New internationalisation drive amid geopolitical shifts

During a turbulent year marked by leadership instability at some of Hong Kong’s major public universities, a new security law and governance disputes threatening university autonomy, officials in the top echelons of Hong Kong’s government were simultaneously promoting the city as a higher education, technology and innovation hub, able to attract top talent from around the world.

Hong Kong academics say it is far from clear what officials mean by ‘hub’. But it became increasingly clear during 2024 that Beijing wants Hong Kong to increase its global higher education and research networks following an exodus of academics and foreign businesses during and after the strict restrictions and travel suspensions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hong Kong’s universities have always been highly internationalised, but many sat up and took note when Zheng Yanxiong, head of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong – Beijing’s top representative in the city – told a major higher education conference that Hong Kong “should maintain the important direction of internationalisation and build an interconnected international higher education co-operation network”.

Speaking at the Global University Presidents and Leaders’ Summit in Hong Kong on 2 December, Zheng said: “With the central government’s [Beijing’s] support, the city’s administration has maintained the baseline of university safety and stability, steadfastly protected university autonomy and academic freedom, supported universities in conducting extensive international co-operation and promoted the rapid development of Hong Kong universities.”

He hailed Hong Kong universities as “having particularly prominent international characteristics”.

A few weeks later, during a visit to the former Portuguese colony of Macau on the anniversary of its handover to Chinese rule in 1999, Chinese leader Xi Jinping indicated he had asked both Hong Kong and Macau to expand foreign ties and “improve global influence”.

This included their role as part of the Greater Bay Area which seeks to integrate the economies of Hong Kong, Macau, and nine cities in China’s southern Guangdong province.

“The intention is very much to involve Hong Kong, and Hong Kong itself wishes to play a role in terms of brokering connections and collaboration between the rest of China and the rest of the world,” explained Laurie Pearcey, adviser to the president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s (CUHK) branch campus in the Guangdong city of Shenzhen.

But others note that with the advent of a new US administration under President Donald Trump in 2025, Hong Kong could be leveraged by Beijing to keep open the doors of co-operation that may slam shut under more hawkish policies towards China.

Doubts about Hong Kong

With five universities ranked within the world’s top 100, Hong Kong’s higher education sector is considered a form of soft power for China, according to an academic at CUHK’s Hong Kong campus, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Hong Kong has been in the spotlight this year [2024] for all the wrong reasons, notably for barring academics and for its clampdown on freedoms,” the academic stated.

Promoting the sector is also a reaffirmation of Hong Kong’s openness, relative to the mainland.

The authorities wanted to use the 2 December forum of international university leaders to emphasise the importance of Hong Kong’s universities “because some people doubt whether Hong Kong can still remain international”, noted Joshua Ka-Ho Mok, provost and vice-president (academic and research) at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, a private non-profit institution. He was pointing to concerns about university autonomy in Hong Kong.

When Hong Kong university leaders travel abroad they often face questions about Hong Kong’s freedoms and how the universities operate, Mok told University World News.

“Hong Kong got the nod from the central government to strengthen its international links – an area where Greater Bay universities want to learn from the experience of Hong Kong’s universities,” said Gerard Postiglione, emeritus professor of higher education at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).

“The high-profile arrests, trials, and jail terms in the international press made it urgent to salvage as much of Hong Kong’s traditional image as an open city as possible,” he said.

News about the city considered to be negatively reported from Beijing’s perspective includes the accelerated passage in March 2024 of the Hong Kong security law, Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, with much discussion of its impact on academic freedom.

This is in addition to the National Security Law for Hong Kong passed by Beijing in July 2020, which sparked an exodus of academics.

The Chinese government argues these laws have brought stability after a period of turmoil, particularly the 2019 unrest that rocked Hong Kong for many months.

Xi and Zheng’s speeches also came amid high-profile trials throughout the year of students, activists and others arrested after the 2019 unrest, and the sentencing of over 40 pro-democracy former legislators and activists on 19 November, in particular a 10-year jail sentence handed down to former HKU law professor Benny Tai, which shocked academics for its severity.

University leadership ‘turbulence’

The (anonymous) CUHK academic referred to earlier noted that turbulence in university leadership and governance during the year may have “blurred the message that Hong Kong’s universities retained their autonomy and were still very open to collaboration globally”.

Rocky Tuan, vice-chancellor of CUHK, announced his resignation in January 2024 after months of targeted criticism by pro-Beijing legislators in the city amid a protracted debate about the number of external members that should sit on CUHK’s governing council as well as concern about alleged interference by legislators in university affairs.

Tuan has been replaced by Dennis Lo Yuk-ming, associate dean of CUHK’s Faculty of Medicine, the sole candidate following an international recruitment search.

Lo, who takes over as vice-chancellor in January 2025, is “considered a safe choice, with a long record at CUHK, rather than having someone parachuted in from the mainland, even if they have many years of experience overseas”, said the CUHK academic.

In November, the city government appointed Hong Kong banker Peter Wong as chairman of HKU’s governing council and replaced five other members of the governing body after months of acrimony and tension between the council and HKU vice-chancellor Zhang Xiang.

The infighting led to the city government setting up a task force in June to handle the disputes, leading to the clearing out of all but one external member of the council.

Hong Kong’s chief executive John Lee, who also acts as chancellor of the city’s publicly funded universities, “has decided to fill all six [council] positions with new appointees to bring in a new outlook,” according to a statement on 27 November 2024 pointing to a “new chapter in governance [that would] steer the HKU towards striving for excellence and provide fresh momentum to the university”.

Zhang himself was investigated and subsequently cleared of alleged misconduct over the handling of donations.

Many HKU academics felt the public ‘feud’, as it was described in Hong Kong media, between Zhang and some previous HKU council members, ostensibly over senior university and council appointments, was affecting the university’s reputation and ability to project itself internationally. Hong Kong officials were concerned it would affect the city’s ability to attract academic talent.

In early December, the city government also announced new chairs of the governing councils of Hong Kong Baptist University, City University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, all effective from 1 January 2025, as well as new council members for these universities.

“It is clear the Hong Kong government wants to put the disputes of dysfunctional university councils behind it in order to push forward with its internationalisation agenda,” said a Hong Kong Baptist University academic speaking on condition of anonymity.

Internationalisation and rankings

Pearcey, who was previously associate vice-president at CUHK in Hong Kong, acknowledged that while internationalisation is not particularly new for Hong Kong, it is advantageous because “it plays out in the world of university rankings, and international students and international research collaborations between China and Hong Kong are treated no differently than a collaboration between Hong Kong and Malaysia”.

Miguel Antonio Lim, senior lecturer in education at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, who attended a number of higher education conferences in Hong Kong in 2024 and is part of a Hong Kong University Grants Commission-funded project on Hong Kong’s relationships, noted: “There's a big element of mainland Chinese support for this internationalisation in terms of money and international students – some rankings count mainland Chinese students as international, and therefore increase their [Hong Kong universities’] rankings.”

From September 2024 the quota of non-local undergraduate students from overseas and mainland China at Hong Kong’s public universities doubled from 20% to 40% of the student body.

“There is also recognition by state and government officials that Hong Kong and its higher education institutions are more solidly English-speaking – not just the universities, but the region as well – and this was supposed to be an important asset for the whole country,” said Lim, noting officials saw the benefits for the country of a “platform to deal with the outside world”.

Undoubtedly, some things have changed. Lim pointed to new textbooks being rolled out in Hong Kong on “Xi Jinping Thought”.

“Ideological political education is more explicit,” he said, adding: “Some people are frank about their concerns about these things.”

Nonetheless, Hong Kong offers easier access to data and parts of the internet that are inaccessible on the mainland.

The CUHK academic noted: “Generally speaking, there is still a culture of open debate, at least between individual academics, even if broader debate in public is less prevalent in Hong Kong, and some academics are very obviously looking over their shoulder, worried about who might overhear. Many academics talk about self-censorship. Global rankings notably do not measure academic freedom and its deterioration.”

He pointed to “constant concerns” about some academics being barred from Hong Kong, such as historian Rowena He who was unable to return to her position at CUHK in 2023, and then sacked from the university.

Hong Kong ‘more acceptable’ than the mainland

Lee told the 2 December summit, in a nod to geopolitical developments: “The world, to be sure, is becoming more complicated, worryingly so. But it is precisely in challenging times such as this that co-operation, rather than isolation, is imperative at every level within any sector, institution and people everywhere.”

At a time when China is trying to revive international student and academic exchanges some academics in Hong Kong and in the West believe China wants to position Hong Kong as a “more acceptable” alternative to the mainland – particularly for those academics from the United States and Europe who have become reluctant to travel to China in the face of heightened suspicion of China.

But Mok disagrees. “I don’t say they [Chinese authorities] are just making use of Hong Kong as a window for maximising internationalisation.” He said there was a broader commitment to engaging with “like-minded” partners.

“Some people from other countries still believe this is very much people-to-people interaction about culture, education, and not really politically driven.

“Mainland university leaders or managers are very flexible, more proactive in searching for different ways to maintain these kinds of links … [it is] not only about ‘making use’ of Hong Kong alone,” Mok stressed.

Pearcey also believes Hong Kong institutions are “not so Machiavellian” as to say: “Great, we can pick up all the collaborations that can't be done in the mainland because people don’t want to go there.”

Rather, they look at the autonomy of Hong Kong’s universities and find it attractive to have a foot in the region. “That said, for every university that will only come to Hong Kong, there are probably 10 that go to mainland China.

“Universities in Hong Kong … have administrations, policies, systems and processes that would probably feel a lot more familiar to a university from … California or New South Wales [in Australia] or wherever,” acknowledged Pearcey. “But people don’t want to overlook the mainland, either, because it is growing so rapidly, and the research quality and quantity are getting better and better.

“The Greater Bay Area has provided a very clear blueprint for Hong Kong to think about integrating with the mainland's research and development agenda and national development,” said Pearcey, adding: “Hong Kong is a region the People’s Republic of China does need, and it should be playing a more active role in the national research agenda. It's been an area, relatively speaking, historically, where they [Hong Kong universities] haven't done enough.”

The future under Trump

As Trump prepares to move into the White House and given existing tensions between China and the US over sensitive technologies, some believe Hong Kong universities have an advantage in being able to collaborate with US universities without the additional scrutiny that comes with ties to Chinese institutions because Hong Kong does not fund defence or pay taxes to China that could fund defence.

However, some academics are concerned that the incoming Trump administration could mean stronger calls for Hong Kong to be treated more like mainland China the more it integrates with the mainland. Four Hong Kong universities have branch campuses in mainland China, and China is funding key laboratories and other research projects in Hong Kong.

Of growing concern in the US is Hong Kong’s possible role in transferring sensitive technologies to the mainland via its universities and research centres.

A view already espoused in the US is that Hong Kong is being used to bypass US sanctions on Chinese companies and universities, including the US ban on high-end semiconductors for some university computers in China, and amid some reports that dual-use civilian-military technologies could be outsourced to Hong Kong.

Pearcey emphasised that Hong Kong universities are focused on facilitating legitimate research collaborations, rather than attempting to bypass restrictions. “I don't think the mainland is using Hong Kong to bypass any global sanctions regime,” he stressed. “Hong Kong universities working with Russia, for example, is not something that I saw.”

Pearcey pointed to the importance in Hong Kong of compliance with “with laws and regulations of the Hong Kong SAR, with the People's Republic of China more broadly, and, indeed, compliance with a whole raft of emerging sanctions and the moving geopolitical currents around the world”.

He said: “Hong Kong universities are working in international alliances, and they are very cautious. They are very aware of the global environment and how universities around the world and other funders think about collaborations with Russia at this particular point in time.”

Mok noted: “Up to now, I don't see major policy being adopted discouraging Hong Kong professors from working with the US or other partners around the world. People-to-people interaction is very much personal. At the same time, we [in Hong Kong] are not doing research in areas that are a so-called ‘red line’.”