Die Endlösung der Uigurischefrage

China’s Genetic Research on Ethnic Minorities Sets Off Science Backlash
Scientists are raising questions about the ethics of studies backed by Chinese surveillance agencies. Prestigious journals are taking action.
By Sui-Lee Wee and Paul Mozur

Kashgar, a city in East Turkestan, the colony where China has locked up more than one million people from predominantly Muslim minority groups.

BEIJING — China’s efforts to study the DNA of the country’s ethnic minorities have incited a growing backlash from the global scientific community, as scientists warn that Beijing uses its growing knowledge to spy on and oppress its people.
Two publishers of prestigious scientific journals, Springer Nature and Wiley, said this week that they would re-evaluate papers they previously published on Tibetans, Uighurs and other minority groups. The papers were written or co-written by scientists backed by the Chinese government, and the two publishers want to make sure the authors got consent from the people they studied.
Springer Nature, which publishes the influential journal Nature, also said that it was toughening its guidelines to make sure scientists get consent, particularly if those people are members of a vulnerable group.
The statements followed articles by The New York Times that describe how the Chinese authorities are trying to harness bleeding-edge technology and science to track minority groups. 

The issue is particularly stark in East Turkestan, a colony on China’s western frontier, where the authorities have locked up more than one million Uighurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in concentration camps in the name of quelling "terrorism".
Chinese companies are selling facial recognition systems that they claim can tell when a person is a Uighur. 

Chinese officials have also collected blood samples from Uighurs and others to build new tools for tracking members of minority groups.Western scientists and companies have provided help for those efforts.

That has included publishing papers in high-profile journals, which grants prestige and respectability to the authors that can lead to access to funding, data or new techniques.
When Western journals publish such papers by Chinese scientists affiliated with the country’s surveillance agencies, it amounts to selling a knife to a friend “knowing that your friend would use the knife to kill his wife,” said Yves Moreau, a professor of engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
On Tuesday, Nature published an essay by Dr. Moreau calling for all publications to retract papers written by scientists backed by Chinese security agencies that focus on the DNA of minority ethnic groups.
“If you produce a piece of knowledge and know someone is going to take that and harm someone with it, that’s a huge problem,” said Dr. Moreau.

Yves Moreau, an engineering professor in Belgium, is calling for publications to retract papers written by scientists backed by Chinese security agencies that focus on the DNA of minority ethnic groups.

The scientific reaction is part of a broader backlash to China’s actions in East Turkestan. 

Lawmakers in the United States and elsewhere are taking an increasingly critical stance toward Beijing’s policies. 

On Tuesday, the House voted almost unanimously for a bill condemning China’s treatment of Uighurs and others.

Dr. Moreau and other scientists worry that China’s research into the genes and personal data of ethnic minorities is being used to build databases, facial recognition systems and other methods for monitoring and subjugating China’s ethnic minorities.
They also worry that research into DNA in particular violates widely followed scientific rules involving consent. 

In East Turkestan, where so many people have been confined to concentration camps and a heavy police presence dominates daily life, they say, it is impossible to verify that Uighurs have given their blood samples willingly.
China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Science and Technology did not respond to requests for comment.
In September, Dr. Moreau and three other scientists asked Wiley to retract a paper on the faces of minorities it published last year, citing the potential for abuse and the tone of discussion about race.
“The point of this work was to improve surveillance capabilities on all Tibetans and Uighurs,” said Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist and founder of the advocacy group Tech Inquiry, and another member of the group that reached out to Wiley. 

Even if the authors obtained consent from those they studied, he added, that would be “insufficient to satisfy their ethical obligations.”

“The point of this work was to improve surveillance capabilities on all Tibetans and Uighurs,” said Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist.

Wiley initially declined, but said this week that it would reconsider. 

Last week, Curtin University, an Australian institution that employs one of the authors of the study, said it had found “significant concerns” with the paper.
Science journals are now setting different standards.
In February, a journal called Frontiers in Genetics rejected a paper that was based on findings from the DNA of more than 600 Uighurs. 

Some of its editors cited China’s treatment of Uighurs, people familiar with the deliberations said.
The paper was instead accepted by Human Genetics, a journal owned by Springer Nature, and published in April.

Philip Campbell, the editor of Springer Nature, said this week that Human Genetics would add an editorial note to the study saying that concerns had been raised regarding informed consent. 

Springer Nature will also bolster guidelines across its journals and is contacting their editors to “request that they exercise an extra level of scrutiny and care in handling papers where there is a potential that consent was not informed or freely given,” it said in an email.
The paper published in Human Genetics was a subject of a Times article on Tuesday that raised questions about whether the Uighurs had contributed their blood samples willingly. 

Those Uighurs lived in Tumxuk, a city in East Turkestan that is ringed by paramilitary forces and is home to two internment camps.
Scientists like Dr. Moreau are not calling for a blanket ban on Chinese research into the genetics of China’s ethnic minorities. 

He drew a distinction between fields like medicine, where research is aimed at treating people, and forensics, which involves matters of criminal justice.
But Dr. Moreau found that recent genetic forensics research from China focused overwhelmingly on ethnic minorities and was increasingly driven by Chinese security agencies.
Of 529 studies in the field published between 2011 and 2018, he found, about half had a co-author from the police, military or judiciary. 

He also found that Tibetans were over 40 times more frequently studied than China’s ethnic Han majority, and that the Uighur population was 30 times more intensely studied than the Han.
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A paper from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 looked at “Learning race from a face.”

Over the past eight years, he wrote, three leading forensic genetics journals — one published by Springer Nature and two by Elsevier — have published 40 articles co-authored by members of the Chinese police that describe the DNA profiling of Tibetans and Muslim minorities.
Tom Reller, a spokesman for Elsevier, said the company was in the process of producing more comprehensive guidelines for the publication of genetic data. 

But he added that the journals “are unable to control the potential misuse of population data articles” by third parties.
The principle of informed consent has been a scientific mainstay after forced experiments on inmates in Nazi death camps came to light. 

To verify that those standards are followed, academic journals and other outlets depend heavily on ethical review committees at individual institutions. 

Bioethicists say that arrangement can break down when an authoritarian state is involved. 

Already, Chinese scientists are under scrutiny for publishing papers on organ transplantation without saying whether there was consent.
In its own review of more than 100 papers published by Chinese scientists in international journals on biometrics and computer science, The Times found a number of examples of what appeared to be inadequate consent from study participants or no consent at all. 

Those concerns have also dogged facial recognition research in the United States.
One 2016 facial recognition paper published by Springer International was based on 137,395 photos of Uighurs, which the scientists said were from identification photos and surveillance cameras at railway stations and shopping malls. 

The paper does not mention consent.
A 2018 study, focused on using traffic cameras to identify drivers by beard, uses surveillance footage without mentioning whether it got permission from the subjects. 

The paper was also published by Springer.
A second 2018 Springer article that analyzes Uighur cranial shape to determine gender was based on “whole skull CT scans” of 267 people, mostly Uighurs. 

While the study said the subjects were “voluntary,” it made no mention of consent forms.
The latter two papers were part of a book published by Springer as part of a biometrics conference in East Turkestan’s capital, Urumqi, in August 2018, months after rights groups had documented the crackdown in the region. 

In a statement, Steven Inchcoombe, chief publishing officer of Springer Nature, said that conference organizers were responsible for editorial oversight of the conference proceedings. 

But he added that the company would in the future strengthen its requirements of conference organizers and ensure that their proceedings also comply with Springer Nature’s editorial policies.

A 2018 study published by Springer, on identifying drivers by beard, used surveillance footage without mentioning whether it got permission.

Two papers assembled databases of facial expressions for different minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Hui, another Muslim minority. 

The papers were released in journals run by Wiley and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 

Wiley said the paper “raises a number of questions that are currently being reviewed.” 

It added that the paper was published on behalf of a partner, the International Union of Psychological Science, and referred further questions to it. 

The engineers institute did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The science world has been responding to the pressure. 

Thermo Fisher, a maker of equipment for studying genetics, said in February that it would suspend sales to East Turkestan, though it will continue to sell to other parts of China. 

Still, Dr. Moreau said, the issue initially received little traction among academia.
“If we don’t react in the community, we are going to get more and more into trouble,” he said. 

“The community has to take a major step and say: ‘This is not us.’”

Exporting Authoritarianism With Chinese Characteristics

Scholars and political leaders describe increasing concerns about Chinese government influence over teaching and research in the U.S. and Australia.
By Elizabeth Redden

Two times in Kevin Carrico’s six years of teaching he’s been approached by students from China who told him that things they said in his classroom about sensitive subjects somehow made their way to their parents back home.

The first time it happened, when Carrico was teaching at a university in the United States, a student informed him that a presentation he’d given about the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had been reported to his father in China, where the father held a position in government. “This was a situation where the father’s superiors -- I wasn’t given a lot of specifics -- but his superiors mentioned this to him and raised this as something that [the father] should know about, supposedly,” said Carrico, who’s now a lecturer in Chinese studies at Australia’s Macquarie University.
The second time, which happened after Carrico moved to Australia, a student told him that a class presentation she’d given on self-immolation in Tibet had been reported to her parents in China.

Kevin Carrico

“The only way that this could have been communicated back to China would have been from somebody in the class,” Carrico said. 

“I suppose another possibility is that the files on the student’s computer are somehow corrupted and can be read or monitored, but that’s probably unlikely.”
“It raises really complicated issues about, ethically, what am I supposed to do as somebody who teaches contemporary China issues in an ostensibly free environment, while some of my students may be in a less free environment such that what they say in class could in some cases be communicated back to China,” Carrico continued. 

“Awareness of that could affect student participation, which is part of their grades, and lack of awareness of that could have implications for students and their families.”
“It leaves me with a real dilemma as someone who is dedicated to not censoring what I teach or write about China, but who also doesn’t want to create an environment in which students are worried about what they say in class or are pressured to contribute to discussions that could somehow be risky for them and somehow or other reported back to officials or to family.”
Carrico finds it hard to judge just how big the problem is based on the two instances his students told him about.
“Two is not a lot,” he said, “but at the same time I do feel like it’s two too many.”
In recent years the Chinese government has stepped up its crackdown on domestic dissent at the same time it continues to expand the country's global influence. 

A confluence of events has China studies scholars raising concerns about whether the Chinese Communist Party is exporting its censorship regime abroad, and what the implications are for free discussion and research at universities outside China.
Some of the concerns -- such as academic freedom concerns raised by the Confucius Institutes, centers of Chinese language and cultural education that are funded and staffed by a Chinese government entity and housed on U.S. and other international campuses, or concerns about foreign scholars self-censoring their writings or choices of research topics so they can continue to get visas to China -- are familiar. 

Others have risen to the forefront over the past few months.

In several recent cases, international scholarly publishers have ceded to requests from Chinese censors to block access to selected journal articles in China. 

Cambridge University Press originally agreed to block access in China to more than 300 articles -- mostly on sensitive topics like Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan and the Cultural Revolution -- from its prestigious China Quarterly journal before reversing course and reinstating the content after coming under heavy criticism. 

Other Cambridge-published journals, the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Asian Studies, have also reported receiving -- and rebuffing -- requests to block access to some of their articles in China.
The giant publisher Springer Nature has, on the other hand, complied with censorship requests. 

After Financial Times reported that more than 1,000 articles had been removed from the Chinese websites of two political science journals published by Springer Nature, the publisher confirmed that “a small percentage of our content (less than 1 percent) is limited in mainland China” and said it is “required to take account of the local rules and regulations in the countries in which we distribute our published content.” 

Springer Nature described the blocking of content as “deeply regrettable” and said it was necessary so as not to avoid jeopardizing access to the remainder of its published content in China.
Shuping Yang

Beyond the issue of scholarly publishing, Chinese nationalism is also posing challenges to foreign universities that host Chinese students. 

After a student delivered a commencement speech last spring at the University of Maryland, College Park, criticizing air pollution in her home city in China and praising “the fresh air of free speech” she found in the U.S., the student, Shuping Yang, came under heavy criticism on Chinese social media and from some of her Chinese classmates. 

The backlash prompted Yang to apologize and for her university to issue a statement defending her right to free expression.
In another commencement controversy, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of California, San Diego, led a protest of the university’s choice of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, as this spring’s graduation speaker. 

A nationalistic Chinese newspaper, The Global Times, blasted UCSD for the invitation to the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing considers to be a separatist, and said its chancellor “must bear the consequences for this.” 

In September it came to light that the China Scholarship Council was freezing funding for government-funded scholars headed to UCSD.
Academic exchange between the U.S. and China is arguably as high as it's ever been (even though it is true that the number of Americans studying in China has actually declined in recent years). 

More than 350,000 Chinese students study at American colleges and universities, making up the single largest group of international students by nationality. 

American universities have grown increasingly dependent on the tuition revenue Chinese students bring and welcome the chance to bring more diverse and global perspectives to the classroom.
But there are increasing concerns about whether mainland Chinese students always feel free on American campuses to articulate perspectives that may deviate from Beijing's party line. 

Earlier this year, The New York Times published an article on the links between campus-based chapters of Chinese Students and Scholars Associations and Chinese embassies and consulates and the ways in which the student groups have, in the words of reporter Stephanie Saul, “worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses.”
Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who holds a doctorate in history, recently published an op-ed in The New York Times in which he described surveillance of Chinese students and scholars on campuses by some of their compatriots. 

“The Chinese government encourages like-minded Chinese students and scholars in the West to report on Chinese students who participate in politically sensitive activities,” he wrote.
“Chinese students who are seen with political dissidents like me or dare to publicly challenge Chinese government policies can be put on a blacklist. Their families in China can be threatened or punished.”
At a hearing in December on China's foreign influence operations held by the Congressional Executive Commission of China, Senator Angus King, an Independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, asked speakers at the hearing about this issue. 

He asked whether there is "any evidence that the Chinese government is recruiting some of those students as agents, either gathering intelligence or otherwise malign activities in our country."
Sophie Richardson testifying.

“We’ve been doing some research for a couple of years on threats to academic freedom from the Chinese government outside China, and a piece of that has involved looking at the realities for students and scholars who are originally from the mainland on campuses in the U.S., Australia and elsewhere,” Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, said in response to King's question.
"It's not a new pathology that Chinese government officials want to know what those students and scholars are saying in classrooms. One doesn't have a perfect year-on-year data set to say that it’s gotten worse, but it’s certainly a sufficiently real dynamic for people. For example, we have a graduate student who told us about something that he discussed in a closed seminar at a university here, and two days later his parents got visited by the Ministry of Public Security in China asking why their kid had brought up these touchy topics that were embarrassing to China in a classroom in the U.S. So I think that that surveillance is real.”

China’s ‘Long Arm’
The congressional hearing -- which bore the title “The Long Arm of China: Exporting Authoritarianism With Chinese Characteristics” -- was not exclusively focused on academe, but much of the hearing focused on Chinese censorship of academic publications and the Chinese government's efforts to wield influence internationally through academic and other people-to-people exchanges. 

“It seems to me there’s a continuum,” Senator King mused at one point. 

“I mean, we have people-to-people programs, we bring students from other parts of the world here, we have various information about our country that has … a positive narrative. But at some point the question is where does puffery stop and -- um, I don’t know what the right word might be -- but some kind of subversion begin?”

The committee's chair, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said in his opening remarks that the Chinese government is “clearly targeting academia. The Party deems historical analysis and interpretation that do not hew to the Party’s ideological and official story as dangerous and threatening to its legitimacy. Recent reports of the censorship of international scholarly journals illustrate the Chinese government’s direct requests to censor international academic content... Related to this is the proliferation of Confucius Institutes and with them insidious curbs on academic freedom.”

“I think in one sense what distinguishes the Chinese efforts to wield influence in the United States is that they are spending a great deal more money to do that,” Glenn Tiffert, a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said at the hearing, where he spoke about his research on censorship of two Chinese law journals (a webcast of the full hearing is available here). 

“They have commercial advantages and so they’re able through, for example, Confucius Institutes to promote a particular view of China and to close out discussion of certain topics on campus.”
“China’s not necessarily appealing to hearts and minds,” Tiffert said. 

“It’s appealing to wallets.”
Jonathan Sullivan, the director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, said in an email interview with Inside Higher Ed that the increasing concerns about Chinese influence over international higher education “are the result of an accumulation of developments and concerning trends in China (and the West).”
“Every sector of Chinese society has tightened under Xi Jinping -- the Party, business, media, internet, [human rights] lawyers, activists, citizen journalists, migrants, Chinese academia,” he said. 

“The expansion of Chinese interests around the world and determination and ability to push back against what it sees as Western hegemony that has acted against China have steadily increased during the same period. At the same time, we have witnessed the erosion of our own values at home via Trump, Brexit, rise of the far right. Taken as a whole, these trends are cause for concern. Although China has long had a censorship regime … there has never been a confluence of these three trends before, i.e., concerted tightening across the board within China, China’s willingness and ability to actively promote its interests in the West, and the erosion of support for core values by our own leaders.”
Carrico, of Macquarie University, added that the "ideological hardening" within China has had implications outside the country.
“People have come to realize that there’s no longer any kind of great firewall between academic practice in China and academic practice outside of China. There is this kind of increasing pressure on academics working outside of China, and ironically, I think this increasing pressure is leading people to realize just how problematic the current system is in China,” he said.

Clashes on Campus

Rowena He

Rowena He, an assistant professor of history at St. Michael’s College, in Vermont, has written that when she was a graduate student in the U.S. and Canada, she dodged questions from college classmates about her research topic -- the Tiananmen Square movement -- and worried about whether she could ever go home and about whether her family members in China would get into trouble. “When my work became better known, angry young Chinese students accused me of lying about historical facts, while thousands of online messages labeled me a ‘national traitor’ who criticized China to get money from ‘the West,’” He wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.
He has also written about the treatment of Grace Wang, who as a freshman at Duke University in 2008 was vilified online and subjected to threats -- her contact information and directions to her parents' apartment in China were posted on the internet -- after she attempted to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-China protesters on the North Carolina campus.
“In the past decade, I have observed the development of Chinese student nationalism, first as a graduate student, later as a scholar and faculty member, and always as a first-generation Chinese living in Canada and United States,” He, who’s also a researcher with Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, said via email. 

“I experienced firsthand the intimidation of hypernationalist discourse in classrooms, in public lectures, in cyberspace and in daily lives. Some media stories describe such phenomena as ‘cultural conflicts’ that the ‘West’ needs to understand and accommodate; meanwhile, within the academy, many consider these reactions as perspectives of ‘the other,’ which thus should be embraced under the principles of inclusion. This sort of conciliatory approach may come easily to some college administrators who have to deal with budgetary pressures and welcome the tuition from Chinese students.”
“It is particularly disturbing to see that, in contrast to the experiences that I have documented in my studies among the previous generation of Chinese diasporas, such ultranationalism of the new generation did not abate as students matured in societies that offer easy access to information and freedom of speech,” He continued. 

“Instead, it appears that Chinese students are becoming even more assertive and aggressive, taking advantage of the freedom of their host countries, and operating with increasingly open support from the Chinese authorities.”
Concerns about these kinds of issues have been especially acute in Australia, bound up as they are in part of a broader public debate about the extent of Chinese influence over the country's politics.
The head of Australia's domestic intelligence agency warned in October of a need to be "very conscious" of foreign interference in universities, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

"That can go to a range of issues. It can go to the behavior of foreign students, it can go to the behavior of foreign consular staff in relation to university lecturers, it can go to atmospherics in universities," Duncan Lewis, the intelligence chief, said.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop

Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, gave a speech in October in which she urged Chinese students to respect freedom of speech in Australia. 

"This country prides itself on its values of openness and upholding freedom of speech, and if people want to come to Australia, they are our laws," she said.
"We want to ensure that everyone has the advantage of expressing their views, whether they are at university or whether they are visitors," Bishop said.
"We don't want to see freedom of speech curbed in any way involving foreign students or foreign academics."

The comments from top Australian government officials followed a series of incidents in Australia in which lecturers at the country's universities came under fire on social media or in Chinese-language newspapers for things they said or did in the classroom.

In one case, reported on by The Australian, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle came under criticism for using teaching materials that referred to Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate countries (Hong Kong is a special administrative region within China, while under the "one China" policy Taiwan is regarded by the government in Beijing as a breakaway province that will eventually be reunited with the mainland). 

According to a statement from the university, the lecturer agreed to meet with concerned students after class to discuss the materials, which came from a Transparency International report that used the word “countries” to refer to both countries and territories. 

The discussion was “covertly recorded” and released to the media. 

“You have to consider all the students’ feelings … Chinese students are one-third of this classroom; you make us feel uncomfortable … you have to show your respect,” a student is heard saying on the recording. 

The Chinese consulate-general in Sydney reportedly contacted the university about the matter.
In another case, a lecturer at Australian National University apologized after students complained that he had translated a warning against cheating into Mandarin, making it appear as if the warning was targeting Chinese students specifically, according to Chinese media. 

In yet another case, a lecturer at the University of Sydney publicly apologized for using a map in class that showed Chinese-claimed territory as being part of India, according to The Australian.
“Does this mean that all of Australia’s universities recognize all of China’s territorial claims?” asked Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Stuart University. 

“It’s madness.”
A book by Hamilton about the extent of Chinese government influence on Australian politics and academe is in limbo after its publisher, Allen & Unwin, delayed its publication indefinitely, saying it was concerned about “potential threats to the book and the company from possible [legal] action by Beijing.” 

Hamilton withdrew the book, which is titled Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia Into a Puppet State, and is looking for another publisher.
“I’m very concerned about the message it sends,” Hamilton said. 

“I wonder whether it will scare off other publishers. They’ll see the story and think, ‘OK, let’s be very careful about any books on China or Chinese influence on the West because there might be blowback from Beijing.’ I’m also worried about the message it sends to other authors. Do they look at this case and say, ‘Well, I might have trouble finding a publisher if I’m too critical of the Chinese Communist Party, so I’ll tone down my criticism or stay away from controversial areas, like the Tiananmen Square massacre’?”
Hamilton said the large influx of Chinese students into Australia -- he calculated for his book that proportionally there are five times as many Chinese students in Australia as in the U.S. -- has made Australian university leaders anxious about causing any offense to the Chinese government and potentially cutting off the substantial flow of tuition revenue from the mainland.
“I think it would be frightening for many university administrators to face up to how dependent they’ve become on a foreign source of money that doesn’t share basic Western values -- or the founding values of Western universities, let’s put it that way," Hamilton said.

Looking for Evidence

David Shambaugh

David Shambaugh, the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and the author of a book on increasing Chinese assertiveness on the global stage, emphasized the importance of being highly empirical in discussing these issues. 

"I am aware of no empirical evidence of Chinese interference with normal academic activity inside the United States," he said via email. 

"Unlike Australia -- where there have been multiple recent reports of monitoring of lecturers in the classroom, intimidation and silencing of Chinese students in class, detentions of Australian academics traveling in China, and general monitoring of China-related activities on campuses by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association -- I am aware of no evidence of any such actions or activities in the United States. These activities may occur in the future, but so far they have not. I have informally polled a number of my Chinese studies colleagues in U.S. universities, and they also report no such activities."
What has happened, he said, is, that the Chinese Embassy and consulates liaise with Chinese Students and Scholars Associations on U.S. campuses. 

And “Chinese individuals do occasionally make comments and challenge public speakers at university events -- but this is part of free speech and not out of the ordinary,” he said.
Other things that have happened, he said, include the social media attacks on the students at Duke and Maryland, retaliation against universities that have hosted the Dalai Lama, and the refusal of China to grant visas to certain U.S. scholars.
“The other thing to mention is that [over] the past six to seven years it has become increasingly much more difficult for American (and other foreign) scholars to conduct social science research in China, either individually or in collaboration with Chinese scholars. This has entirely to do with the increasingly strict and repressive political atmosphere in the country, whereby the authorities are on the lookout against alleged ‘foreign hostile forces.’ A dark political cloud has descended over Chinese academe in recent years -- and this has negatively affected opportunities for normal scholarly research and collaboration.”
Sen. Marco Rubio

At the mid-December congressional hearing on Chinese foreign influence activities, Senator Rubio asked the witnesses whether they were willing to share if they have experienced any intimidation as a result of the work they have done on this topic.
“Personally, I have not to date within the United States,” replied Tiffert, of Stanford. 

“In China working on the topics that I work on, I come under significant pressure, and the informants and people that I speak to also do, and I think that goes with the territory and it’s well recognized among people who work on modern China and contemporary issues in China.”
He continued, “I have to say that in the classroom I’ve not experienced any negative activity or any of the personal outrage that we’ve seen at other universities, say, in Australia. In my teaching I’ve been spared that. I’ve found Chinese students to be extremely thoughtful and even open-minded about issues that are passionately felt at home.”
“But there definitely is the danger -- and early-career academics are highly conscious of this -- there’s always the possibility that a minority might express unhappiness or outrage at something that is taught because it’s different than the way they’ve been taught it and that produces unwelcome controversy … Because of the decline of tenure, faculty become risk averse. They don’t want to cause controversy because they’re also concerned that their universities might not adequately support them in the event that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association or even a smaller group of students takes issue with something they said in the classroom. And so there’s a self-censorship, a chilling of speech, that occurs as well.”

A Set of Standards?
What, if anything, can universities and scholarly publishers do about some of these issues?
Scholars have urged publishers to stand together in resisting Chinese requests that they actively censor they content for the China market, and an online petition calling for a peer review boycott of publications that censor their content in China has garnered more than 1,000 signatures.
“This is an issue that is only going to occur over and over with the Chinese authorities, and [that] foreign journal editors and publishers need to anticipate and take a united stand on,” said Shambaugh, of George Washington University.
“My own view is that all publishers need to take a very principled [stance] and adopt the simple position in favor of freedom of speech and publishing over a position of (a) craven financial gain, or (b) the argument that it’s better to have a large number of journals available to Chinese readers than none at all (my view is none at all if China tries to ban a single one).”
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, the Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of the Cambridge-published Journal of Asian Studies, added that scholarly publishers have leverage they can use.
“The reason why I'm particularly distressed about the situation with Springer,” he said, “is that with the desire to compete internationally, the Chinese authorities actually really care about the journal Nature" -- a premier scientific journal published by Springer.
“It would be seen as problematic, I think, to scientists to be operating in a university setting that didn't have access to that sort of premier publication. I think Springer had more to bargain with because of the prestige of that publication. But on the other hand, they're a private company, so they were less beholden to the interest of academics and less concerned, I think, to the damage that could be done to their brand within intellectual circles,” Wasserstrom said.
After the Cambridge Press decision to censor content -- which was quickly reversed -- James A. Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, published an open letter in Medium criticizing the censorship and characterizing Cambridge's concession as “akin to The New York Times or The Economist letting the Chinese Communist Party determine what articles go into their publications  --  something they have never done.”
“It wasn’t decrying Chinese censorship so much as it was decrying non-Chinese institutions going along with it and actively abetting it,” Millward said of the letter.

“I have a history of visa bannings related to work on Xinjiang, along with a bunch of other scholars, and I’ve always been upset at the sort of weak reaction of my own and other universities to that kind of thing and the fear of what will happen, what will China do to us if we actually stand up and say, ‘boo.’” (Millward was one of a group of contributors to a book on China's Xinjiang region who were unable to get visas to China after the book was published. He has since been able to return, he said, but only after jumping through extra hoops.)
"We need some open statements or standards, guidelines, about how these situations should be dealt with, and we don't really have that," Millward said.
"There's this kind of general sense of what academic freedom is and so on and so forth, but universities just want to go forth alone."
In the congressional hearing last month, the final question, which came from Senator Rubio, had to do with just this issue.
“Are any of you aware of efforts, whether it’s in academia or entertainment or anywhere, for universities, for example, to come together and confront this threat to academic freedom, establish some level of standards about what they will and will not do in the universities, a collective effort to affirmatively say, ‘We don’t care if you’re going to deny us trips and access to the marketplace or even to students or to exchanges or the ability to have campuses in the mainland; we are not going to allow you to pressure and undermine academic freedom’?” Rubio asked.
Among the witnesses who replied was Richardson, from Human Rights Watch.
“Just by chance I happened to spend Sunday morning with a group of China-focused U.S. academics, and this issue dominated our conversation,” she said.
“I think it’s fair to say that there’s enormous interest in having some sort of set of principles or code of conduct, but I think there’s also a recognition of how difficult it would be to get institutions to sign on to that for fears about loss of funding or the desires of fund-raisers or administrators versus the interests of faculty. But I think there is momentum to capitalize on.”

Rogue Nation: Beijing Hinders Free Speech Abroad

Through a campaign of fear and intimidation, Beijing is hindering free speech in the United States and in other Western countries.
China Digital Times

At The New York Times, Wang Dan, a former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, looks at the growing reach of Chinese censors on American college campuses as Beijing attempts to export its political control beyond its borders. 

Chinese international students studying in the U.S. were discouraged from attending Wang’s forums on Chinese politics due to fear of reprisal.
[…O]ver the past three months, my efforts on American campuses have been stymied. 

The Chinese Communist Party is extending its surveillance of critics abroad, reaching into Western academic communities and silencing visiting Chinese students. 

Through a campaign of fear and intimidation, Beijing is hindering free speech in the United States and in other Western countries.
The Chinese government, and people sympathetic to it, encourage like-minded Chinese students and scholars in the West to report on Chinese students who participate in politically sensitive activities — like my salons, but also other public forums and protests against Beijing. 

Members of the China Students and Scholars Association, which has chapters at many American universities, maintain ties with the Chinese consulates and keep tabs on “unpatriotic” people and activities on campuses. 

Agents or sympathizers of the Chinese government show up at public events videotaping and snapping pictures of speakers, participants and organizers.
Chinese students who are seen with political dissidents like me or dare to publicly challenge Chinese government policies can be put on a blacklist. 

Their families in China can be threatened or punished.
When these students return to China, members of the public security bureau may “invite” them to “tea,” where they are interrogated and sometimes threatened. 

Their passport may not be renewed. 

One student told me that during one of his home visits to China he was pressured to spy on others in the United States. [Source]
Australia has also recently been confronted with Chinese government influence on its academic and publishing sectors. 

Publisher Allen & Unwin announced plans to postpone the release of Clive Hamilton’s book on Chinese influence in Australia for fear of possible legal action from Beijing. 

The book’s delay has sparked widespread criticism as the country grapples with its economic dependence on China and the consequent growth of Beijing’s interference in its domestic affairs. From Jacqueline Williams at The New York Times:
The decision this month to delay the book, “Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State,” has set off a national uproar, highlighting the tensions between Australia’s growing economic dependence on China and its fears of falling under the political control of the rising Asian superpower.
Critics have drawn parallels to decisions this year by high-profile academic publishers in Europe to withhold articles from readers in China that might anger the Communist Party.
But the case has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in Australia, where the book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about what many here see as the threat from China to freedom of expression. [Source]
Allen & Unwin is not the only major Western publisher that has succumbed to pressure from Beijing to censor material critical of China. 

The book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about Chinese attack on freedom of expression. 

Last month, scientific publishing company Springer Nature caved in to Chinese government request and blocked hundreds of articles on its Chinese website that touched on sensitive political topics. 

In August, Cambridge University Press withheld more than 300 articles from the Chinese website of China Quarterly, before reversing the decision in response to widespread criticism.
In Ghana, artist Bright Tetteh Ackwerh has published a series of cartoons criticizing Chinese influence in the country. 

He has continued to use art to speak out against controversial Chinese government activities in the country despite protests from Beijing. 

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu at Quartz reports:
In the image, Xi Jinping is pouring a sludge of brown water from a Ming dynasty vase into bowls held by Ghana’s president and the minister of natural resource. 

Next to Xi, China’s ambassador to Ghana happily clutches a gold bar.
The Chinese embassy was reportedly infuriated by the cartoon and issued a complaint to the Ghanaian government on media coverage of the arrests of several Chinese miners involved in illegal mining, which is known locally as “galamsey”. 

While Ghanaian miners were also arrested, much of the public’s focus has been on the Chinese. Ghana is the second largest gold producer in Africa after South Africa.
[…A]ckwerh, who cites Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei as one of his inspirations, wasn’t done. 

In August, he published another cartoon titled “Occupation,” where the presidents of Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal are arguing over a plate of jollof rice. 

It’s reference to the so-called jollof wars, a mostly fun debate between West African countries over who makes the best version of the dish.
[…] “I hope my example has given other artists the courage to also contribute to this and things like this. 

There are things we have the power to do that even governments can’t,” he said. [Source]
Meanwhile, more direct efforts to gain support for the Communist Party abroad have been stymied. 

A group of visiting Chinese scholars at the University of California, Davis disbanded a Chinese Communist Party branch that they set up at the university after realizing they may have violated U.S. laws. 

Nectar Gan and Zhuang Pinghui at South China Morning Post report:
Mu Xingsen, secretary of the party branch, confirmed its establishment when contacted by the South China Morning Post on Sunday but said it had already been dissolved.
“It is because we have later learned that this [establishing a party branch] does not comply with the local laws,” Mu said. 

“Of course we should respect the local laws when we’re here.”
The US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires all individuals and groups acting under the direction or control of a foreign government or political party to register with the Department of Justice in advance and regularly report their activities.
[…] The branch, which planned to meet every two weeks, had tasked its members with promoting the organisation to their colleagues or neighbours who were coming to the US, it said, and to absorb party members into the organisation. [Source]

The Chinese Ogre

Australian Furor Over Chinese Influence Follows Book’s Delay

By JACQUELINE WILLIAMS

An uproar followed an Australian publisher’s decision to postpone the release of a book by Clive Hamilton, who says Beijing is actively working to silence China’s critics.

SYDNEY, Australia — The book was already being promoted as an explosive exposé of Chinese influence infiltrating the highest levels of Australian politics and media. 

But then, months before it was set to hit bookstore shelves, its publisher postponed the release, saying it was worried about lawsuits.
The decision this month to delay the book, “Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State,” has set off a national uproar, highlighting the tensions between Australia’s growing economic dependence on China and its fears of falling under the political control of the rising Asian superpower.
Critics have drawn parallels to decisions this year by high-profile academic publishers in Europe to withhold articles from readers in China that might anger the Communist Party.
But the case has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in Australia, where the book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about what many here see as the threat from China to freedom of expression.

“The decision by Allen & Unwin to stall publication of this book almost proves the point that there’s an undue level of Chinese influence in Australia,” said Prof. Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University. Allen & Unwin is one of Australia’s largest publishers.
In the yet-unpublished book, the author, Clive Hamilton, a well-known intellectual and professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia, describes what he calls an orchestrated campaign by Beijing to influence Australia and silence China’s critics.
In one chapter, according to Mr. Hamilton, the book asserts that senior Australian journalists were taken on junkets to China in order to “shift their opinions” so they would present China in a more positive light.

Mr. Hamilton says the company that was set to publish his book expressed concerns about possible lawsuits by Beijing.

In another chapter, he said the book details what he calls links between Australian scientists and researchers at Chinese military universities, which he said had led to a transfer of scientific know-how to the People’s Liberation Army.
The book had been scheduled to be published in April, and Mr. Hamilton had already turned in a manuscript. 

But Allen & Unwin, based in Sydney, suddenly informed him on Nov. 2 that it wanted to postpone publishing because of legal concerns.
Mr. Hamilton responded by demanding the return of the publication rights, effectively canceling the book’s publication by Allen & Unwin. 

Mr. Hamilton says he will seek another publisher.
Mr. Hamilton said the decision had been made for fear of angering Beijing, and shows China’s ability to limit what information Australians can see — exactly the sort of influence that he said he warned about in his book.
“This is the first case, I believe, where a major Western publisher has decided to censor material critical of China in its home country,” Mr. Hamilton said in an interview. 

“Many people are deeply offended by this attack on free speech, and people see a basic value that defines Australia being undermined.”
In a statement, the publisher said it decided to hold off publishing the book, which would have been Mr. Hamilton’s ninth with the company, until “certain matters currently before the courts have been decided.”
It did not specify what those matters were.
“Clive was unwilling to delay publication and requested the return of his rights,” the statement said.
However, Mr. Hamilton has disclosed an email that he said was sent to him on Nov. 8 by Allen & Unwin’s chief executive, Robert Gorman. 

The email explained the decision to delay the book’s release: “April 2018 was too soon to publish the book and allow us to adequately guard against potential threats to the book and the company from possible action by Beijing.”
“Our lawyer pointed to recent legal attacks by Beijing’s agents of influence against mainstream Australian media organizations,” the email said.
The contents of the email have been widely reported by the local news media. 

When asked for comment, Allen & Unwin declined to confirm or deny its authenticity. 

Mr. Gorman has not gone public to deny the email’s authenticity.
Mr. Hamilton said the publisher was probably referring to two defamation cases that are currently in the courts aimed at two Australian media companies: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a major television company, and Fairfax Media, a newspaper publisher.
One of the suits was filed by Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-Australian businessman who has been a major donor in Australian politics. 

Chinese fifth column: Chinese agent Chau Chak Wing.

Chau is seeking damages from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for a TV news report that the suit says damaged his personal and professional reputation.

That report, which was shown on a popular current affairs program, said the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the domestic spy agency, had warned political parties against accepting contributions from two ethnic Chinese, of whom one was Chau, because of ties to the Chinese government.
Chau has long said his campaign contributions are entirely "legal" and "unrelated" to the Chinese government.
The news report prompted a heated debate in Australia over how vulnerable its democratic political system is to foreign influence, especially from China.
The question of Chinese interference is a delicate one for Australia, an American ally that has embraced Beijing as its largest trade partner and welcomed Chinese investors, immigrants and students in large numbers.
“The book shows in great detail the problem of Chinese influence in Australia is much deeper than we thought,” said Mr. Hamilton, a prolific author who in 2009 received the Order of Australia, one of the country’s highest honors, for “service to public debate and policy development.” 

“I think some of the material I’ve uncovered have been a shock even to our intelligence agencies,” he said.
James Leibold, a professor of politics and Asian studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, said the decision to withhold such a book, especially one written by a noted author like Mr. Hamilton, underscored China’s growing ability to pressure publishers and other media companies.
Last month, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest academic publishers, came under criticism for self-censorship after it bowed to Chinese government requests to block hundreds of articles on its Chinese website that touched on delicate topics like Taiwan, Tibet and Chinese politics.
In August, another publisher, Cambridge University Press, admitted to removing some 300 articles from the Chinese website of China Quarterly, an academic journal, that mentioned issues like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Experts say Allen & Unwin, the Australian publisher, has gone a step further by delaying access to a book to readers outside of China.
“Australia is a bellwether,” said Professor Medcalf of National Security College. 

“If dissent can be stifled here, then it can be stifled anywhere.”

China censorship drive splits leading academic publishers

Beijing’s challenge divides western university presses on whether to resist or comply 
By Ben Bland in Hong Kong

The world’s leading academic publishers are deeply divided over how to respond to China’s intensifying censorship drive at home and abroad, with some vowing to resist while others have caved in to pressure.
Western university presses and their commercial rivals have locked swords with hostile censors for hundreds of years but academics say the scale of the challenge they face from China today is unprecedented.
Having silenced many of his domestic critics, Xi Jinping is seeking to export the Chinese Communist party’s heavily circumscribed view of intellectual debate as part of his push to promote Chinese "soft" power. 
Jonathan Sullivan, head of the China Policy Institute at the Nottingham University, said western institutions are too prone to surrender their principles for the promise of market access. 
“China can do what it likes at home but the real issue is for western academia, media organisations and other companies,” he said.
“As is China’s wont, they are dividing and ruling.”
The FT revealed this week how Springer Nature, a German group that publishes leading periodicals including Nature and Scientific American, had blocked access to at least 1,000 academic articles in China that mention subjects deemed sensitive by Beijing, including Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong.

Cambridge University Press also acceded to a similar request from the Chinese authorities to block content.
It reversed course after a backlash, pledging to “uphold the principle of academic freedom on which the university’s work is founded”.
Springer Nature, which claims to be the world’s biggest publisher of academic books, defended its actions, saying it was obliged to comply with “local distribution laws” and was trying to avoid its content being banned outright.
But China scholars accuse the company of abetting Chinese censors. 
James Millward, professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University, condemned Springer Nature for failing to disclose the scale of its censorship, beyond an admission that “less than 1 per cent” of its vast content library was affected. 
The company is “effectively covering up and enabling the nature of the Chinese global censorship effort”, he said. 
The scorn of academics will not, however, deter other publishers from following Springer Nature’s lead.
University of Chicago Press, which publishes the highly regarded China Journal, said it had not yet blocked content in China but, if asked, would cut off access to institutions overseen by the government.
“If faced with a request by any government to remove material felt to be ideologically insupportable, our approach would be to stop making electronic access available to institutions overseen by that government,” said Michael Magoulias, director of journals at the University of Chicago Press.
Sage Publications, another large commercial publisher of academic content, said it had not blocked any journals or articles in China but would not necessarily reject such requests.
“Should we be asked to withdraw any content in any country, we would engage in consultations with learned societies, editors and others shaped by the specific request in order to decide how to respond,” it said in a statement.
Other publishers were defiant.
MIT Press, the publishing arm of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said political censorship was “antithetical to everything universities and university press publishing stand for”. 

Lord Patten, chancellor of Oxford university, said recently that even though China was a “hugely important income stream” for the institution, Oxford University Press had not and would not block content.
But China experts fear that so long as publishers remain divided, Beijing will use its growing economic power and influence to pick them off one by one. 
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine, called on publishers to resist Beijing and test its willingness to block access en masse to the world’s greatest producers of scientific and educational content.
“Some kind of co-ordinated effort is needed,” said Prof Wasserstrom, who is also editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, one of the Cambridge University Press publications the Chinese authorities tried to censor.
“At a certain point, you have to walk away from the Chinese market, no matter how lucrative.”

The Greedy Boche

A German research publisher gives in to China’s censorship
The Washington Post

Visitors browse vendor exhibits near a display from publisher Springer Nature at the Beijing International Book Fair in August. 

SPRINGER NATURE publishes books and prestigious journals, including Nature and Scientific American, and portrays itself as a champion of open access to reports of scientific research. 

Its website declares that “research is a global endeavor and the free flow of information and ideas is at the heart of advancing discovery.” 

Yet in China, the company has compromised this core principle.
The Financial Times disclosed Wednesday that Springer Nature has blocked access in China to at least 1,000 articles from the websites of the Journal of Chinese Political Science and International Politics, two of its journals, in response to Beijing’s censorship demands. 

The newspaper said all the articles in question “contained keywords deemed politically sensitive by the Chinese authorities,” including “Taiwan,” “Tibet” and “cultural revolution.” 

According to the FT, a search for “Tibet” on the Journal of Chinese Political Science website in China returned no results, whereas a search outside China showed 66 articles. 

No articles mentioning the “cultural revolution” could be found on the website in China, the newspaper said, whereas 110 were visible outside.
China’s Great Firewall, a gigantic digital cordon, attempts to keep out information that Chinese authorities find potentially threatening. 

Within China, the Internet is policed by a vast censorship regime backed by restrictive laws on what can be expressed. 

For foreigners wanting to do business in China with products that disseminate information, this poses a vexing problem: To obey Chinese law means to give in to censorship.
Western companies have responded variously. Apple, which sees China as a vital market, acquiesced to removing the New York Times app from its China App Store at the behest of the authorities. 

Google tried to work in China for a few years but eventually left. 

Cambridge University Press at first agreed to remove some 300 sensitive articles in the prestigious China Quarterly journal from its website for a Chinese audience but in August reversed course and refused to give in. 

Springer Nature said the China blockage was compelled by local laws, that the censored articles were “less than one percent” of its content in mainland China, and that the other 99 percent is “safeguarded for all our customers in China.”
It was once thought that Western intellectual and business engagement with China would promote liberalization and was preferable to isolation. 

But rather than show more tolerance, China is showing less. 

Xi Jinping has been on a crusade against free expression, from the press to universities to social media. 

Foreigners must be careful not to abet this repressive campaign. 

When it comes to the principle of free expression, there is no way to say that half or even 99 percent is good enough. 

A journal collection missing pieces of China’s history — the Cultural Revolution, or Tiananmen Square massacre — is absent truth. 

Springer Nature should reverse its censorship and insist that the Chinese people be exposed fully to the “free flow of information and ideas.”

Science With Chinese Characteristics

Science journal retracts 107 'fabricated' research papers by Chinese authors

By Yvette Tan

An international publisher has retracted 107 research papers by Chinese authors, after finding out that the reports had been "compromised."
The articles were published by the Springer Nature publishing company in the journal Tumor Biology, between 2012 and 2016.
The publisher said it found that the papers, which are required to be peer-reviewed, had been submitted to reviewers who had fake email addresses.
"We are retracting these published papers because the peer review process required for publication in our journals had been deliberately compromised by fabricated peer reviewer reports," Springer Nature said in a statement on RetractionWatch.com.
The articles were submitted with the names of real researchers, but fabricated email addresses, Peter Butler, editorial director at Springer Nature for cell biology and biochemistry, was quoted in a report by state-run China Daily.
After investigating and following up with the real reviewers, the latters confirmed to Springer Nature that they did not do the peer review.
The authors involved in the incident all hail from Chinese organisations, with a large majority of the articles involving research in the field of cancer.