Essay Contest Winner: Ziting Gao

At the beginning of the last academic year, we asked students from around the country to submit their experiences dissenting against tyranny and embracing American freedoms. 

After reading nearly 300 applications, it’s time to announce our exceptional winner: Ziting Gao from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Read her essay in full here:

One of the lucky ones: What i learned when my family moved from the us to china

It’s easy in an election year to despair of American democracy, to bewail the flaws in the voting system, and to agonize over misinformation campaigns and the “fake news” accusations from bombastic public figures. But as a foreign student, even the divisive discourse of the election season seems to prove the lasting power of American liberty: At least here, people still remember how to fight for their right to speak.

Growing up in China, I did not know I was a prisoner. There was nothing odd about our unblemished history, our preferences for literature by Chinese and Soviet Union authors, or our civic education textbook that was a modern version of The Little Red Book. It was not until I studied abroad in the US for high school that I found out all the CCP is hiding from Chinese people. 

I was 13-years-old when I first learned about the 1989 killing in Tiananmen Square. Thirty-four years after the event, the story does not exist on Chinese search engines; students don’t read about it in school or on social media. The West dubbed it a massacre, and yet, the victims’ families cannot even visit cemeteries, and the youths of the country wallow in ignorance. This is one of the most effective ways the Chinese government controls the minds of youth — by revising history. 

I first came to the US to avoid the zhongkao exams — make-or-break junior high scholastic aptitude tests. Once I was here and had access to unrestricted history and information, I tried to find out what else the CCP was hiding. I read books about the massacre and the one-child policy that opened my eyes to China’s scars. Using the deep reservoir of research literature available online in the US, I started conducting my own study about the 1989 Massacre and sharing my findings with friends back home.

However, my former classmates remain as in the dark as I once was. When I asked them about their opinions on the June 4th Massacre, they thought I was referring to the May 4th movement, an anti-imperialist movement the CCP praised for cementing Chinese nationalism. When I asked them about how the one-child policy affected their families, they sent me the “confused” emoji with three question marks. On the very next day, my WeChat account was banned for a month.

Their ignorance baffled me. I cannot even decide what I feel more: relief for my own lucky escape or gloom for the millions of Chinese youth being indoctrinated and enslaved to ignorance. What I do know is that if this revisionism continues, China and its children will never escape from a cycle of silence and governmental repression. 

At a conference in 2021, Xi said, “Democracy, a shared value of humanity, is a key tenet unswervingly upheld by the CCP and the Chinese people.” Is it liberty that the people of Hong Kong are no longer allowed to hold a candlelight vigil on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Is it liberty that the younger generations have virtually zero idea about the incident? Is it liberty that people who want to talk about June 4th on social media have to photoshop the “Tank Man” image by switching the tanks for a row of yellow ducks?

Since coming to the US, I have seen what liberty really is. True liberty breaks the shackles not only from your wrists and ankles but also from your mind. When the youngest in society never challenge the status quo, they are puppets, as in the current predicament of Chinese youths. Their situations are worse than those of African Americans in the antebellum South, for they have relinquished control of the most precious thing of all—their souls. They do not even have enough knowledge to know what they lack, much less to fight to preserve it. 

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression... to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” By curbing this right, the CCP effectively takes away young people’s will to gain liberty. 

My lucky escape aside, there are many more who cannot yet feel the weight of their chains. Still, others do not appreciate their freedom until they see how easily it can be taken away. Compared to China, the US is much freer, but we must remain vigilant, continuing to fight for that freedom.

Ziting Gao is a high school senior in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since moving to the U.S. in 2017, she has conducted and published research about cultural intelligence and the historical development of human rights. She is currently working on research to assess the potential of implementing a Chinese truth commission for the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

First published in RealClear World in February, 2024. Image: Reuters/The Atlantic Council