Overseas students, exchanges deterred by spy laws – Academic

A prominent Peking University academic has said recent anti-espionage laws introduced by the Chinese government are deterring prospective foreign students from coming to China, while overly stringent restrictions are preventing Chinese academics from attending international events, despite the government’s avowed commitment to academic exchanges.

Jia Qingguo, former dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies in Beijing, last week submitted a proposal at the week-long meeting of the government’s advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which began in the capital on 4 March, to clarify recent laws related to foreign contacts, including new data rules and China’s new anti-espionage law, which came into effect in July 2023.

The updated law widens the scope of activities that can be considered espionage, with the definition of state secrets broadened to include “documents, data, materials or articles relating to national security and interests”.

While concerns had been expressed on the law’s impact on scholarly research, it is rare for an academic to refer publicly to the international impact of such laws.

In an unusually frank commentary published on the website of Peking University’s Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding on 6 March, Jia said recent laws may be affecting student and academic exchanges.

In respect of the new anti-espionage law, he said: “No implementation rules have been issued to clarify what information is to be collected and how it is to be collected, in a way that does not constitute a violation of the law, and that has led to misunderstandings outside China.”

International students

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a speech at the China-US Summit in San Francisco last November, said China aimed to host 50,000 US students over five years.

However, United States Ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns recently estimated there were only about 350 US students in the country last year – a dramatic decline from the peak of 2015, when some 15,000 US students were studying in China.

Jia argued that post-pandemic restrictions could not be blamed for the drop in international students. “Since the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the international study abroad market has grown significantly and has basically returned to pre-pandemic levels,” he said.

He also pointed to a significant drop in Korean students coming to China. As of April 2023, some 15,857 Korean students were in China for undergraduate, postgraduate or language training, a 78.3% decrease from 73,240 in 2017.

“Another theory is that it is caused by geopolitical reasons, such as the tense relations between China and the United States and Western countries. However, after the COVID-19 epidemic was lifted, the number of Chinese students studying in these countries did not decrease significantly, but showed a recovery growth. Obviously, geopolitical reasons cannot explain the sharp decline in the number of international students in China,” he said.

Censorship and other restrictions

Jia said some international students could be deterred from considering China as a study destination because of concerns about censorship, restrictions on academic freedom, and the strong ideological culture prevalent in Chinese universities.

“For example, the current [practice of] anonymous review of masters and doctoral theses puts an emphasis on political correctness, and this would increase the uncertainty [for] foreign students with different political and cultural backgrounds passing the review,” Jia said.

In his proposal to the CPPCC session, which is being held alongside the annual sitting of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s de facto parliament, this week, he said educational institutions could ease academic freedom concerns by using a “different standard based on the law rather than political considerations” when assessing dissertations by foreign students.

“Consideration may be given to conducting anonymous reviews of foreign students' dissertations separately from those of Chinese students, and using compliance with the constitution and the law as the standard for political judgement,” he wrote.

Denis Simon, a US-based expert on China’s higher education and science, and former executive vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University near Shanghai, agreed that ideological education could be an issue for international students coming to China for postgraduate studies.

If a foreign student is “going to come and take a PhD in political science or in government, it's going to be very hard to write a dissertation that would be – let's put it – ‘politically aligned’ in all respects,” Simon told University World News.

Pointing to political pendulum swings in China, and the current emphasis on party ideology, he said: “There are periods of time where a Chinese law’s implementation is a little bit more relaxed, and periods when it's tightened up. The general consensus right now is that it is a period of tightening and therefore adherence to the intention of the law is very important.”

Simon pointed to recent reports of increased Communist Party control over universities. With the US trade and tech restrictions imposed on China, and other geopolitical tensions, China has adopted a “siege mentality” and so “their [China’s] reaction has been these national security laws and espionage laws and all of these [policies] designed to protect the motherland,” Simon said.

Loss of exchange

“In the end the losers are exchanges, whether it is science and technology cooperation for research or students and scholarly exchanges. The loss of them is the consequence of this,” he said.

Even short visits to China have not gone ahead as the US State Department continues to categorise China as a category three country: Don't go if you don't have to go.

US universities, particularly public universities, follow the State Department guidelines on international travel, Simon said, and disallow student trips to the mainland.

China’s current economic problems are also a factor. “The future of US-China business engagement may be on the decline,” Simon said, adding that foreign students are “wondering where the career benefit will be from spending time in China learning Chinese, making the investment and then finding gainful employment utilising that skill set”.

Other measures proposed in Jia’s CPPCC submission included cutting red tape for foreign students looking for internships or job opportunities “in non-sensitive institutions” in China, as well as lowering the work visa threshold for foreign graduates which would help reduce pressures on self-financed international students coming to China.

Jia pointed out that China’s recent economic downturn had curtailed internship opportunities for foreign students in Chinese companies.

Jia’s submission also recommended that China expand the number of scholarships available to foreign students, including for short-term studies, to encourage more international enrolments.

Academic visits hampered by bureaucracy

It is not just inward exchanges but outbound trips by academics that are affected, according to Jia, who noted in his CPPCC submission that Chinese experts and academics are seen less and less frequently in international meetings.

He argued that excessive restrictions on overseas exchanges hindered efforts to “Tell China’s story well”. His recommendations included giving Chinese universities and think tanks more autonomy to decide who could attend international conferences rather than seeking approval from the central authorities.

Jia had previously proposed dropping requirements for regular academics to get prior approval for overseas exchanges, notably in a submission to the CPPCC session in March 2021.

Then, he said that some institutions required that any meeting with foreigners needed the approval of two persons, and the Chinese expert had to submit a detailed meeting report afterwards. “They also cannot meet the same foreign persons twice in one year.”

In 2020 the authorities stipulated that approvals were also required for online seminars, a rule that is still in place.

“The existing management of overseas exchanges has gone beyond a reasonable limit,” Jia said in his current submission, a dding that some Chinese experts and academics could not attend overseas conferences because they failed to get approval in advance.

Referring to political or security risks, he argued that there was also risk in having too many restrictions. Jia proposed “policy adjustments” to encourage retired officials to join international events. Keeping records of activities would be sufficient for academics who are not in a leadership role and do not often handle classified information, according to Jia.

“The world is paying close attention to China’s rise and wants to understand China’s ideas and thoughts. However, at this time, China’s voice not only does not increase, but decreases,” he wrote. “This has aggravated the negative views of foreign people towards China.”