Officials bar scholars from attending conference via Zoom

The international conference was supposed to gather some of the most promising and most established Asia studies scholars from across the world in lush Honolulu. Instead, at least five Chinese scholars based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were prevented from attending virtual events via Zoom, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter, writes Emily Feng for NPR.

They said Chinese security officers and education officials directly intervened, citing education regulations published during a global coronavirus pandemic which require all Chinese scholars to receive university permission to attend any international event in-person or online.

“After years of encouraging and funding PRC scholars to participate internationally, the intensifying controls of recent years are now full scale, and academic work, at least on China, is to be quarantined from the world,” said James Millward, a history professor at Georgetown University who attended the conference. “The doors have slammed shut fast.”
Full report on the NPR site