I teach medical students at the top university in my province and I've occasionally tried discussing geopolitical issues with my students. It has mostly failed to stimulate any real interest or substantive discussion. Students tend to get defensive that everything is an attack on China and are generally just eager to find how issues make other countries look bad/worse than China. They often manage to bring their hatred of Japan into the discussion. I find Chinese are generally indifferent to the situation in the Middle East because it really has nothing to do with China and my guess is they'd kind of smirk and say something along the lines of how China is better than over there. Can't imagine they'd care about the history of ethnic strife in the middle East, the nature of the Syrian rebels, whether Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria and the implications of U.S. policy in Iraq. More like, China good. China peaceful. America is world's police man, too violent with guns and wars and school shootings. The end. 

My students are utterly self-absorbed and myopic.

Yeah, a few asked m