The Times - UK (2020-10-17)

the times | Saturday October 17 2020 1GM 35

Comment

they pay attention to things that are below the

threshold of illegal behaviour.”

Defenders of British universities note that they have

gone some way towards changing culture on other

fronts. Sexual harassment, tolerated only a few

decades ago, is now fatal to a tutor’s career. Academics

and administrators used to think terrorism was solely

a problem for the police. Now they worry about, and

intervene against, campus radicalisation. Co-operation

has increased with Britain’s security service, MI5. Its

new director Ken McCallum used his first public

speech this week to highlight the threat from China.

British universities should start by gathering better

information about the incidence of outside pressure.

This could be a job for the Joint State Threats

Assessment Team, a once-secret part of MI5. Another

useful move would be to apply greater scrutiny to the

unchallenged ties between China and our leading

academic institutions, such as Cambridge University.

Its China Centre has repeated the party line on its

website, using terms such as “China’s national

rejuvenation”. Cambridge accepts generous funding

from well-connected Chinese entities such as Huawei

(which also funds 16 other British universities). None

of this is illegal. But that does not make it right. Critics

of the Chinese regime at Cambridge say that the

university authorities encourage them to keep a low

profile; they do not wish to be identified.

A spokesman for Cambridge said: “We condemn

unreservedly any attempts to impinge on academic

freedom. There have been no allegations of such

interference reported to the university and we would

urge any staff or student who feels their academic

freedom is being challenged to come forward. We will

investigate these matters with urgency and offer them

our full support while we investigate.”

Rows over universities handily draw attention to the

threat from China. But they may also be a distraction.

Matthew Henderson, a consultant who formerly

worked on China for the British government, says:

“For Beijing, military, political and economic agendas

are fused into a single strategic narrative — of world

domination.” The West’s response, even when it

happens, is not just late, but piecemeal.

lambasted that, and the Foreign Office’s hands-off

approach to the problem. Not much has changed since

then. Mr Tugendhat says authoritarian states are still

using students and research funding to influence

speech and silence opposition. “Universities must take

action but they can’t do it alone,” he says.

The problem, says Glenn Tiffert, a China-watcher at

the Hoover Institution think tank in America, is a clash

of interests. Academics want professional success and

will make compromises if necessary. Being unable to

travel to China is a potential career killer. University

administrators want to bring in more money from

foreign students and rise up the league tables. Students

want to get their degrees with minimal hassle, cost and

effort. Defending national security and the principle of

intellectual freedom, many feel, is not their priority.

Yet some of the proposed cures may be worse than

the disease. Using technology to teach and mark

anonymously may be beyond university IT services:

Chinese hackers could easily use such attempts to

protect independent-minded students to target them

for retribution. In any case, the widespread use of Zoom

(which often uses servers based in China) and other

online teaching tools during the pandemic makes it

impractical to offer anonymity. Taking liberal-minded

students out of real-life classrooms is no solution either,

says Professor Fulda. It dumbs down discussion and

“normalises” the idea of Chinese control.

More broadly, university autonomy and freedom

include the precious right to make mistakes. “We don’t

want a national security response,” says John

Heathershaw, an Exeter University academic

specialising in Central Asia, who regards the

Australian response to Chinese pressure as “awful”.

The battlelines are blurred. Liberal-minded

defenders of free speech find themselves on the same

side as national security hawks who believe we are

already in a new Cold War with China. Mr Tiffert says

trying to solve the problem through the framework of

“legality and illegality” is wrong, as is relying on the

attention of spy-catchers. By the time the hard-edged

bits of government get involved, the damage is done.

“You can’t legislate your way out of this problem —

you have to change the culture in universities so that

on western campuses, western rules do not apply on

foreign universities’ campuses in China. There, too,

content is closely tailored to match local sensitivities.

In short, the interaction between cash-hungry

universities and the Chinese Communist Party’s

control-freakery is fatal for academic freedom.

Belatedly Britain is taking countermeasures. Oxford

University has said that it will introduce one-on-one

teaching for students who might be at risk. Other

institutions plan to allow students to submit work

anonymously and on old-fashioned paper, which

cannot be hacked by Chinese spies. On Thursday

Universities UK, the umbrella group for British higher

education, published a much-anticipated report on the

risks of foreign collaboration. Its main recommendation

is that governing bodies commission an annual report

on international ties and their potential downsides.

S

tartlingly, its report is agnostic about specific

countries. The word “China” appears nowhere

in its nearly 60 pages. It is true that other

countries present problems too. Saudi money

has for decades distorted academic inquiry in

Britain. “Safe” subjects receive generous funding.

Potentially explosive topics such as the study of

differences in early Koranic texts, which cast doubt on

the Muslim doctrine that the holy book was infallibly

transcribed from an angel’s dictation, are trickier.

Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkey and the Gulf states

also make efforts to spy on troublesome students and

influence course content and research. But China’s

clout is on a different scale.

More practical suggestions are expected next year.

But, so far, the response falls a long way short of what

many feel is necessary, and of what other countries

are doing. The Australian parliament is considering a

law that would give the government the right to

intervene in universities’ international activities when

national security is at stake. Britain’s complacency was

highlighted in a parliamentary report last year, when

representatives of both the elite Russell Group and the

mass-market Million Plus group claimed in evidence

that Chinese state interference was not a problem. The

foreign affairs committee, chaired by Tom Tugendhat,

Chinese

students shun

course modules

with sensitive

material, or

write their

assignments in

a way that will

not get them

into trouble

“

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