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I recently wrote about the threat to academic freedom posed by Confucius Institutes at American colleges and universities. For a fuller understanding, it’s worth knowing just how little freedom Chinese professors at Chinese universities have—after all, these are often the people who come to the U.S. to serve as instructors at Confucius Institutes or in other academic exchange programs.

China has roughly 3,000 colleges and universities, about 1,200 of which are degree-granting institutions and another 1,500 are vocational or technical in nature. Several of the degree-granting institutions are internationally recognized as among the best in the world, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Zhejiang University, which are often ranked among the top fifty in the world alongside with Western institutions like Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Sidney. 

Chinese colleges and universities are broadly organized along Western lines, though decades of Soviet influence and the Cultural Revolution have taken their toll—in particular, on academic freedom. Simply put, Chinese professors are highly restricted in what they are able to teach and discuss.

Consider a 2019 report from the group Scholars At Risk, titled “Obstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom & China’s Quest for World-Class Universities.” As China has made a (largely successful) effort to improve its system of higher education, it has also been extremely aggressive clamping down on the teaching of topics or events that cast the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or China in a negative light. As the report explains:

In mainland China, state and university authorities have employed a range of tactics to intimidate, silence, and punish academics and students. They include limits on internet access, libraries, and publication imports that impair research and learning; orders to ban discussion and research on topics the Party-state deems controversial; surveillance and monitoring of academic activity that result in loss of position and self-censorship; travel restrictions that disrupt the flow of ideas across borders; and the use of detentions, prosecutions, and other coercive tactics to retaliate against and constrain critical inquiry and expression.

One of the key tools the CCP uses to suppress academic freedom, according to the report, are student informants. A number of academics at Chinese Universities have been disciplined or even driven out of academia as a result of these informants’ reports.

…assistant professor Xu Chuanqing was suspended from teaching at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture after students reported comments she made comparing the studying habits of Japanese and Chinese students… In May 2018, Zhai Juhong was suspended from teaching at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Hubei after she allegedly commented in class about a constitutional amendment abolishing China’s presidential term limits. According to the university’s Party committee, Zhai “breach[ed] guidelines for conduct issued by the Ministry of Education.”

In June 2018, You Shengdong, an economics professor at Xiamen University, was fired after his students reported to university officials that he made “politically inappropriate” comments… And on March 20, 2019, Chongqing Normal University (CNU) reportedly demoted associate professor Tang Yun and revoked his teaching credentials for comments he allegedly made during a lecture. According to CNU officials, Tang’s comments, which were allegedly made during a course on revolutionary writer Lu Xun, were “injurious to the country’s reputation.” CNU further described Tang as “a bad influence.”

It’s clear that the academics from China’s colleges and universities who come to teach at Confucius Institutes have been immersed in a culture that sharply curtails teaching or discussing anything seen as “injurious” to the CCP. Another report, “How Beijing Influences Academic Freedom Beyond its Borders” from the Human Rights Center at Ghent University (Belgium), explains how the CCP uses its outposts on Western campuses to extend the reach of its crackdown on academic freedom.

…In Australia, many students and academics report experiencing constant harassment from China’s global censorship efforts. Pro-democracy students, in particular, experience direct harassment – physical and psychological – after being identified as criticizing the CCP… China-sponsored and directed institutions such as the China Student and Scholar Association and Confucius Institutions function as oversea monitoring mechanisms that aim to suppress independent academic activity that is not in line with Beijing’s preferred narratives. The Confucius Institutions, for instance, participate actively in tracking Chinese students abroad and reporting them for exercising their academic freedom on campus… Further, those informal networks also monitor and report professors for their critical comments, and pressure them into apologizing for their academic activities. As a result, both Chinese students and academics became extremely cautious about their actions and words to avoid retaliation. 

The absence of genuine academic freedom in Chinese higher education makes clear that America’s policymakers should limit the spread of CCP influence in our own colleges and universities.