TRANSCRIPT:
I was in college in Beijing, China. And English is one of the required classes, and we were not learning very well because of the professor’s strong accent. So I thought if I’m going to learn English, I probably should learn it properly. So I picked up a shortwave radio and I heard this clear signal was the Voice of America and that was the time the “Special English” was on.
It made me a better English speaker and that opened up the chance to visit Boston for a year. Shortly after I came back, went back to China, the Tiananmen Square movement started and that’s when I went back to listening to Voice of America for news.
I believe there are a lot of people in, not just China, but all over the world [who] tune in to Voice of America for news, for actual truths about many different things. Especially now in China, the censorship of internet was so strong, and the Voice of America is probably one of those few can open up the people’s sort of view about the world instead of just be surrounded by propagandists. And without this voice, essentially we are losing the fight against the propaganda.
Published
Qian is a professor of environmental science at The University of Toledo. His research focuses on quantitative methods for analyzing complex environmental and ecological data.