An American mother penned a stunning tribute to her Chinese Communist Party "co-parent" on Wednesday in a guest essay for the New York Times.
Heather Kaye lived in Shanghai for 16 years where she raised her two young daughters. Forced to return to the states due to China's coronavirus policies, the fashion designer said she greatly missed the control the government had on her family's life.
"We’ve returned to a divided America where many feel government has no place in our lives," she lamented. "In these times, I find myself missing my Chinese co-parent."
Kaye explained the extent to which the government co-parents, from its former one-child policy to weighing in on how her children slept and ate.
"The girls’ Chinese kindergarten lectured us on everything, including how many hours our daughters should sleep, what they should eat and their optimal weight," she wrote.
Despite saying she felt her kids were "on loan" from the Chinese government, the mother soon saw "benefits" to this arrangement.
Kaye touted how the CCP taught her daughters values like "self-discipline, integrity and respect for elders," along with a "solid work ethic."
"Constantly served up moral, history and culture lessons on pulling together for the sake of the Chinese nation, our girls came home discussing self-discipline, integrity and respect for elders. With school instilling a solid work ethic and a total drive for academic excellence, my husband and I didn’t need to push the girls to complete homework; the shame of letting their teachers and classmates down was enough to light their fires," she wrote.
The writer went on to argue it was safer for her children under the communist regime's control because of increased police presence and heavy censorship.
"Raising kids in China was a plus in other ways — such as the heavy censorship, which results in a kid-friendly internet, and national limits on how many hours young people can spend playing online video games," she wrote.
"Ironically, the tight control of the Communist Party surveillance state results in its own kind of freedom: With crime and personal safety concerns virtually eliminated, our daughters were riding the subway unsupervised in a city of around 26 million people from the age of 11."
"A constant but benign (and mostly unarmed) police presence kept order; streets and the green spaces around every corner were kept immaculate, and the sense of civic pride was palpable," she wrote.
Kaye ended her essay with hope that the American government would learn from China's example.
"There’s never been a more crucial time for us to learn from one another and build new bridges across the street, nation and world. Attention to the common good is a fundamental value I seek in an American government co-parent," she wrote.
She stipulated that the Chinese Communist Party merits much of the criticism it gets.
"There is no shortage of condemnation directed at China’s Communist Party by critics in the United States, much of it justified. But my family’s experience in China taught us that immersion in a culture with different answers to everyday questions alters how one sees the world," she wrote.
The Times has frequently received criticism for its favorable coverage of the Chinese Communist Party. Last year, the paper was slammed after publishing an essay by the head of a Communist China-linked think tank without initially disclosing his affiliation.
Author and expert on America-China relations Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital that "China has essentially corrupted U.S. media."
Fox News' Brian Flood and Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.
