Last Wednesday, the South Korean government announced that it will deport Chinese citizens found guilty of attacks during the running of the Olympic torch in Seoul last month. “The justice ministry, while fully respecting the friendly ties between South Korea and China, will sternly punish Chinese nationals who committed illegal acts,” a ministry spokesman said. The authorities were specifically looking for four Chinese, including a student suspected of injuring a policeman in a fight in a hotel lobby at the end of the torch relay.

Small South Korea has historically had trouble dealing with large China, yet Seoul’s officials have now found the courage to stand up to Beijing, which had earlier rushed to the defense of the students. So what is the most powerful country in the history of the world doing about its Chinese student problem?

Chinese students in the United States made a series of death threats last month. The most prominent incident involved Grace Wang, a Duke freshman who tried to mediate between twelve pro-Tibet protestors and a crowd of about 500 angry people, mostly Chinese citizens. As a result, her home in China was vandalized, her family there was forced into hiding, and she became the target of death threats in the United States.

Those who made threats against Wang should be found, jailed, and, if foreign nationals, deported. And that goes for all the others who made death threats on American colleges during the last couple months. Universities are vital institutions, and attempts to undermine freedom of expression on campus strike at the heart of our society. There should be zero tolerance for such intolerance. And Washington needs to send a clear message to Beijing, which appears to have orchestrated the “pro-China” demonstrations of students.

It’s bad enough that the Chinese Communist Party represses China’s people. It’s worse when it seeks to repress ours.