‘Music diplomacy’ hopes for US-China harmony voiced at launch of Juilliard School campus in Tianjin

Outpost of famed New York performing arts conservatory started operating last year but recent inauguration praises US-China cultural exchange
While potential for dialogue is praised by observers, there is concern about China’s recent crackdowns on public entertainers

US-China relations

Linda Lew

Published: 9:37pm, 1 Nov 2021

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The American performing arts conservatory Juilliard School has inaugurated its first overseas campus in China, receiving congratulations from First Lady Peng Liyuan and China’s foreign vice-minister in a sign that Beijing is pushing music diplomacy.

The institution in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin is the first to offer US-accredited music degrees in mainland China and has been operating since October last year. Its campus was officially inaugurated last week.

The Tianjin Juilliard School is in a newly built park along the Hai River in Binhai’s Yujiapu financial district. Photo: Zhang Chao

Xie Feng, the foreign vice-minister, met Joseph Polisi, the president emeritus and the school’s chief China officer, on Friday and said the Tianjin Juilliard School served a unique function in the exchange between Chinese and American young people.

“[The school] can serve as a link that protects and strengthens China-US relations,” Xie was quoted as saying in a Chinese foreign ministry statement.

“Following ping pong diplomacy, music diplomacy can be used to help the cultural exchange between China and the US return to normal.”

Ping pong diplomacy refers to a tour by American table tennis players to China in 1971, invited by Chairman Mao Zedong, which paved the way for then-US president Richard Nixon’s visit and the normalisation of relations between the two countries.

Xie’s comments came after China’s Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng also met Polisi, and a congratulatory letter from First Lady Peng, a former singer, was sent to the school on the inauguration of its campus on October 26.

China-US relations have been at their worst in decades, as tensions over issues such as the trade war and human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

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The Tianjin Juilliard School reception was notable after the Harvard Beijing Academy, a summer programme running since 2005, said last month it would move to Taiwan from 2022 because of a perceived lack of friendliness from its host, the Beijing Language and Culture University.

China has banned entry to most international students since the start of the pandemic but the Tianjin Juilliard School was able to bring in all its international graduate students in 2020, the institution’s executive director and chief executive, Alexander Brose, previously told the South China Morning Post.

Xie Feng, the vice-foreign minister, said: “Following ping pong diplomacy, music diplomacy can be used to help the cultural exchange between China and the US return to normal.” Photo: AFP

The school, along with New York University Shanghai, were the only two schools in China whose international students could enter the country last year, according to Brose.

Arturo Irisarri Izquierdo, a doctoral candidate at Baptist University specialising in the development of the Chinese piano concerto, said music had a long history of easing dialogue between China and the US.

Perhaps the best-known case was that of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which first visited China in 1973 at then-premier Zhou Enlai’s invitation, and performed not only works by Western composers such as Beethoven, but also the Yellow River Piano Concerto, Irisarri said.

The revolutionary-themed concerto by Chinese composers was first directed by Jiang Qing, Mao’s last wife and a leading political figure during the Cultural Revolution.

Irisarri said that with political discourse increasingly taking on a confrontational dynamic, music could provide a great means to foster dialogue, by offering a space where Chinese and Western musicians could work together for a common goal and engage their audiences in the musical process.

“I would like to interpret Peng Liyuan and Xie Feng’s support of musical diplomacy as an encouragement to work on a dynamic of greater integration and collaboration,” Irisarri said.

Richard Broinowski, a violinist and former Australian diplomat, said music exchanges between China and the West – especially with the US and Australia – had taken a hit because of the pandemic and political tensions.

“We have so many anti-Chinese propagandists in Australia that it’s becoming difficult to continue to perform. A Chinese orchestra, or soloist, would not be welcome in Australia right now,” Broinowski said.

He said the Chinese foreign ministry expressing support for the Tianjin Juilliard School was positive and he hoped the diplomatic sentiment would continue to support these exchanges.

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However, he remained concerned about Beijing’s policing the behaviour of public figures that had seen several Chinese entertainers blacklisted from public life, including pianist Li Yundi, who was punished by the Beijing police for soliciting prostitutes, said Broinowski.

“The leadership is becoming highly moralistic, aren’t they? The man has a right to his private life,” Broinowski said.

Sex work is illegal in China, and solicitation can be punished with detention up to 15 days and a fine of up to 5,000 yuan (US$780).

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Leading American music school strikes right note