Page:ISC-China.pdf/117

Chinese Interference in UK Academia

China also seeks to monitor and control Chinese students' behaviour—primarily via the network of Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs). There are reportedly more than 90 CSSAs in the UK, all based at universities, and they are actively supported—and at least partly financed—by the Chinese embassy. The CSSAS ostensibly exist to look after the interests of Chinese students in the UK, organising cultural activities for Chinese and non-Chinese students, and providing practical advice to Chinese students on living and studying in the host country. However, CSSAS are—along with Confucius Institutes—assessed to be used by the Chinese state to monitor Chinese students overseas and to exert influence over their behaviour. Professor Steve Tsang told the Committee:

"The student bodies are infiltrated … We know that … there are meetings that happen through the middle of the night and the following morning some Chinese students can get rung up by somebody at the cultural or education section of the embassy to ask them: why did you say that? Why did you do that?"

This would appear to be resulting in a culture of fear and suspicion among Chinese students in the UK. According to Professor Tsang, "we are seeing that … in the class where there is only one Chinese student, that Chinese student usually engages in discussions and debates much more openly than in a class that has quite a few Chinese, [where] they don't know who [if anyone] is going to report on them". The protests in Hong Kong, and subsequent demonstrations in support of the protesters by some ethnic Chinese students in the UK, have brought to the fore the pressure exerted on Chinese students in the UK by the Chinese embassy and CSSAS.

Examples of such behaviour have been reported throughout the Western world over the past decade, but awareness of the issue has increased in recent years. The perception that the Chinese government is interfering with academic freedom across the world—including through surveillance of its own students overseas via Confucius Institutes, CSSAS and other means—is such that, in 2019, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Human Rights Watch issued a Code of Conduct to help universities protect themselves against Chinese academic interference, the Code called for the rejection of Confucius Institutes and restrictions on CSSAS.