Between a rock and a hard place: academic freedom in globalising Chinese universities

ABSTRACT

This article examines academic freedom in China amid the tensions within a marketised global political economy of knowledge production. Joining the global competition for hegemony in the ‘knowledge economy’, the Chinese authorities signalled an acceptance of the ‘rules of the game’, even though these have the potential to undermine domestic political control. Global (as opposed to national) rankings of universities were actually initiated in China, and Chinese universities are competing for status. Likewise, China has created space for marketised higher education institutions and increasingly collaborates with global commercial publishing platforms, while academics there are under growing pressure to publish in globally ranked journals. The dynamic authoritarianism pursued under Xi Jinping has exacerbated the tensions inherent in these differing imperatives. The Xi era has witnessed declines in university autonomy; growing content-related restrictions in teaching, research and publishing including extending these to global firms; and increased distrust of research collaborations with ‘foreigners’. We focus here on a central support for academic freedom: institutional and individual autonomy, showing how threats to autonomy in Chinese universities are related to two different types of authoritarianism: party control and managerialism. We also point to areas of tension between internationalisation of Chinese higher education and authoritarian impulses.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic freedom
• China
• censorship
• institutional autonomy
• business university

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Raewyn Connell, The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why It’s Time for Radical Change (London: Zed, 2019), 115.

2 Zhidong Hao, ‘Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China’, in Academic Freedom Under Siege: Higher Education in East Asia, the U.S. and Australia, ed. Zhidong Hao and Peter Zabielskis, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 37–60.

3 Connell, The Good University.

4 Lanre Bakare, ‘Plans for 50% Funding Cut to Arts Subjects at Universities “Catastrophic”’, The Guardian, May 6, 2021, sec. Education, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/06/plans-for-50-funding-cut-to-arts-subjects-at-universities-catastrophic; Anna Fazackerley, ‘“Despicable in a Pandemic”: Fury as UK Universities Plan Job Cuts’, The Guardian, January 22, 2021, sec. Education, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/22/despicable-in-a-pandemic-fury-as-10-uk-universities-plan-job-cuts; Liz Morrish, ‘Academic Freedom Is in Crisis; Free Speech Is Not’, Council for the Defense of British Universities (blog), April 6, 2021, http://cdbu.org.uk/academic-freedom-is-in-crisis-free-speech-is-not/.

5 Morrish, ‘Academic Freedom Is in Crisis; Free Speech Is Not’.

6 Connell, The Good University.

7 Richard Münch, Academic Capitalism: Universities in the Global Struggle for Excellence (Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2014).

8 Connell, The Good University What Universities Actually Do and Why It’s Time for Radical Change, 127.

9 Willem Halffman and Hans Radder, ‘The Academic Manifesto: From an Occupied to a Public University’, Minerva 53, no. 2 (1 June 2015): 165–87.

10 Jelena Brankovic, ‘The Absurdity of University Rankings’, Impact of Social Sciences (blog), March 22, 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/03/22/the-absurdity-of-university-rankings/; Igor Chirikov, ‘Does Conflict of Interest Distort Global University Rankings?’, Research and Occasional Papers Series (Berkeley, CA: UK Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, April 27, 2021), https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/does-conflict-interest-distort-global-university-rankings-igor-chirikov-cshe-521-april; Leon Rocha, ‘What’s inside the Times Higher Education World University Rankings’ “Academic Reputation Survey”?’, USS Briefs (blog), May 26, 2019, https://medium.com/ussbriefs/whats-inside-the-times-higher-education-world-university-rankings-academic-reputation-survey-e16f0476f720.

11 Connell, The Good University, 120.

12 Connell, The Good University.

13 Xintong Lu, ‘What Drives Chinese Scholars to Publish in International Journals? Motivations and Implications’, Higher Education Research & Development (31 August 2021): 1–15.

14 See for example, Chenchen Zhang, ‘Right-Wing Populism with Chinese Characteristics? Identity, Otherness and Global Imaginaries in Debating World Politics Online’, European Journal of International Relations 26, no. 1 (1 March 2020): 88–115.

15 UNESCO, Recommendation Concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel (UNESCO, 1997).

16 UNESCO, ‘World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action’, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000113878; Zhidong Hao, ‘Academic Freedom Under Siege: What, Why, and What Is to Be Done’, in Academic Freedom Under Siege: Higher Education in East Asia, the U.S. and Australia, ed. Zhidong Hao and Peter Zabielskis, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 1–36.

17 UNESCO, ‘Recommendation Concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel’, paragraph 22(k); Terence Karran, Klaus D. Beiter, and Lucy Mallinson, ‘Academic Freedom in Contemporary Britain: A Cause for Concern?’, Higher Education Quarterly (July 20, 2021), 4.

18 Karran, Beiter, and Mallinson, ‘Academic Freedom in Contemporary Britain’.

19 Halffman and Radder, ‘The Academic Manifesto’.

20 Judith Butler, ‘Academic Freedom and the Critical Task of the University’, Globalizations, May 16, 2017, 1–5.

21 Connell, The Good University, 32.

22 Butler, ‘Academic Freedom and the Critical Task of the University’, 2.

23 Connell, The Good University.

24 Naomi Waltham-Smith, ‘Take It or Leave It: The Political and Epistemic Effects of Academic Freedom’, The Philosopher, November 2021, np, https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/essay-waltham-smith. Emphasis in original.

25 Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); Connell, The Good University What Universities Actually Do and Why It’s Time for Radical Change; Stanley Aronowitz and Karen Lynn Gregory, ‘Jobless Higher Ed: Revisited, An Interview with Stanley Aronowitz’, Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, no. 28 (2016).

26 Leo McCann et al., ‘“Upon the Gears and upon the Wheels”: Terror Convergence and Total Administration in the Neoliberal University’, Management Learning 51, no. 4 (1 September 2020): 431–51.

27 Karran, Beiter, and Mallinson, ‘Academic Freedom in Contemporary Britain’. On the latter point, Scotland is now a partial exception in having recently enacted legislation mandating certain governance reforms in the name of academic freedom.

28 Elizabeth J. Perry, ‘Educated Acquiescence: How Academia Sustains Authoritarianism in China’, Theory and Society 49, no. 1 (1 January 2020): 7.

29 Tim Pringle, Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Labour Unrest (London; New York: Routledge, 2011).

30 Ka Ho Mok and Xiao Han, ‘Higher Education Governance and Policy in China: Managing Decentralization and Transnationalism’, Policy and Society 36, no. 1 (2 January 2017): 34–48.

31 Scholars at Risk, ‘Obstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom & China’s Quest for World Class Universities’, Academic Freedom Monitoring Project report (New York: Scholars at Risk, 2019).

32 Rui Yang and Meng Xie, ‘Leaning toward the Centers: International Networking at China’s Five C9 League Universities’, Frontiers of Education in China 10, no. 1 (27 January 2015): 66–90.

33 Mok and Han, ‘Higher Education Governance and Policy in China’.

34 Ling Zhou, ‘Access to Justice in Higher Education: The Student as Consumer in China’, The China Quarterly 244 (December 2020): 1099.

35 Kai Yu et al., Tertiary Education at a Glance: China (Springer Science & Business Media, 2012); Ruth Hayhoe et al., Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012).

36 Qiang Zha, ‘China’s Move to Mass Higher Education from a Policy Perspective’, in Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities, ed. Ruth Hayhoe et al. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012), 54.

37 Zha, 32.

38 Cristina Viviana Groeger, ‘The Education Fix’, Dissent Magazine (blog), February 12, 2021, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-education-fix.

39 see for example, Mitchell L. Stevens, Elizabeth A. Armstrong, and Richard Arum, ‘Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub: Empirical and Theoretical Advances in the Sociology of Higher Education’, Annual Review of Sociology 34, no. 1 (August 2008): 127–51; Xiaobing Wang et al., ‘College Is a Rich, Han, Urban, Male Club: Research Notes from a Census Survey of Four Tier One Colleges in China’, The China Quarterly 214 (25 June 2013): 456–70; Chris Cunningham and Colin Samson, ‘Neoliberal Meritocracy: How “Widening Participation” to Universities in England Reinforces Class Divisions’, On_education Journal for Research and Debate 4, no. 10 (2021): 1–7.

40 Scotland has retained free university tuition, but only for Scottish residents, and until Brexit, EU citizens.

41 Cunningham and Samson, ‘Neoliberal Meritocracy: How “Widening Participation” to Universities in England Reinforces Class Divisions’.

42 Perry, ‘Educated Acquiescence’.

43 Qinghua Wang, ‘Crisis Management, Regime Survival and “Guerrilla-Style” Policy-Making: The June 1999 Decision to Radically Expand Higher Education in China’, The China Journal 71 (1 January 2014): 151.

44 Chenchen Zhang, ‘Governing Neoliberal Authoritarian Citizenship: Theorizing Hukou and the Changing Mobility Regime in China’, Citizenship Studies 22, no. 8 (17 November 2018): 855–81.

45 Qiang Li and Yamei Sun, ‘去哪上大学?——高等教育就学地选择的影响因素研究’, 清华大学教育研究 39, no. 06 (2018): 37–46.

46 Xiao Han, ‘Cross-Field Effect and Institutional Habitus Formation: Self-Reinforcing Inequality in Chinese Higher Education System’, Journal of Education Policy 34, no. 2 (4 March 2019): 267–94.

47 Yang Zhou, Yuanzhi Guo, and Yansui Liu, ‘High-Level Talent Flow and Its Influence on Regional Unbalanced Development in China’, Applied Geography 91 (1 February 2018): 89–98.

48 Zha, ‘China’s Move to Mass Higher Education from a Policy Perspective’, 49.

49 Zhidong Hao and Zhengyang Guo, ‘Professors as Intellectuals in China: Political Roles and Academic Freedom in a Provincial University’, in Academic Freedom Under Siege: Higher Education in East Asia, the U.S. and Australia, ed. Zhidong Hao and Peter Zabielskis, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 81–102.

50 Zhigang Li, Xun Li, and Lei Wang, ‘Speculative Urbanism and the Making of University Towns in China: A Case of Guangzhou University Town’, Habitat International 44 (1 October 2014): 422–31.

51 Sampo Ruoppila and Feng Zhao, ‘The Role of Universities in Developing China’s University Towns: The Case of Songjiang University Town in Shanghai’, Cities 69 (1 September 2017): 56–63, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.05.011; Jie Shen, ‘Universities as Financing Vehicles of (Sub)Urbanisation: The Development of University Towns in Shanghai’, Land Use Policy, 21 April 2020, 104679.

52 Shuangmiao Han and Xin Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”: An Exploratory Study of the Changing Governance of Higher Education in China (1978–2018)’, Higher Education 78, no. 5 (1 November 2019): 946.

53 Ka Ho Mok, ‘Policy of Decentralization and Changing Governance of Higher Education in Post-Mao China’, Public Administration and Development 22, no. 3 (2002): 261–73.

54 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’.

55 Han and Xu; Mok, ‘Policy of Decentralization and Changing Governance of Higher Education in Post-Mao China’; Rui Yang, Lesley Vidovich, and Jan Currie, ‘“Dancing in a Cage”: Changing Autonomy in Chinese Higher Education’, Higher Education 54, no. 4 (1 October 2007): 575–92.

56 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’, 932.

57 Mok and Han, ‘Higher Education Governance and Policy in China’.

58 Hu Jian and Frank Mols, ‘Modernizing China’s Tertiary Education Sector: Enhanced Autonomy or Governance in the Shadow of Hierarchy?’, The China Quarterly 239 (September 2019): 702–27.

59 Hao, ‘Academic Freedom Under Siege’.

60 Jun Li, ‘Autonomy, Governance and the Chinese University 3.0: A Zhong–Yong Model from Comparative, Cultural and Contemporary Perspectives’, The China Quarterly 244 (December 2020): 995.

61 Jian and Mols, ‘Modernizing China’s Tertiary Education Sector’, 714, 721.

62 Terry Bodenhorn, ‘Management and “Administerization” in China’s Higher Education System: A View from the Trenches’, The China Quarterly 244 (December 2020): 975.

63 Bodenhorn, 970.

64 Halffman and Radder, ‘The Academic Manifesto’.

65 Hao, ‘Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China’.

66 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’, 932.

67 Jude Howell and Tim Pringle, ‘Shades of Authoritarianism and State–Labour Relations in China’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 57, no. 2 (2019): 223–46.

68 Reuters, ‘China Cuts “freedom of Thought” from Top University Charters’, The Guardian, December 18, 2019, sec. World news, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/china-cuts-freedom-of-thought-from-top-fudan-university-charter.

69 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’, 942.

70 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’.

71 Tim Pringle, ‘Which Side Are You On?’, Positions Politics, April 2021, https://positionspolitics.org/which-side-are-you-on/.

72 Hao, ‘Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China’.

73 Wei Quan, Bikun Chen, and Fei Shu, ‘Publish or Impoverish: An Investigation of the Monetary Reward System of Science in China (1999–2016)’, Aslib Journal of Information Management 69, no. 5 (1 January 2017): 486–502.

74 Han and Xu, ‘How Far Has the State “Stepped Back”’.

75 Lu, ‘What Drives Chinese Scholars to Publish in International Journals?’, 8.

76 Lu, 12.

77 Joyce Lau, ‘Research Relevant to China “Cast aside in Race for Citations”’, Times Higher Education (THE), August 5, 2020, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/research-relevant-china-cast-aside-race-citations.

78 Connell, The Good University, 124.

79 Ibid.

80 Nicholas Loubere, ‘The New Censorship, the New Academic Freedom: Commercial Publishers and the Chinese Market’, The Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies 1 (2020): 239–52, https://doi.org/10.25365/jeacs.2020.1.239-252.

81 Loubere, 248.

82 Yang, Vidovich, and Currie, ‘“Dancing in a Cage”’.

83 Hao, ‘Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China’, 50.

84 Sean R. Roberts, ‘The Roots of Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang’, March 17, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-02-10/roots-cultural-genocide-xinjiang.

85 ‘Stop “Vilifying” China, Beijing Tells Social Scientists’, Times Higher Education (THE), January 4, 2021, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/stop-vilifying-china-beijing-tells-social-scientists.

86 China Digital Times, ‘Guizhou Orders Cameras in University Classrooms’, China Digital Times (CDT) (blog), December 3, 2014, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/guizhou-province-orders-cameras-university-classrooms/.

87 Tom Phillips, ‘Chinese University Puts CCTV in Dormitories to Encourage “Good Study Habits”’, The Guardian, June 16, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/16/chinese-university-students-cctv-surveillance-wuchang.

88 Scholars at Risk, ‘Obstacles to Excellence: Academic Freedom & China’s Quest for World Class Universities’.

89 Xiaojun Yan, ‘Engineering Stability: Authoritarian Political Control over University Students in Post-Deng China’, The China Quarterly 218 (June 2014): 500, 493.

90 Yan, 499.

91 Perry, ‘Educated Acquiescence’, 10.

92 Hao and Guo, ‘Professors as Intellectuals in China’, 90.

93 Hao, ‘Commercialization and Corporatization vs. Professorial Roles and Academic Freedom in the USA and Greater China’.

94 Konstantinos Tsimonis, ‘“Keep the Party Assured and the Youth [Not] Satisfied”: The Communist Youth League and Chinese University Students’, Modern China 44, no. 2 (1 March 2018): 170–207.

95 Yan, ‘Engineering Stability’, 503.

96 ‘Bright Futures’ Project, ‘In Search of Excellence: Chinese Students on the Move’, October 10, 2018, http://brightfutures-project.com/policy-report-post/.

97 Rob Schmitz, ‘In China, The Communist Party’s Latest, Unlikely Target: Young Marxists’, NPR.Org (blog), November 21, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669509554/in-china-the-communist-partys-latest-unlikely-target-young-marxists.

98 Civicus, ‘China: “Crackdown on Jasic Labour Struggle Seeks to Eliminate Unrest during Economic Downturn”’, March 26, 2019, https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/news/interviews/3805-china-crackdown-on-jasic-labour-struggle-seeks-to-eliminate-unrest-during-economic-downturn; Anonymous, ‘Orwell in the Chinese Classroom’, Made in China Journal (blog), May 27, 2019, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/05/27/orwell-in-the-chinese-classroom/; Jenny Chan, ‘A Precarious Worker-Student Alliance in Xi’s China’, China Review 20, no. 1 (2020): 165–90.

99 Anonymous, ‘Orwell in the Chinese Classroom’.

100 Chan, ‘A Precarious Worker-Student Alliance in Xi’s China’; Ngai Pun et al., ‘Worker–Intellectual Unity: Trans-Border Sociological Intervention in Foxconn’, Current Sociology 62, no. 2 (2014): 209–22; Yueran Zhang, ‘Leninists in a Chinese Factory’, Made in China Journal (blog), June 25, 2020, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/06/25/leninists-in-a-chinese-factory/.

101 Tim Pringle, ‘China’s bid to block my journal’s articles is a new attack on academic freedom’, The Guardian, August 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/21/china-bid-block-china-quarterly-attack-academic-freedom.

102 Chan, ‘A Precarious Worker-Student Alliance in Xi’s China’.

103 Pun et al., ‘Worker–Intellectual Unity’; Guoguang Wu, Yuan Feng, and Helen Lansdowne, Gender Dynamics, Feminist Activism and Social Transformation in China (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2019).

104 Chenchen Zhang, ‘The Curious Rise of the “White Left” as a Chinese Internet Insult’, OpenDemocracy (blog), May 11, 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/digitaliberties/curious-rise-of-white-left-as-chinese-internet-insult/; Zhang, ‘Right-Wing Populism with Chinese Characteristics?’

105 See for example, Joseph Fewsmith, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Sophia Woodman, ‘Segmented Publics and the Regulation of Critical Speech in China’, Asian Studies Review 39, no. 1 (2015): 100–118.

106 Jian and Mols, ‘Modernizing China’s Tertiary Education Sector’, 719.

107 Mok and Han, ‘Higher Education Governance and Policy in China’.

108 GAO, ‘China: U.S. Universities in China Emphasize Academic Freedom but Face Internet Censorship and Other Challenges’ (Washington, DC: US Government Accountability Office, 29 August 2016), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-16-757.

109 Han, ‘Cross-Field Effect and Institutional Habitus Formation’.

110 Yojana Sharma, ‘Campus “Will Close” If Academic Freedom Is Threatened’, University World News, June 26, 2015, https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20150626134954290.

111 Sharma.

112 Elizabeth Redden, ‘Question of NYU’s Control over NYU Shanghai Sits at Center of Faculty Suit’, Inside Higher Ed, August 25, 2021, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/08/25/question-nyus-control-over-nyu-shanghai-sits-center-faculty-suit.

113 Michael Gow, ‘Chinese Foreign Cooperatively Run Schools: An Examination of Officially Approved Transnational Higher Education Degree Programs in the People’s Republic of China’, in Western Higher Education in Asia and the Middle East: Politics, Economics, and Pedagogy, ed. Kevin Gray, Hassan Bashir, and Stephen Keck (Lexington Books, 2016), 151.

114 Gow, ‘Chinese Foreign Cooperatively Run Schools: An Examination of Officially Approved Transnational Higher Education Degree Programs in the People’s Republic of China’.

115 Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang, ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40; Radmir Khajbakhteev, ‘How the Commodification of Knowledge Is Creating a New Age of Colonialism’, OpenDemocracy (blog), 5 February 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/how-commodification-knowledge-creating-new-age-colonialism/.

116 Elizabeth Redden, ‘Survey of More than 500 China Scholars Provides Data on How Frequently They Experience Chinese State Repression’, Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2018, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/09/04/survey-more-500-china-scholars-provides-data-how-frequently-they-experience-chinese; Tim Pringle, ‘China’s Bid to Block My Journal’s Articles Is a New Attack on Academic Freedom’, The Guardian, August 21, 2017, sec. Opinion, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/21/china-bid-block-china-quarterly-attack-academic-freedom.

117 Rachel Harris and Sophia Woodman, ‘Surveillance and Repression of Muslim Minorities: Xinjiang and Beyond’, Society and Space (blog), December 7, 2020, https://www.societyandspace.org/forums/surveillance-and-repression-of-muslim-minorities.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Pringle

Tim Pringle is a Reader in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London and Editor of The China Quarterly. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Warwick. His research interests focus on labour movements, industrial relations and trade union reform in China, Vietnam and Russia as well as the challenge of academic freedom in the context of internationalised higher education.

Sophia Woodman

Sophia Woodman is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science. Her research interests include citizenship, human rights, migration and social movements in contemporary China, including mobility of Chinese students for higher education. Beyond China, she's interested in conditions for radical politics and the politics of sustainability, as well as the fate of the university as an institution.