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OBSTACLES to Excellence OBSTACLES TO Excellence Academic Freedom & China’s Quest for World-Class Universities A REPORT OF The Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Scholars at Risk (SAR) gratefully acknowledges the members of higher education communities worldwide who have inspired us through their courage and dedication. We acknowledge the researchers who made this report possible, especially Paul Mooney, the committee of expert reviewers who provided crucial insight, and contributors to the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, who have reported incidents analyzed in this report and SAR’s Free to Think report series. We thank the many member institutions, associations, partners, and individuals that contribute to our work generally, including core support for services for threatened and refugee scholars. These include our funding partners, the members of SAR’s Board and Ambassadors Council, and the many friends of SAR, who help us each day to protect more scholars. This report is the result of research conducted by outside consultants and SAR staff, and may not reflect the views of individual network members, institutions, or participating individuals. Scholars at Risk invites comments on this report or inquiries about our work at [email protected]. Scholars at Risk depends on the generous financial support of these and other friends inside and outside higher education communities to sustain our work. Gifts of any size are gratefully appreciated, including matching gifts and bequests. To donate, please visit www.scholarsatrisk.org. ISBN #: 978-0-9994844-6-3 Table of Contents Executive Summary 4 Introduction 8 Methodology 10 Overview of Higher Education in China 12 Threats to Scholars and Students in Mainland China 22 Academic Freedom in China’s Minority Regions 40 Pressures on Hong Kong and Macau 54 Foreign Higher Education in China 70 The Long Arm of the Chinese Party-State 80 Analysis and Recommendations 98 Appendix: Table of Incidents 102 Appendix: Additional Resources 107 Executive Summary | 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY China’s government has made significant investments to develop universities that already compete with the world’s best. Their progress has captured global attention over the years, with universities around the world forging partnerships with institutions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and scholars and students from around the world flocking to study, teach, and research in the country. But while China continues to stoke its ambitions for developing more world-class universities, respect for academic freedom and other human rights essential to quality higher education lags behind, leaving scholars and students at risk, and the country’s goals in the balance. bstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom education communities, and civil society in China and China’s Quest for World-Class and around the world. OUniversities looks at a wide range of In mainland China, state and university pressures and threats to academic freedom in authorities have employed a range of tactics to China and where China has extraterritorial academic intimidate, silence, and punish academics and students. connections.* Based on interviews with Chinese They include limits on internet access, libraries, and and international sources familiar with higher publication imports that impair research and learning; education in China; data from SAR’s Academic orders to ban discussion and research on topics the Freedom Monitoring Project;† legislative and Party-state deems controversial; surveillance and regulatory texts; statements by government monitoring of academic activity that result in loss officials; and reporting and research by human of position and self-censorship; travel restrictions rights organizations, academia, and the press, this that disrupt the flow of ideas across borders; and the report aims to raise awareness and understanding use of detentions, prosecutions, and other coercive of these pressures, and offers constructive tactics to retaliate against and constrain critical recommendations for governments, higher inquiry and expression. Reinforcing these restrictions * This report focuses on higher education institutions and personnel under the territorial control of the PRC, at home and in overseas activities. † The Academic Freedom Monitoring Project investigates and reports attacks on higher education communities around the world. To learn more, visit https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/actions/academic-freedom-monitoring-project/. Executive Summary | 5 and violations is a rallying of efforts by the Chinese with concerns over their autonomy and independence Communist Party (CCP) to make Party ideology from political influence, and the ability of participating central to the PRC’s education system, including scholars and students to carry out their work and the development of “Xi Jinping Thought Centers,” studies amidst the serious pressures that exist off- teacher training in Party ideology, and leveraging campus. In light of these and other concerns, a growing Party loyalty through research funding opportunities. number of foreign higher education institutions have Scholars and students in and from the Tibet, pulled out of joint ventures or otherwise scaled back Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous their institutional presence in China. Regions report intensive levels of surveillance, China’s long arm extends over higher education censorship, and the threat of imprisonment under communities around the world, too. Chinese the PRC’s increasingly strict security policies. students and scholars who study and work overseas, They also face challenges in accessing quality as well as their non-Chinese peers, suffer from higher education due to language policies that tilt restrictions on and retaliation for academic conduct towards a Mandarin-only approach. Since 2017, and content. This includes reports of scholars and a growing number of scholars and students from students experiencing surveillance, intimidation, Xinjiang’s minority communities have been targets and coercive legal action, and apparent efforts by of an unprecedented government crackdown, PRC officials and their allies to constrain expression which, many rights groups and experts believe, on foreign campuses. The last include concerns over has resulted in more than one million individuals Confucius Institutes and their compatibility with wrongfully detained in so-called “re-education” pro-academic freedom values of their host campuses. camps or disappeared. Meanwhile, broad allegations by foreign government In the Hong Kong and Macau Special officials and political figures that Chinese scholars Administrative Regions, university communities and students overseas are linked to espionage and that for years enjoyed relatively significant academic intellectual property theft have resulted in policies freedom are confronted with a shrinking space for and actions that threaten the ability of innocent ideas. The pro-democracy protests of 2014 marked Chinese scholars and students to engage in academic a turning point for Hong Kong, where Beijing has activity abroad, as well as the stigmatization of increasingly sought influence over higher education these same communities. and civil society, including by attempts to eliminate The impact of these pressures on academic dissent and critical inquiry. A ferry ride away, in freedom extend far beyond the scholars and students Macau, scholars and students operate in an directly targeted, sending a message to members environment where the conditions needed for of the Chinese and global higher education academic freedom and quality higher education communities that certain questions and ideas are have eroded. off-limits. Moreover, because the line delimiting what is off-limits is fuzzy, Respect for academic freedom and other scholars, students, human rights essential to quality higher education and institutions resort to self-censorship, lags behind, leaving scholars and students shrinking the space at risk, and the country’s goals in the balance. for inquiry and expression. Perry Link, Amidst these pressures, foreign higher a China scholar at University of California-Riverside, education institutions have established joint described the phenomenon as an “anaconda in the ventures on the mainland in partnership with chandelier,” silently threatening to drop and devour. Chinese universities. These partnerships, while The PRC government benefits from this ambiguity, offering important opportunities for international as “everyone in its shadow makes his or her large research, dialogue, and learning, have been met and small adjustments—all quite ‘naturally.’”* * Perry Link, “China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier,” The New York Review of Books, April 11, 2002, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/04/11/ china-the-anaconda-in-the-chandelier/. Executive Summary | 6 Respect for academic freedom and for China’s This report invites consideration of these issues and ambition for world-class universities requires a questions. It offers recommendations for strengthening deeper understanding of the issues at hand, along academic freedom that would support China’s higher with a robust and global dialogue and response. education ambitions, emphasizing the need for greater Toward that end, this report aims to provide a survey dialogue, even while insisting on China’s responsibility of major issues impacting academic freedom in to protect academic freedom and human rights. China and where China has extraterritorial academic
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