How China uses its students to police universities in Canada

[I am Groot]

This article relates how China operates through its students there, how it keeps them under its control, how it uses its embassies and consulates, the United Front organization, and Confucious Institutes embedded within colleges to control not only their students, but also professors who study and teach about China, and others whose subjects merely occasionally touch on China. And it's about how universities kowtow to the wishes of the Chinese government and students to silence and punish teachers who offend them because they want their money so badly. 

The story is in the UK. But if there's anyone here who thinks things are not only just as bad but, given the notable cowardice of our governments and universities, even worse, they're living in dreamland. All of the organizations mentioned, like the Confucious Institutes, the Chinese Scholarship Council, the United Front, and Chinese students associations are all active on Canadian campuses.

 

The problem, however, is more complicated than a bunch of young chauvinists making noise on UK campuses. As the charity I run, UK-China Transparency, has shown, the CCP has institutionalised its presence at British universities. Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) are present on roughly 100 British campuses. Most are formally registered as student societies under the authority of university student unions and typically describe themselves as “branches” of a central UK CSSA based at the Chinese embassy in London. This acts as an overseas office for an organisation controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, which conducts influence operations abroad and was name-checked by MI5 in 2022. Most CSSAs publicly admit — though sometimes only in official documents published in Mandarin — that they are under the “guidance”, “control” or “leadership” of the embassy, which runs training programmes and networking events for CSSA leaders.

And if that’s not “surreal” enough, consider the China Scholarship Council’s footprint in Britain. This Chinese government body gives stipends to hundreds of PhD scholars in the UK, selecting them on the basis of their political leanings as well as their academic merit. British universities then pay these scholars’ fees. Like CSSAs, scholarship recipients are formally obliged to accept “guidance and management” from Chinese diplomats in the UK — with penalties imposed on them and their families if they fail to do so or otherwise negatively impact China’s national security. As with Confucius Institutes and CSSAs, all these expectations are spelled out in official documents — in Mandarin.

The Chinese students policing Britain's universities - UnHerd

 

Edited March 20, 2024 by I am Groot