Harvard hosts Chinese official who said Communist Party of China is ‘great party’

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A Chinese government official who previously claimed the Communist Party of China (CPC) is a “great party” and said that human rights violations in China were “lies” gave a speech this past weekend at Harvard University.

Huang Ping, who has been the consul general of China’s New York Consulate since 2018, attended the 25th annual Harvard College China Forum at Harvard Business School on Saturday, where he gave a speech celebrating China’s efforts to “build a great modern socialist country.”

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“Over the past 100 years, the CPC has united and led the Chinese people to achieve world-renowned achievements in developing our country and improving people’s lives,” Huang said, according to a transcript by China’s ministry of foreign affairs. “China will unswervingly be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order, and will continue to make unremitting efforts for human development and progress.”

Huang is a staunch defender of the CPC and has previously denied the existence of a genocide being committed against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, despite statements to the contrary by the U.S. State Department and the Holocaust Museum.

Chinese Consul General in New York Huang Ping addresses a reception in New York City celebrating the 20th anniversary of Macao’s return to the motherland on Dec. 12, 2019. (Xinhua/ via Getty Images)

“There are lots of lies here, fabricated by some people with their own political agenda,” Huang said in a August 2021 interview, denying the existence of genocide and internment camps. “As I said, there’s no genocide, not a single evidence to prove that there’s a genocide or something there. It’s just a slandering.” 

Huang also called the CPC a “great party” and described the internment camps in which Uyghurs are detained as educational.

“I see these centers as a campus, rather than camps,” he said at the time. “We get these people there to be educated. And this has been quite effective in terms of countering terrorism and in de-radicalization. Up to now, there has not been a single terrorist attack in exactly four years.”

Huang Ping, new Chinese consul-general in New York, speaks at a press briefing upon his arrival at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 15, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Rui via Getty Images)

During his speech Saturday, Huang called on Americans to be more “tolerant to diversity” and to accept China’s way of governance.

“American society has always advocated the spirit of diversity and inclusiveness, but there are also some narrow-minded people who find it difficult to accept those countries with different histories, cultures and systems from the U.S.,” he said. “They always point fingers at those countries and want to change them.”

Huang’s visit to Harvard followed a report from Fox News Digital last week about China securing $120 million in contracts with U.S. universities in 2021. The report cited a Wall Street Journal article from 2020 about the Department of Education investigating Harvard and Yale as part of an ongoing review that has discovered U.S. universities failed to report at least $6.5 billion in foreign funding from countries like China and Saudi Arabia. 

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“The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is rooted in the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization,” Huang continued. “It is the choice of the 1.4 billion Chinese people. The development and progress China has made in the past few decades has fully proved that this is the right path that suits China’s national conditions. We will follow this path unswervingly. A poll conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School on China for 10 consecutive years shows that the Chinese people’s satisfaction with the government has remained above 90% year after year. We hope that the U.S. side will respect the path independently chosen by Chinese people and accommodate a peaceful and prosperous China.”

Huang’s comments come as millions of people remain locked down under China’s strict COVID-19 orders, which has slowed China’s economic growth and left residents of Shanghai, the country’s richest city, in sometimes dire conditions, forcing some people into isolation facilities while those that don’t test positive are forced to rely on overburdened delivery services for food and supplies.

Harvard did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Cameron Cawthorne and Michael Lee contributed to this report.