Academic freedom abuses ‘stall world-class HE ambition’

While China has ambitions for developing more world-class universities, its respect for academic freedom and other rights essential to quality higher education is lagging, according to a major new report by Scholars at Risk (SAR), the United States-based rights organisation.

Obstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom and China’s Quest for World-Class Universities, released this week, examines a range of pressures and threats to academic freedom in China and further afield as China is increasingly applying extraterritorial pressures on scholars and students.

Both Chinese and foreign scholars interviewed for the report offered a common refrain: without academic freedom, research suffers, teaching suffers, quality suffers. “Without academic freedom, there can be no world-class universities,” the report says.

“For decades now, the Chinese government has invested heavily in academic institutions and programmes designed to compete with the world’s finest,” says SAR Executive Director Robert Quinn.

“This positive ambition is undermined, however, by state policies and practices that fail to protect academic freedom. This poses grave personal and professional risks for Chinese scholars and students,” as well as posing “serious academic, reputational and financial risks for foreign academic institutions with partnerships with Chinese counterparts, in China or abroad”.

In the view of the report’s authors, China has not yet been able to build world-class institutions without academic freedom.

Clare Robinson, advocacy director at SAR, told University World News: “There is only so far that they can go and this will eventually be limiting” their bid for world-class status. “It will be more limiting within certain fields, but a university that does not encourage asking questions… begs the question of whether that institution can move science and knowledge forward at a rate that will enable them to be seen as world class.”

Rankings measure outputs rather than conditions (within the universities), she says. “Chinese institutions are heavily connected internationally so their [research] outputs have benefited from academic freedom elsewhere,” Robinson said.

The report documents a wide range of both systematic and targeted methods to intimidate, silence and punish outspoken academics and students, in China as a whole; in the minority regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet; in regions such as Hong Kong and Macau where previously free university environments are being undermined; and abroad – particularly in countries with large numbers of Chinese students, in an attempt to control what is being said on campuses, in particular on sensitive issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and the Tiananmen massacre.

“The impact of these pressures on academic freedom extends far beyond the scholars and students directly targeted, sending a message to members of the Chinese and global higher education communities that certain questions and ideas are off-limits. Moreover, because the line delimiting what is off-limits is fuzzy, scholars, students and institutions resort to self-censorship,” the report says.

Academic freedom violations threaten all

The report notes that while documented cases may seem few, and while many scholars or students in China may say they have relatively broad freedom to pursue their teaching or research interests, it is not the percentage who have experienced such pressures that matters.

“What matters is that a violation of any one scholar or student’s academic freedom threatens everyone’s, and the fact that any scholar, student, institution or partner could find themselves the object of such pressures, often with little or no warning.”

Scholars in China can face a range of consequences for their academic expression and views. From investigations and suspensions to termination and credential revocation, retaliation by university authorities disrupts studies and irreparably harms careers.

“Academics have been detained, arrested and wrongfully prosecuted, often on security-related charges. In some disturbing cases, authorities have targeted family members as well.”

In some of the most egregious cases, victims have been denied due process, subjected to torture and suffered other mistreatment by authorities.

“The use of such punishment apparently seeks to inject caution, if not fear, into the university space, impairing scholars’ and students’ ability to explore difficult and sensitive ideas and questions,” it says.

The situation is particularly bad in minority regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang where state oppression “runs the risk of leaving behind a lost generation of academics and students, crippling the potential for higher education institutions in China’s minority regions to rise to world-class status, and preventing universities throughout China from expanding their regional expertise and academic offerings”, the report says.

Scholars, including foreign scholars, under sustained pressure from university leadership have also been forced to leave their institutions or the Chinese higher education sector entirely. Christopher Balding, an American academic who taught at the Peking University HSBC Business School for nine years, alleges that he was forced out of his position in July 2018 for being publicly critical of state censorship and China’s economic policies.

“China has reached a point where I do not feel safe being a professor and discussing even the economy, business and financial markets,” he wrote in his blog.

A range of measures

Measures to restrict academic freedom include limits on internet access, libraries and publication imports; orders to ban discussion and research on topics the Party-state deems controversial; surveillance and monitoring of academic activity that result in loss of position and self-censorship; travel restrictions that disrupt the flow of ideas across borders; and the use of detentions, prosecutions and other coercive tactics to retaliate against and constrain critical inquiry and expression.

“Limited access to information – including filtering of online content, scholars being denied access to literature and archival materials, and challenges in accessing human research subjects – deprives scholars and students in China of access to quality research, teaching and learning,” the report notes.

With the exception of some university libraries jointly managed with foreign higher education institutions, that reportedly offer wider content, state censorship and other restrictions on domestic and imported content undercut the potential for Chinese universities to support world-class research on a range of subjects, the report says.

“Academic freedom requires that scholars and students are free to express themselves without undue restrictions or fear of reprisals. This includes both speaking and publishing in academic journals and classrooms, as much as raising difficult questions within their area of expertise in the press, online and through other venues and forums that allow for public engagement.

“Moreover, these consequences warn other members of the campus community and beyond to avoid certain questions or ideas,” says the report.

Ideological focus

“Reinforcing these restrictions and violations is a rallying of efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to make Party ideology central to the country’s education system, including the development of ‘Xi Jinping Thought Centres’,” stepped up teacher training in Party ideology, and “leveraging Party loyalty through increased research funding opportunities” for those who comply, the report says.

For example, Teng Biao, a legal scholar, reported seeing a list of research projects proposed by China’s ministry of education, with the first 10 all related to Xi Jinping Thought. He is quoted in the report as saying many scholars are now writing papers on this topic, while neglecting or declining to take on other important research projects.

While Teng described some universities as being relatively more open than others, most lecturers at Chinese universities would self-censor, he said.

“Party priorities is not a recent development, but the pressure to support ideologically focused work has grown under Xi Jinping, setting up a potential conflict with the simultaneous effort to increase the quality and international recognition of Chinese higher education,” the report notes.

Foreign travel

Chinese authorities have restricted Chinese and international scholars’ and students’ travel in, out and within the country in connection with their academic activity, including by denying entry and exit, refusing visas and confiscating passports.

Chinese scholars also face challenges in getting permission from authorities to leave the country for academic purposes.

Universities have reportedly required academics wishing to leave the country to “sign a declaration agreeing not to say anything that might ‘damage the interests and reputation of the country while not revealing any Party or country secrets’,” according to the report.

These include Feng Chongyi in March 2017. In November 2018, authorities prevented Professor Sheng Hong and researcher Jiang Hao from travelling to the US to attend a conference at Harvard University, on grounds of national security.

Foreign academics and students have also suffered deportations and have been barred and blacklisted from returning to the country in connection with their academic activities.

Overseas reach

China’s long arm extends to higher education communities around the world with attempts to restrict academic conduct and content and retaliation against those who cross the line. There are many reports of scholars and students experiencing surveillance, intimidation and coercive legal action in the report.

These include efforts to shut down publications and campus discussions; harassment campaigns; and the use of interrogations, travel restrictions, detentions and other coercive actions to manipulate and intimidate both Chinese and non-Chinese students and scholars outside the country.

The report notes that tactics used abroad “are at times stark and unapologetic, and other times subtle”.

But the costs of such pressures are substantial. “Overseas Chinese scholars and students are put in a precarious situation: unsure whether their ideas or actions will set off alarms back in China, they may opt to self-censor in order to avoid legal or professional consequences.”

“Meanwhile, higher education communities around the world that welcome Chinese scholars, students and institutional partners, including Confucius Institutes, may find academic exploration limited by politically-motivated efforts to constrain disfavoured expression, teaching and debate.”

“Should evidence of China’s extraterritorial interference continue to develop, and with it increasingly rash reactions by the international community, more doors for academic and cultural exchange may be closed rather than open, damaging the higher education space generally,” the report notes.

But SAR’s Robinson said “decoupling” more than a decade of partnerships and collaborations with Chinese universities “is not necessarily the right approach”.

“We very much encourage more dialogue about these values of academic freedom and making clear that these are indeed values that institutions outside of China hold core to their universities and will only move forward with agreements that address academic freedom,” she says.

“There is some reassessing that needs to be done but we would absolutely not encourage any sudden decisions [to decouple] but to have more of a global conversation of why academic freedom is important,” she says, adding that “decoupling will happen if there is no middle ground”.