China's growing entanglement in UK academia

Feb 15

Feb 15 China's growing entanglement in UK academia

In late 2019 Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee heard testimony from a senior academic that officials from the Chinese Confucius Institute had confiscated papers which mentioned Taiwan during an academic conference. Another testimony from a SOAS professor reported that a senior academic at a Russell Group University was asked to avoid commenting politically on China by the university’s vice-chancellor, for fear of damaging relations. The increasing interference of autocratic states in British universities, the committee argued, was accompanied by a “non-existent” stance from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on how to deal with it. The Committee’s reports fit in with similar assessments from the governments of Australia and the United
States – both of which have implemented schemes to deal with foreign influence on academia. This threat isn’t unique to China either, reports were also heard of an academic discussion which was bugged by an employee of a Russian government-sponsored body – the Rusky Mir Foundation. Global universities are fantastic, so why should the involvement of China and others in our academic
institutions worry us?

British universities have traditionally sought to promote liberal (and, admittedly, Western) values. Universities are not only expected to uphold standards of academic excellence and rigour but also those of moral excellence; British campuses have historically been engines of new ideas, fuelled by free expression, the tolerance of differing opinion, and freedom from outside interference. It is vital to understand that the environment by which academic excellence can flourish is one in which differing opinions can contest, unimpaired by outside influence. However, as our higher education institutions globalise, so do their sources of funding and influence.

The report’s findings were largely denied by British Universities, and while the chair of MillionPlus (a group representing 20 Russell Group universities) denied the presence of any
evidence of foreign interference within the report, it is difficult to refute that British universities are increasingly global in scope. Almost 20% of total funding for research across the UK comes from overseas, and the number of people migrating to and emigrating from the UK in order to study is increasing too. Moreover, pioneering “branch campuses” set up by UK institutions overseas exemplify the increasingly international nature of our institutions: The University of Manchester has a campus in São Paulo, and the same can be said for Heriot-Watt in Dubai, and Lancaster in Ghana.

An exemplar of this trend is Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China. A joint venture between Nottingham University and the Wanli education group, the creation of the Ningbo campus in 2004 was the first of over 2,000 joint venture programmes established in China since then. While the institution is formally a part of Nottingham University, Nottingham only owns 37.5% of shares in the
institution, and Ningbo must, along with all other foreign-funded universities on Chinese soil, have party officials represented on their management boards. Indeed, the fact that the committee found that academics at Nottingham were pressured by Chinese officials into cancelling events related to Tibet and Taiwan on both Chinese and British campuses demonstrates that institutions with a home in China must unavoidably answer to the demands of the Chinese Ministry of Education. These demands, like the ones heard by the committee, may often run contrary to standards of good academic and moral practice, and serve to stifle the thorough and robust research upon which British universities have built their reputation.

This concern, however, goes beyond the two UK universities with homes in China. An analysis of agreements signed by a number of Australian universities with Chinese state-backed Confucius Institutes (CI’s) revealed identical clauses stating the institutions’ obligations to accept the ruling of Hanban (the Confucius Institutes’ mainland headquarters) in terms of the institutes’ teaching standards. Confucius Institutes have been reported on by a number of groups, including Human Rights Watch, as being “extensions of the Chinese government” prone to censoring issues of secessionism, or any other dialogue viewed to be in contravention of Chinese law.

Crucially, however, the installation of a CI often proves to be a lucrative move for cash-strapped universities, as contracts are negotiated on an individual basis. Just as in the case of joint initiatives however, this funding comes at the price of granting Hanban leverage over academic freedoms. The University of Lyon was forced to terminate its contract in 2013, when Hanban officials began
to demand sinology-related research be further integrated with the CI, to a point where the university-issued communiqué commented that their “independence [had become] unacceptable to Beijing.”

Christopher Hughes, an LSE professor who testified at the recent enquiries, argued that CI’s were viewed by officials as integral to China’s cultural mission, involving the softening of China’s image, which may necessitate the obfuscation of facts and good academic practice. This comes in the form of the drive for integration which has been demonstrated, but also, Hughes argues, politically biased and selective teaching within the institutions.

There is, of course, a similarity between Confucius Institutes and Western programmes such as the British Council or Germany’s Goethe Institutes – both of which are charged with spreading their respective cultures and languages in a similar to way to CI’s, and similarly work with local institutions to do so. The argument that these institutions should be considered equivalents is a tempting one, but while, for instance, the British Council is governed by a non-governmental board, Hanban is directly accountable to the Chinese Ministry of Education, and thus permanently controlled by the CPC. It is difficult to see therefore how Hanban, a body controlled by a non-democratic party, is compatible with British universities holding democratic values.

The globalisation of our universities, in all the forms it takes, is a fantastic thing. It invites students to broaden their horizons, travel, and forge a global community. Above all, having a selection of students with a range of experiences enhances one of the most valuable aspects of university life: the discovery and testing of new ideas and knowledges through debate. The failure to prevent censorship from autocracies can certainly be laid at the foot of our Universities for not properly safeguarding their ideals, and more should be done to do so. However, it is also the role of the UK government to follow the example of Australia and the United States in introducing guidelines and rules by which universities must adhere, lest we ultimately find their academic freedom for sale.