Jiang Xueqin

Jiang Xueqin (Chinese: 江学勤^{[ph 1]}; pinyin: Jiāng Xuéqín; born 1976^{[ph 2]}) is a Chinese-Canadian educator and commentator. In the 2000s, he was involved in education reforms in China.^[5][6] Since 2022, he has worked as a teacher at Moonshot Academy high school in Beijing.^[7] He is also known for his YouTube channel Predictive History, on which he styles himself as "Professor Jiang".^[8][9]

Jiang Xueqin was born in Guangdong. His father was a high school teacher in China. At the end of the Cultural Revolution when he was 6, Jiang's family immigrated 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.^[3][10]

Jiang says that he was awarded a scholarship and attended Yale College within Yale University and obtained a B.A. in English Literature from Yale College in 1999.^{[10][7][4][11]} Jiang holds Canadian citizenship.^[6][1]

His belief in guanxi or social networking for career success came to be while studying at Yale, which he says he lacked.^[3]

In 1998, while still studying as an undergraduate at Yale, Jiang worked his first teaching job, a six-month stint at the Affiliated High School of Peking University in Beijing.^[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. While suffering from depression, which continued for the next five years, in 2000 Jiang moved to Beijing where he worked small stints as a freelance journalist.^[5][3] Jiang wrote for publications such as the American Christian Science Monitor and the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.^[1]

In 2002, Jiang initiated educational reforms at Shenzhen Middle School.^[5][6]

In 2001, Jiang was contracted to conduct an undercover U.S.-funded PBS documentary about the labor movement in China.^[12][4] 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".^[4][10]

Jiang has since held senior administrative and teaching positions at several prominent Chinese secondary schools, including:

• Deputy Principal, Shenzhen Middle School (2008–2010)^[5]
• Program Director, Peking University High School International Division (2010–2012)
• Tsinghua University's Affiliate High School (2014)^[6]
• History and Philosophy Teacher, Moonshot Academy Beijing (2022–present).^{[ph 1]}

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.^[13]

His writing has appeared in The New York Times (Chinese edition), China Youth Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.^[14]

Jiang created the YouTube channel Predictive History, in which he styles himself as "Professor Jiang" despite not teaching at the university level. His description of the channel includes employing structural historical analysis, game theory, and concepts inspired by Isaac Asimov's fictional psychohistory to interpret and predict important geopolitical developments.^{[ph 3][15]} Jiang also has a course, Western Philosophy, that has been recorded and uploaded to his YouTube channel.^[15]

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].^[15][16] According to India Today, other analysts had made similar predictions but "Jiang packaged them early and memorably."^[3]

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.^[10]

While some media outlets described Jiang's lecture on Iran in 2024 as prophetic (earning him the moniker "Nostradamus of China"),^[10] others criticized the predictions for relying on selective historical analogies, not showing his game theory work, and untestable assumptions.^[15] 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.^[3] He has said that he uses VPN to get past the internet censorship in China to access YouTube and other blocked websites.^[9] 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.^[10]

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.^[8] 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.^[10] 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.^[17]

Jiang's usage of the moniker "Professor", as a high school teacher, has also been described as misleading.^[3] In an inteview with Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo, he 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.^[9]

• 创新中国教育 [Creative China]. 2014. ISBN 978-7-5117-2072-6.
• Schools for the Soul. 2021.^[18]
• "China's media enables tyranny and corruption". CNN. 23 November 2017.

• Teaching Page at the Moonshot Academy
• YouTube channel @PredictiveHistory
• Interview with Breaking Points on War with Iran (March 2, 2026)
• "'Precisamos reformar a ideia de escolaridade', diz educador chinês que estará no Educação 360" [We need to reform the idea of education says Chinese educator on Education 360]. Extra (in Brazilian Portuguese). 11 August 2015. Retrieved 18 January 2026.