Dissident warns of Chinese spies in scholarly guise

A prominent Chinese dissident who moved to the United States after being fired by Peking University last year has warned of the dangers of academic exchanges with China, saying that Beijing had sent spies as visiting scholars, writes David Brunnstrom for Reuters.

Xia Yeliang, an economics professor, was expelled from Peking University last October amid a broader crackdown on dissent, having drawn the ire of officials for blog posts calling for democratic reforms and rule of law in China. He took up a post at Washington's Cato Institute in February.

At his first public event at the think tank, Xia said the fact that so many high-ranking Chinese officials sent their children to study abroad showed a lack of trust in China's education system and a desire to "borrow the good fame and name" from prestigious US universities. "Every year among those top universities there are some visiting scholars, and among them I can definitely say there are some people who are actually spies," he said.
"They don't do any research - probably they just do some surveys for their boss."
Full report on the Reuters site