu province?”
Rodriguez recalled telling the cameras that he liked a Chinese infrastructure project and then pausing and wondering: What did I just say? Will this somehow come back to haunt me when I start my career?
Sometimes, the reporters taught us phrases in Chinese to recite on camera. Once, after I toured a Chinese village, a crew pulled me aside for an interview and taught me to recite a poem in Mandarin that included the line, “I love China.”
Looking ‘American’
The more “American” we looked, the more the camera crews seemed to follow us. As a brown-eyed, brunette, white 22-year-old, I was especially popular. They also liked Abrahm, who is a square-jawed, smooth-skinned white guy. They loved Lehrman, a rosy-cheeked Duke senior who wore red lip stain and bohemian outfits, as well as Rodriguez, who has long, fluffy, curly hair and shiny white teeth.
“He looks like the American teenage boy,” Lehrman said.
I found myself subconsciously performing for cameras. I prepped by borrowing Lehrman’s lip tint, blush, and mascara each morning (a change from my usual morning makeup routine, which is to slap Vaseline on my lips).
“There was a whole reality show’s amount of cameras.”
Matthew Rodriguez, Duke senior
We were a traveling circus with cameras constantly rolling. We were paraded in front of local press and TV stations. The message was clear: American students love Jiangsu and are impressed by China’s cultural prowess.
As Osborne, the Wright State professor, pointed out to me, Chinese media aren’t like American journalists covering an event in their paper’s city. “It’s not people who decide on their own because everything is party-controlled all the way down,” said Osborne. Even the “local media outlets” were inherently intertwined with a larger government effort, he said.
We were bused around on two massive coaches, with the media people following in their own black van. Each day of our trip felt like stepping into a machine that was built for us to make friends, smile, eat food, and express our admiration for Jiangsu province.
Frank, Man of Mystery
Accompanying us was a representative of the Jiangsu Foreign Affairs Office whose name was Liu Fan but who was known to us as Frank. He played many roles—tour guide, cheerleader, and culture expert. He made every announcement, rallied us on early mornings, and introduced us to visitors. When he issued instructions about logistics such as when to board the bus, it sometimes turned into a 12-minute soliloquy about the meaning of timeliness and the cultural phenomenon of American students being late.
One night, after dinner at a massive Chinese restaurant where Rodriguez, Abrahm, and I played spades with a deck of cards we brought along, Frank told us to go explore. Buses would be back for us in two hours. Someone—by typing “drinks” into Google Maps—led a group of us to an outdoor bar, one you might find in a young-Brooklyn neighborhood.
Rodriguez threw on a pair of sunglasses that made the hostess, who thought he looked like Timothee Chalamet, swoon over him. While he was busy with an international romance, the rest of us were singing and taking selfies with a bulldog we spotted on the street.
Bottles of wine danced across the table. At some point, I looked toward the head.
Frank!
He sat, still, staring, waiting for one of the 20 students to notice him. He could have been there for minutes, I’m not sure. I squeezed knees under the table and nodded toward the end, signaling Put down your alcohol and stay calm. I’m not sure if we were told not to drink on the trip, but we had the impression we weren’t supposed to.
After minutes of confusion, during which we slowly moved our bottles under the table in an unsubtle effort to cover up, Frank stood up.
“Go to the bus,” he said. This was not the charismatic Frank we knew. We wimpishly insisted that we pay and then run to the bus, but Frank said he’d already paid.
We walked toward the bus, reeking of beer and wine, fearing punishment. But once on board, he was energetic, smiley, the old Frank. He told us he was thrilled that we enjoyed the night out, and jokingly told us to stay away from alcohol. The tone was, We’ll keep this between us.
While Frank played tour guide and government representative, we also were accompanied by Wei Wang, a DKU official who sometimes clashed with Frank over the itinerary and Frank’s long speeches. Wang was a shorter, round-faced, perpetually stressed Chinese man, his thick accent making every announcement sound urgent.
It seemed to me that the friction between them reflected a longer-running tension between DKU and the Chinese government.
“There’s no genuine cultural exchange.”Jeanette Tong, Citizen Power Initiatives for China
I spoke to Wang (who preferred to be called Robin) months after the trip ended, and he laughed when I asked about their relationship. The tension had been palpable.
“During the trip, you can see myself on behalf of DKU and Frank on behalf of Jiangsu FAO, there are kinds of different culture and different governance,” Wang explained. He saw Frank representing the desires of China at large, while his priority was the students.
According to Wang, the itinerary for the program was finalized weeks before our arrival in China. But he said Frank, day by day, would adjust the plan, adding new activities and talks.
“The government wants to take more control on the program, which makes this program not really flexible,” he told me, explaining that there wasn’t much Duke or DKU could do to regain control once they lost it.
Frank told him that only Jiangsu TV would join us, so Wang envisioned a few cameras on a museum trip or two. “Unfortunately, during the trip, Frank also invited different levels of media and TV to come join in this program,” he said.
When I followed up with Frank, he said they tried to be responsive to student complaints: “We gave a green light to the media … Maybe too much during the first couple of days, so we tried to narrow it down and give some limitations to that.”
‘It Felt Transactional’
When I returned to the U.S., I talked with other Duke students who shared my sentiments: We felt used.
“It felt transactional,” said Lehrman, explaining that while we took advantage of a free trip, the backers of the trip took advantage of us.
We felt the Chinese government, with the help of a pretty clueless partner in DKU, had tried to give us a one-sided view of the country. As Osborne put it, “they want you to learn a specific thing and take it back with you. And that’s propaganda.”
After being interviewed for hours, we also knew that our words would live on in China and beyond. One evening around sunset, our group visited Nanjing’s city wall. Frank, holding his phone horizontally, summoned us from our selfies to look at his phone. We were on China Central Television (CCTV), the giant national network. Footage of us can also be found on Wechat, the all-in-one app that people in China use for messaging, social media, and games.
“We quickly realized that we were being broadcasted everywhere, all the time, which was both hilarious and really scary,” said Lehrman.
A spokeswoman from the Chinese Embassy told The Assembly that Ambassador Xie retweeted footage of our group, commenting that he was happy to see American students in China finding “a pathway toward a better future for all.”
I asked Osborne and Tong if it is possible for Duke to take a big group of students to China without it being an organized propaganda trip. “No,” said Osborne, but students can go prepared for what they’re going to see, to ask questions (to the extent it’s allowed), and with an understanding of what they will not see on this trip.
But, as Osborne explained to me, this type of presentation was carefully constructed. We weren’t simply participants on a cultural exchange program; we were being showcased to project China’s cultural influence and international appeal.
After all … we love China!
Jacqueline Cole is a senior at Duke University, where she writes for The 9th Street Journal. She has interned at the Concord Monitor and Newsday, covering politics and breaking news, and has had work published in INDY Week.