Higher Education Partnerships with China: US and European Responses to a Changing Context

Engaging with higher education institutions from the People’s Republic of China (China or the PRC) raises difficult tensions for universities in liberal democratic contexts. Universities in China are overseen by a political party that routinely silences dissent and does not respect principles of academic freedom in the social sciences and humanities. For decades in the post–Mao era, this tension remained relatively muted outside of the PRC, but it has gained newfound significance as China’s power and assertiveness have grown globally.

The tightening of China’s domestic higher education sphere along with the PRC’s focus on outward expansion together have generated externalities abroad in the form of controversies about censorship, self-censorship, and co-optation. As a result, there has been a rethinking in many democratic states about how best to engage with the PRC’s higher education sector. This article describes the contours of some of those responses in the United States and Europe in terms of their regulatory efforts and initial outcomes. As China’s most visible higher education initiative abroad, it focuses on the response to Confucius Institutes (CIs); however, many of the same considerations are in play concerning research funding, joint campuses, and student exchanges.

The tightening of China’s domestic higher education sphere along with the PRC’s focus on outward expansion together have generated externalities abroad in the form of controversies about censorship, self-censorship, and co-optation.

This article identifies two underlying logics of the response to the twin developments of the PRC’s deepening control and outward expansion: enhancing security and protecting academic integrity. Both logics feature on either side of the Atlantic, but this study contends that, in general, enhancing security is a more prevalent motivation in the United States and protecting academic integrity is a more predominant motivation in Europe. Before discussing the contours of these reactions, it is necessary to contextualize them as responses to changes in China’s own approaches to higher education control and expansion.

TIGHTENING AT HOME, EXPANDING ABROAD

After the protest and crackdown at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the PRC worked to reassert control over campus life and higher education (Perry 2020, 7). A combination of renewed political oversight and generous research funding tied to party priorities created a context in which “Chinese academia advocates the party-state’s patriotic agenda of national unity and technological advance” (Perry 2020, 7). This applies domestically, but the dividing line between domestic and international higher education is increasingly blurry. China has launched several initiatives to globalize its higher education system (Pringle and Woodman 2022). In this context, the policies and practices of domestic control may not remain so neatly confined within borders.

Within the PRC, the context for higher education in the past decade is one of political tightening and increased control. Minzner (2019) traced this to several party-state directives and speeches around 2014 and 2015, including a 2014 Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and State Council opinion that called for strengthening ideology in higher education—in particular, the social sciences—through measures such as bolstering political training for faculty and standardizing textbooks. In 2016, Xi Jinping himself stated that universities must “serve the Communist Party in its management of the country” and that China should “build universities into strongholds that adhere to Party leadership” (Reuters 2016).

Several examples illustrate how this strategy has unfolded. Between 2013 and 2017, more than 100 universities unveiled charters that affirmed party leadership (Feng 2020). In 2019, Fudan University in Shanghai expunged a previously stated commitment to freedom of thought from its charter and inserted this clause: “the university Communist Party committee is the core leadership of the school” (Feng 2020). In terms of social science research, the group of projects that was awarded funding by the National Social Science Foundation in 2019 featured dramatically more focus on socialist ideology and the party relative to the year before Xi Jinping took power. Xi’s name was “literally stamped all over research projects in every field” and his “Xi Jinping Thought” frequently was cited as a reference point (Minzner 2019). Restrictions and scrutiny on Chinese academics’ engagement with foreign colleagues have increased, even including visits by the police for papers presented at foreign conferences (Feng 2022). In the classroom, “student information officers” monitor professors and fellow students for signs of disloyalty, and they write reports about their professors for local party branches (Feng 2020; Hernandez 2019).

To what extent do these developments leak outward and impact higher education outside of China? This is a particular issue for universities in liberal democratic contexts in which academic freedom generally is protected by laws and norms. The risk is that the forms of control exercised within the PRC can extend beyond its borders and dilute protections for students, faculty, and staff (Pils 2021, 143).

Extraterritorial control can be subtle, as when a partnership generates actual or promised financial benefits resulting in compromise on liberal educational values by certain actors within universities (e.g., internationalization offices) (Tiffert 2020, 32). Individual scholars who conduct research about China may be incentivized to alter their work to preserve access to the PRC that they need to produce their research. (For an analysis of self-censorship in the China studies field based on survey evidence, see Greitens and Truex 2020, 366–68.) The control also can be direct, as when PRC authorities instruct academic publishers to censor content for the Chinese market or risk losing market access (Wong and Kwong 2019) and when mainland-based digitized academic databases to which foreign universities subscribe are censored (Tiffert 2019).

Questions about extraterritorial control become especially salient as China’s higher education sector internationalizes with the aims of not only bolstering technical skills and intellectual perspectives through international cooperation but also to be “an important vehicle to defend and promote the Party State’s interests and ideology abroad” (Burnay and Pils 2022, 1767). Using predeparture sessions, periodic monitoring and reporting by Chinese Students and Scholars Association branches, collaboration with PRC consulates, and political orientation sessions for academic hires who return from abroad, Chinese authorities attempt to mitigate the putative impact of liberal socio-political ideas learned abroad (Yan and Alsudairi 2021). Awardees of China Scholarship Council funding apparently pledge to “consciously safeguard the honor of the motherland, [and] obey the guidance and management of embassies (consulates) abroad” (Felden 2023). These modes of political control are built-in features of China’s expansion of international engagement with effects that do not stop at the PRC’s borders.

CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES AND CHINA’S OUTREACH

The most visible manifestation of China’s global higher education comes in the form of CIs; therefore, this study uses them as a window into the response to China’s enhanced control and outward expansion in the sector. CIs, which predate Xi Jinping’s campaign of control, are educational institutes in foreign universities that are associated with a partner university in the PRC and overseen by a central Chinese body. Previously, that body was the Confucius Institute Headquarters (also known as Hanban). In 2020, a restructuring saw coordination of overseas Chinese-language education shift to the newly created Center for Language Education and Cooperation, which is a nonprofit body “affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.” The current director of the body, Ma Jianfei, also is the secretary of the organization’s party committee. ¹ A separate entity, the Chinese International Education Foundation, which is registered with China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, was spun off specifically to address CIs.

There are approximately 500 CIs globally in more than 140 countries. Unlike equivalents (e.g., Germany’s Goethe Institute and France’s Alliance Française), which usually are freestanding, CIs are located almost always at a host university and therefore are more directly relevant to conversations about higher education. Although there is variation in local CI arrangements and practices, they generally teach Mandarin language and a politically appropriate version of Chinese culture (Hartig 2015). However, at times they facilitate teaching of Chinese business, economics, and even politics for credit at the host university (e.g., in Ireland; see Keena 2021). Research on CIs shows that they are a part of China’s strategic public outreach (Dukalskis 2021, 123; Hartig 2015; Hubbert 2019) and that they can achieve modest but real success in terms of boosting China’s image (Brazys and Dukalskis 2019); gaining support of stakeholders (Repnikova 2022, with reference to Ethiopia); and improving public attitudes toward China in a survey-experiment context (Yeh, Wu, and Huang 2021). In the classroom, however, the picture is mixed. In American Confucius Classrooms—set in primary or secondary schools and usually organized by a local CI—survey evidence revealed that students developed less favorable views of China while still retaining an interest in Chinese culture (Green-Riley 2020). Likewise, anthropological research suggests that American students’ experiences of CIs were shaped by their own interpretation of the curriculum and informed by their knowledge that the CIs were state-affiliated (Hubbert 2019).

CIs are not found only in the United States and Europe; they are in every region of the world. (For a map as of 2017, see Brazys and Dukalskis 2019.) This is important because, as Repnikova (2022) noted, much scholarship on CIs has been focused on the United States, Europe, and Australia, where attitudes toward China’s rise often are more skeptical than those in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Particularly in developing countries, the “pragmatic enticement” of working with CIs as a part of deepening a relationship with China may be appealing (Repnikova 2022). It also is notable that in contexts featuring the combination of lower levels of media freedom and a host government that wants to cultivate closer ties with China, criticism of CIs may not be reported widely.

CIs have been linked to controversy in several contexts. The cases that have been discovered and reported publicly include efforts to shut down campus events in Australia (Economist 2019) and Germany (Fulda and Missal 2021a); remove materials about Taiwan at an academic conference in Portugal (Sudworth 2014); limit discussion about Tibet in Finland (Myklebust 2022); taking advice from PRC consulates about how to respond to scholarly presentations in the United States (Ford 2022); threats by a local CI director made to a critical scholar in Slovakia (Yar 2021); and accusations of recruiting intelligence informants in Belgium (Sharma 2020). Efforts to rethink engagement with China’s higher education institutions, including its CIs, are unfolding in the confluence of Xi’s renewed control at home, China’s growing assertiveness and presence abroad, and the visibility of controversies like these.

A SNAPSHOT OF OFFICIAL RESPONSES IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE

The United States and Europe are not alone in taking steps to revise their higher education relationships with the PRC. Japan, for example, began a review of the country’s 14 CIs in 2021 (Fujita 2021). However, the reevaluation has been most visible in the West. The response is not uniform: some countries have made significant changes, some have discussed doing so but are still deliberating, and others have done nothing of consequence.

Two logics tend to underlie the response: enhancing security and protecting academic integrity. These two logics can overlap or coexist, but they also can be seen as analytically distinct. The first logic holds that the PRC’s expanding influence into domains such as universities constitutes a security threat insofar as it can shape politics, public discourse, and elite preferences about engagement with China. (With reference to Australia, see Chubb 2023.) This perspective elevates concerns about spying and espionage, particularly as it pertains to science and technology. The response, therefore, is characterized by security mechanisms, including intensified screening of research, scrutiny of visa applications for Chinese researchers, and investigations and prosecutions of researchers for (alleged) offenses. (See US examples in Lee and Psaledakis 2021.)

The second logic holds that engagement with PRC partners can compromise the integrity of teaching and research about China-related topics by creating incentives for self-censorship and/or normalizing PRC political controls over research and teaching (Pils 2021). This perspective elevates concerns about the financial and institutional independence of universities and thus their willingness to protect space for free inquiry by researchers and students—including those from China—as they enter partnerships with PRC entities. The response, therefore, is characterized by institutional reforms to protect academic freedom, severing partnerships that cannot be reformed, and pushing to fund and build China expertise that is not linked to the PRC state. Truex (2019), for example, suggested that universities should regularly hold events on issues including PRC state repression and the future of Taiwan to reaffirm the freedom-of-speech norm on campus.

Regarding CIs, the United States stands out both for its relatively hard line and the manner in which it has pursued its aims. Security is the regulatory domain that the United States has prioritized in addressing PRC higher education entanglements. Section 1091 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 stipulates that universities that host CIs are not eligible for funds appropriated by the Act unless they apply for a waiver and meet certain conditions. ² In effect, this forces universities to choose between eligibility for certain defense-related federal research funds—including support for some foreign-language training—and hosting a CI. The initial outcome has been stark. As of December 2022, seven CIs were located in the United States—a decrease from more than 100 only five years prior (Lum and Fischer 2023).

The stated motivation behind the move to quash CIs in the United States generally is to protect national security. For example, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley requested dozens of colleges and universities across the country that hosted CIs to schedule a briefing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “become proactively involved in better understanding the national security threats posed by Confucius Institutes and the Chinese Government to our Nation’s academic and research institutions.” ³ Florida Senator Marco Rubio articulated similar concerns in his efforts to convince Florida universities to sever ties with CIs (Ducassi 2018). When he was Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo suggested that CIs were used to recruit “spies and collaborators” (Reuters 2020). This approach is consistent with a broader securitization of US–PRC higher education links. Although some political leaders, including Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, have focused on preserving academic integrity and the space for discussion about human rights, ⁴ the US approach, on balance, has emphasized security.

Although still noting concerns about espionage and intellectual property theft, the European Union via the European Parliament (EP) has elevated systemic issues of academic integrity and higher education autonomy. In an EP resolution passed in March 2022 by a vote of 552 for, 81 against, and 60 abstentions, the Parliament noted the 200 Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Europe in the context of academic freedom and financial dependence of universities on foreign authoritarian powers (para. CF). ⁵ The resolution, which came after hearings and a report, raises concerns about CIs being platforms for the recruitment of spies (para. 132). However, it emphasizes that the financial dependence of universities on China can damage academic freedom (para. 128) and that ceding control over China-related cultural activities in Europe to entities such as CIs can “lead to a loss of knowledge on China-related issues, depriving the EU of the necessary competences” (para. 126). The EP views the reorganized governance that oversees CIs from the Chinese side as a part of the PRC’s propaganda system. It calls on EU states and the European Commission to support Chinese-language instruction and research free of entanglements with the PRC party-state (para. 131).

The EP resolution notes specific efforts in Sweden to build expertise less reliant on PRC officialdom. The Swedish National China Centre, for example, was established with government funding in 2020 to provide policy-relevant research and inform public debates about China. Amid worsening Sweden–China relations since 2015, agreements on all of Sweden’s CIs were allowed to lapse. Indeed, most of Scandinavia has soured on CIs (Forsby 2022). The University of Helsinki, for example, ended its CI two years after the institute attempted to stifle discussions on issues including Tibet (Vänttinen 2022). This occurred after an attempt to revise the university’s CI agreement to bring it more in line with Finnish regulations. ⁶

Other European states are still debating and evaluating their approaches. In his campaign, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to close the country’s CIs, but he then backtracked when in office, nodding to more modest potential reforms (Parker and Staton 2023). Germany continues to grapple with how to mitigate the (self-)censorship and other risks that arise from collaborations with the PRC, with shifts in official attitudes toward heightened awareness of the dangers of reliance on authoritarian states (Fulda and Missal 2021a, 2021b). Security rationales still appear, as when the Netherlands announced its intention to screen certain Chinese students on security grounds (Bounds 2023). These issues may become more common but, thus far and relative to the United States, academic integrity concerns appear to be more prevalent in Europe.

CONCLUSIONS

With a particular focus on CIs, this study provides an overview of select US and European responses to the PRC’s reassertion of academic control at home and expansion abroad. Space constraints preclude a comprehensive examination of responses, but two tentative conclusions can be drawn.

First, there has been a broad rethinking in the United States and Europe about engaging with PRC higher education entities. To be sure, some politicians and commentators latch on to this for cynical or disingenuous purposes. However, for many academics and students inside and outside of China, the externalities of Xi Jinping’s domestic reassertion of ideology and control in the higher education sector have real consequences.

Second, the rethinking has two main stated motivations: security and academic integrity. For political scientists, keeping the focus on academic integrity is preferable. It maintains the focus on institutions, not individuals, and speaks to the core of what universities are meant to do. The security approach can cast suspicion on individuals and contribute to racial profiling. It also can distort academic integrity in its own way by creating chilling effects over certain types of research. University leaders should focus on creating transparent institutions and structures that are independent of PRC efforts to distort free academic inquiry.