Asian tourists on the campus of Harvard University, an Ivy League school in the United States. (File photo)
A new report says the Chinese Communist Party uses inappropriate means to exploit the open environment of U.S. universities to advance its economy, technological development, military power and international standing. The report confirms concerns raised in recent years in the U.S. about Beijing’s infiltration of Western campuses. Analysts point out that Chinese students and scholars studying and interacting in the United States generally do more good than harm, but the United States needs to improve its open system to ensure that important technologies are not stolen.
The report, released in April by the National Security Institute at George Mason University, notes that the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated Western universities by giving students access to Western campuses, providing tuition for international students, using foreign research to develop civil-military integration technologies, hiring top foreign experts, using academic diplomacy to build soft power, and using the China Students and Scholars Association to monitor the ideology of Chinese students.
Academic exchanges have been an important part of the normalization of relations between the United States and China since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979.
“In 1978, there were nine Chinese students studying in the United States, and last year, that number was 370,000. That’s a very extraordinary change,” Richard Stengel, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs at the U.S. Department of State, said at a Brookings Institution symposium this week.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. grew 450 percent in the 12 years before the new crown epidemic (between 2006-2019), from 67,000 to 370,000. Currently, 1/3 of international students on U.S. campuses are from China.
Stengel said an open environment is the most important strength of the United States as one of its soft powers. “We have a soft power that is superior to the Chinese Communist Party and any other country, and that is our openness,” he said. “It’s true that some people will take advantage of our openness, but at the end of the day, we have to rely on our openness, we have to rely on our values. Otherwise, we’re not America.” He said.
Stengel was referring to the current debate within the U.S. about whether institutions of higher learning should allow students from China, Russia and other countries to participate in research involving sensitive technologies that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. In 2018, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wary repeatedly warned of the threat posed by Chinese students and scholars. He said that Chinese Communist spies are taking advantage of the open research and development environment in the United States, where professors, students, and scholars can be information gatherers in a non-traditional sense.
Under former President Trump, the U.S. increased scrutiny of U.S.-China academic exchanges and restricted Chinese students with military backgrounds from coming to the U.S. for academic exchanges. In addition, the U.S. suspended the Fulbright Program, an international academic exchange program with China and Hong Kong, began limiting the number of Chinese students studying high-tech subjects in the U.S., and banned Chinese scholars from participating in sensitive research.
The wary attitude toward Chinese students is not limited to the government, but has spread throughout U.S. society as well. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 55 percent of U.S. respondents believe restrictions should be placed on Chinese students. This is a marked difference from American attitudes toward other international students, with 80 percent of Americans saying there are benefits to universities recruiting foreign students.
Are the signs that this is the end of Chinese students’ connection to U.S. colleges and universities? Some practitioners of higher education are calling for cultural exchange not to become a casualty of the escalating U.S.-China conflict. And other experts point out that in a changing environment, universities need to change their previous strategies and develop the necessary censorship to ensure that their open environment is not exploited.
Anzhu Tang: U.S. Needs to Improve Open System to Address China Threat
Lee Bollinger, president of Ivy League school Columbia University, said there are no state secrets on college campuses and no reason for outsiders to worry.
“People keep talking as if Chinese students and professors are coming here to steal our intellectual property. The point is, our system is completely open,” he said, “There are no state secrets on campus and there’s no reason for people to come and engage in espionage. We recruit foreign students, we recruit domestic students, we recruit professors, and we explore everything we can learn about it and then share it with the world.”
“That means international students and professors are able to take what they’ve learned and go back to their countries and continue their research. That’s our system.”
In response, Drew Thompson, a fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and former Pentagon official for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, told Voice of America that President Bollinger is not wrong about the openness of the U.S. system, but in the climate of U.S.-China competition, the U.S. has to make changes.
“Adversaries are taking advantage of our openness to the detriment of the United States, so our system needs to improve to deal with the threats from China and Russia,” he said. “That’s not to say we won’t admit Chinese scholars, but in this new era, the university needs a new model, one that takes into account national security That means selectively working with foreign scholars to develop technologies and selectively deciding who has access to these new technologies and intellectual property.”
Red Line: Academic Freedom
Another issue that cannot be ignored is the challenge to U.S. academic freedom posed by the large number of Chinese students.
In a 2019 investigative report, the human rights group Human Rights Watch said many colleges and universities around the world that are affiliated with the Chinese Communist government, or institutions of higher learning with large numbers of Chinese students, are not prepared to systematically address threats to academic freedom.
This report shows that some Chinese students have made statements in the classroom that have led to threats to their families back home. Some Chinese scholars detail how Chinese officials overseas have directly threatened them, deterring them from criticizing the Chinese government in the classroom or other settings. Others described how Chinese students remained silent in class for fear that their statements would be recorded by other Chinese students and reported to the Chinese Communist authorities. One Chinese student studying in the United States summed up his concerns about classroom surveillance by saying, “It’s not a free space.”
At the same time, opening branch campuses within China has become a thorny issue as some U.S. universities have partnered with Chinese universities. Many worry that U.S. institutions of higher learning will go out of their way to censor themselves in order to be part of the Chinese education market, avoiding certain historical, cultural and “sensitive” topics.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said he, like other U.S. university presidents, believes in the inviolability of academic freedom.
“That’s our red line,” he said.
Ming-Han Ma: Chinese students still do more good than harm coming to U.S.
Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, believes that, overall, the benefits of Chinese students coming to the United States to study outweigh the drawbacks.
“These students who are influenced by American liberal thinking could have a positive impact on the direction of their country in the future,” he told Voice of America, “and this international human interaction could be an element in stabilizing U.S.-China relations at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries. “
“But at the same time, the U.S. needs to take a careful look at who it grants visas to and to ensure that those Chinese students coming to the U.S. have no ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army or Chinese national security agencies,” he added.
Tang Anzhu, a fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, argued that Chinese students in the United States are good for U.S. soft power, but only if they need to ensure that important technology and intellectual property are not stolen or given away.
“Xi Jinping has eliminated independent civil society in China and put everything under Party control. The result is that scholars from China are required to serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, not science and knowledge, let alone the interests of the United States,” he said.
Mamingham believes that along with academic exchanges with China, the United States and Taiwan should further deepen academic exchanges by encouraging more Taiwanese students to study in the United States and more American students to go to Taiwan. “Both the U.S. and Taiwan have the will to ensure understanding between the bilateral populations to foster a strong bilateral relationship,” he said.
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