Jiang Xueqin
Chinese-Canadian educator (born 1976)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jiang Xueqin (Chinese: 江学勤; pinyin: Jiāng Xuéqín;[ph 1] born 1976),[ph 2] also known as "Professor Jiang", is a Chinese-Canadian educator and commentator. In the 2000s, he was involved in education reforms in China.[3][4] Since 2022, he has worked as a philosophy teacher at Moonshot Academy high school in Beijing.[5] He gained international attention with his viral YouTube channel Predictive History, on which he is best known for commentating on and analysing geopolitics using game theory, historical patterns and eschatology.
Jiang Xueqin | |
|---|---|
| 江学勤 | |
| |
| Born | 1975 (age 50–51) |
| Citizenship | Canada[2] |
| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Occupations | Educator, YouTuber, blogger |
| Substack information | |
| Newsletter | |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Subscribers | 2.3 million |
| Views | 77 million |
| Last updated: April 13, 2026 | |
Early life and education
Jiang Xueqin was born in Guangdong. His father was a high school teacher in China. At 6, Jiang's family emigrated to Canada, where they settled in Toronto. His father became a short-order cook, and his mother worked as a seamstress. Jiang says he had a poor childhood including having to wear hand-me-down clothes.[6][7]
Jiang graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1999.[7][5][8][9] As an undergraduate at Yale College, he worked as a teacher at the Affiliated High School of Peking University in Beijing in 1998.[4]
Jiang holds Canadian citizenship.[4][1]
Career
His belief in guanxi or social networking for career success came to be while studying at Yale, which he says he lacked.[6]
After graduation, he fell into deep frustration when he failed to publish his own book or get articles published in magazines. "I felt lost, angry, and bewildered by the world. I jumped from one job to another, never settled down, and eventually fell into severe depression when I was almost 30," Jiang Xueqin recalled.
In 2000, Jiang, while suffering from depression, moved to Beijing where he worked small stints as a freelance journalist.[3][6] Jiang wrote for publications such as the American Christian Science Monitor and the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.[1]
In 2001, Jiang was contracted to conduct an undercover U.S.-funded PBS documentary about the labor movement in China.[10][8] While filming one such protest in Daqing, Jiang was arrested and detained for two days before he was deported from China on 5 June 2002. A friend claimed that he was accused of "making illegal video recordings" and suspected of spying. No charges were filed.[1]
In 2003, Jiang was allowed by Chinese officials to return to China, where he decided to abandon freelance journalism and pursue educational reform instead at "high-profile schools".[8][7]
In 2008, Jiang initiated educational reforms at Shenzhen Middle School in a push for a more liberal system of learning with focus on creativity.[3][4] He has described himself as being the first person in China to initiate such reforms.[11]
Jiang has since held senior administrative and teaching positions at several prominent Chinese secondary schools, including:
- Deputy Principal, Shenzhen Middle School (2008–2010)[3]
- Program Director, Peking University High School International Division (2010–2012)
- Tsinghua University's Affiliate High School (2014)[4]
- History and Philosophy Teacher, Moonshot Academy Beijing (2022–present).[ph 3]
He was a researcher with the Global Education Innovation Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and has served on the selection committee for the Global Teacher Prize.[12]
His writing has appeared in The New York Times (Chinese edition), CNN, China Youth Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.[13]
YouTube channel
In 2024, Jiang created the YouTube channel Predictive History with the initial intention of recording his classes for his students to review. He describes his channel as employing structural historical analysis, game theory, and concepts inspired by Isaac Asimov's fictional psychohistory to interpret and predict important geopolitical developments.[ph 4][14] Jiang also has a course, Western Philosophy, which he has recorded and uploaded to his YouTube channel.[14]
Jiang's Geo-Strategy episode, "The Iran Trap" (2024), has attracted international attention, predicting the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 and escalating U.S. involvement in a conflict with Iran (cf. the 2025 and 2026 conflicts) and eventual U.S. loss in a prolonged conflict, the first two of which have come true as of 2026[update].[14][15] According to India Today, other analysts had made similar predictions but "Jiang packaged them early and memorably."[6]
After his channel went viral amid the 2026 Iran war, he started appearing on podcasts and online news shows like Piers Morgan Uncensored and The Tucker Carlson Show.[7]
He styles himself as "Professor Jiang" in his videos; he has not taught at a university level.
Reception
While some media outlets described Jiang's lecture on Iran in 2024 as prophetic (earning him the moniker "Nostradamus of China"),[7] others criticized the predictions for relying on selective historical analogies, not showing his game theory work, and untestable assumptions.[14] India Today said that his geopolitical analysis glaringly do not feature Chinese foreign policy or internal problems of China even though he resides in the country.[6] In an interview with Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo he said that he uses VPN to get past the internet censorship in China to access YouTube and other blocked websites, adding "I do not talk to reporters in China because I'm conscious that whatever I say online could be used against me."[16] The South China Morning Post noted that he is mainly popular outside of China, though some of his English-language lectures have been translated and uploaded onto Chinese social media.[7]
The Free Press described Jiang as a conspiracy theorist who has promoted conspiracy theories through his YouTube channel about the Illuminati, Freemasons, Jesuits and Sabbateans controlling the Western world.[17] According to the South China Morning Post, which described some of his lectures as "veering into well-trodden conspiracy theories on shadowy secret societies", in "Pax Judaica", the concluding lecture about Greater Israel of his Secret History series, Jiang has presented a theory that after the US is forced from the Middle East, the Illuminati, an organization comprised of Freemasons, Jesuits and Sabbateans, would control the world from Jerusalem.[7] Yang Meng, assistant professor at Peking University, argued that Jiang has promoted conspiracy theories relating to Israel, such as claiming that Israel has practiced ritual child sacrifice in the Gaza war.[18]
Jiang's usage of the moniker "Professor", as a high school teacher, has also been described as misleading.[6] He has defended the usage saying that he did not initially name his channel as such and only started using the title after fans started calling him by that name.[16]
Publications
- 创新中国教育 [Creative China]. 2014. ISBN 978-7-5117-2072-6.
- Schools for the Soul. 2021.[19]
- "China's media enables tyranny and corruption". CNN. 23 November 2017.