That is why we are losing the global competition not only to China,

but also India, Brazil, and South Korea. Iran, too, has now caught up with Russia in the number of scientific publications.

It’s 2016—how can anyone spout such nonsense? There is no such thing as “Russian education,” just as there is no “Chinese education” or even “American education”; there is global education. The role of international ties and international exchange in it is enormous. The key “carriers of knowledge” have become so mobile that a professor may be working in Oxford today, Princeton tomorrow, and Singapore the day after. And while he is working in Singapore, people are trying to lure him to South Africa and back to the United States.

The Chinese send 250,000 people to American universities every year, and they pay for it themselves. Why? Because they worship the American hegemon?

No—the relationship between the United States and China is more complicated than Russia’s relationship with the United States. The Chinese simply understand that this is in their interest. They are buying knowledge, they are training their people, and those people come back and improve Chinese universities.

And so it turns out that among the world’s top 200 universities, China already has several institutions, while Russia has only Moscow State University.

Not to mention Putin’s favorite subject—geopolitics: of course, all countries that aspire to influence also expand this form of “soft power” by promoting their language and culture. The Chinese, for example, sponsor and promote Confucius Institutes, while the British have the British Council.

So instead of fighting them, we should follow their example: create and fund similar institutions of our own abroad. Subsidize Russian-language courses, pay for distance-learning programs. The moment someone thinks, “Maybe I should learn Russian,” we should be right there, ready to offer everything from a cultural center to free online courses.

Of course, we can go on banning things. We’ll keep banning our way down to the point where Burkina Faso has more scientific publications in international journals than we do.