Repressive Experiences in China Studies

First-of-its-kind survey of China scholars seeks to quantify just how frequently they encounter repressive actions by the Chinese state intended to stop or circumscribe their research. A majority say self-censorship is a problem.

By Elizabeth Redden

Anecdotes abound of scholars who write on controversial subjects being denied visas to enter China, having difficulty accessing archives on the mainland or being “taken for tea” by Chinese police or security officials during the course of their fieldwork. 

But just how common are these kinds of experiences?
A survey of more than 500 China scholars discussed Saturday at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Boston finds that such “repressive research experiences are a rare but real phenomenon” in the China studies field and “collectively present a barrier to the conduct of research in China.” 

Researchers found that about 9 percent of China scholars report having been “taken for tea” by Chinese government authorities within the past 10 years, to be interviewed or warned about their research; 26 percent of scholars who conduct archival research report being denied access; and 5 percent report difficulties obtaining a visa.
A majority of researchers believe their research is either somewhat sensitive (53 percent) or very sensitive (14 percent). 

Sixty-eight percent of scholars say that self-censorship is a problem for the China studies field.
“Our own conclusion is that the risks of research conduct in China are uncertain, highly individualized, and often not easily discernible from public information. The decision about whether or not to pursue a particular potentially sensitive research project is a therefore highly personal one. Scholars encounter real consequences for conducting certain research in China, and these risks are higher for both Chinese researchers, and the Chinese colleagues and interlocutors who interact with foreign scholars,” Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri, and Rory Truex, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, write in a paper outlining the results of their survey.

Greitens and Truex write that their survey provides “the first systematic data on the frequency with which China scholars encounter repressive actions by the Chinese government.” 

The researchers sent the survey to 1,967 social scientists they identified having expertise in China and received 562 complete responses, for a 28.6 percent response rate. 

Respondents include anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists and sociologists. 

The researchers limited the sample to scholars working in Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, New Zealand and North America.
The survey focuses specifically on researchers' experiences, but it comes at a time of increasing concern about Chinese influence on Western academe more broadly. 

Reports last fall that academic publishers were censoring journal content in China raised widespread alarm, and Chinese-government funded Confucius Institutes, centers of Chinese language and culture education that are located on U.S. college campuses, are coming under increasing scrutiny.
Greitens and Truex divided the repressive research experiences they documented into three main categories:
Restrictions on access to China. Greitens and Truex found that the Chinese government "does restrict visa access for work that it considers potentially problematic." While there are some high-profile cases of scholars who report being "blacklisted" from China long term, the researchers found that "the most common form of restriction is temporary visa ‘difficulty’ rather than outright denial or long-term blacklisting." Greitens and Truex note that it is not always clear that the reason for difficulties is related to the scholar’s research, but the scholars often believed or received informal indication this was the case.
Restrictions on access to research materials and subject. Restrictions on access to archival research materials are fairly common: 26 percent of all scholars who do archival research report facing restrictions, as do 41 percent of responding historians, whose research depends most heavily on access to archives. Denials of access to particular materials often seemed to be based on the topic of those materials, though, as Greitens and Truex write, “archivists rarely cited sensitivity as the reason for denial, instead citing digitization or other internal processes.”

The survey findings also suggest that access to archival materials has changed over time, and that previously accessible materials are no longer available to foreign researchers.
Of those researchers who use interviews or participant observation in their research, about 17 percent report that they’d had interview subjects “withdraw in a suspicious or unexplained matter, an experience that is most prevalent in political science and anthropology.”
Surveillance and intimidation. Among the 9 percent of respondents who said they’d been interviewed by Chinese authorities (“taken for tea”) within the last 10 years, Greitens and Truex write that there were certain common patterns in their experiences. “A scholar attracts attention in the course of research -- attending a protest, requesting archival access, giving a talk, etc. Agents of the local government in turn respond, gather information on the researcher, and often seek an end to, or place boundaries around, the research activity,” they write.
In addition, about 2 percent of respondents reported having their computer or other materials confiscated during field research. And 2.5 percent -- 14 individual scholars -- reported experiencing temporary detention by police or physical intimidation. Greitens and Truex found that “these higher-impact events occurred disproportionately in places with a heightened security presence, such as Tibet and East Turkestan.”

Impact on a Range of Research Subjects
Over all, Greitens and Truex found that while it does appear that “research topic area plays a role in repressive experiences,” it is “far from deterministic.” 

For example, they found that scholars who studied topics considered sensitive like ethnicity, religion and human rights were disproportionately likely to encounter difficulties getting visas. 

But researchers who studied other topics including the environment, China’s foreign relations and gender had problems, too.
In many cases Greitens and Truex note that “research is not blocked, but allowed to proceed while being monitored along the way.” 

One theme of their findings was what scholars describe in open-ended responses as “fuzzy” or unclear boundaries: “You never know where the border is; you only know when you have crossed it,” one respondent said.

Warnings frequently come through informal channels. 

Twelve percent of all scholars, and 17 percent of those who said they do intensive field research, say that a Chinese colleague or friend had been contacted about their work. 

“We note that this is consistent with a broader pattern... where political sensitivity is communicated through indirect channels and language than directly through formal procedures, where relationships rather than documents and institutions are leveraged for that communication,” Greitens and Truex write.
China scholars reported adjusting their research strategies in various ways to avoid drawing undesired attention from Chinese state authorities. 

Nearly half (48.9 percent) said they have used different language to describe a project while in China. Nearly a quarter (23.7 percent) shifted a project’s focus away from the most sensitive aspects, while 15.5 percent reported having abandoned a project entirely. 

Just 1.6 percent reported publishing anonymously.
Though the majority (68 percent) of respondents agree that self-censorship among China scholars is a problem in the field, Greitens and Truex write that their "survey data also challenges the definition of self-censorship and the notion that it occurs primarily because of self-interested careerism. Respondents stressed discretion as a necessary ethical principle for social science research in China, given the potential for a scholar’s Chinese interlocutors to disproportionately bear the negative consequences of sensitive research. They also drew a distinction between censoring the conclusions of academic work and choosing to adopt more publicly critical stances on policy issues, especially those that fell outside their specific research area."
Asked to offer advice on how to manage sensitive research in China, respondents emphasized the importance of listening to Chinese colleagues and protecting research subjects and interlocutors above all else.

American students lose interest in China studies

Concerns about pollution, work opportunities take toll on enrollment
By PAUL MOONEY

Some observers say that study abroad programs in China need to address student demand for internships and work opportunities, not just focus on language and culture.

BERKELEY, U.S. -- Early in his presidency, Barack Obama set a goal to vastly increase the number of Americans studying Chinese and taking part in academic programs in China.
Eight years later, Obama is gone and so is much of the academic momentum. 

Though China looms ever larger in U.S. economic and security concerns, American universities are experiencing a decline in the enrollment in Chinese language courses and study abroad programs. The growing sense that work opportunities in China are harder to come by is compounding worries about pollution and other living conditions.
Stanford University announced in January it would indefinitely suspend its undergraduate program in Beijing as of May. 

The school's student newspaper reported that enrollment had fallen by around two-thirds from 2004 to just eight last year. 

The university had earlier merged its Chinese and Japanese language degree programs into a single East Asian studies course.
The number of U.S. students in language courses in China began to rise ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, when dozens of programs were started to meet increasing demand. 

Obama announced the 100,000 Strong Initiative in late 2009 to send over that number of students within five years.
Although that target was indeed met, enrollment has been dwindling since hitting an annual high of 14,887 in the 2011-2012 academic year. 

Within three years, the figure had dipped to 12,803, according to the Institute for International Education.
Said Victor Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania: "There has been a marked decline in the number of students studying Chinese at UPenn and generally across the country, and also in the number of foreign students studying Chinese in China and elsewhere. The [100,000 Strong] project has had no positive, significant impact on increasing the number of Americans going to China to study Chinese.
"It was announced to great fanfare, but was not followed up by practical programs for encouraging and facilitating students to go to China," he said.
Enrollment in Chinese language programs at the University of Pennsylvania peaked at 1,229 in 2009-2010; the current figure is 725.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics, for which Beijing National Stadium, better known as the Bird's Nest, was built, spurred interest among American students in learning Chinese. 

It's a similar situation at Williams College in Massachusetts where enrollment in Chinese language classes dropped from 1.6% of all students in 2012 to 1% in 2016. 

Sam Crane, professor of political science, said that while his Chinese politics class once attracted 30-35 students, only 18 enrolled in the last semester. 

In recent years, China-funded fellowships for graduate studies have found no takers, he said.
Not all programs have seen a decline however. 

According to the New York-based Modern Language Association, Chinese language courses at U.S. universities recorded overall enrollment growth of 2% between 2009 and 2013. 

But this compared with the 50.4% growth seen in 2002-2006.

Souring views
A key factor in the disappearing momentum is a souring in American views of China in recent years. Nearly two-thirds of respondents in a January poll by Pew Research Center said they saw China as either an adversary or a serious problem. 

The researchers said negative views of China rose 21 percentage points between 2006 and 2016 among young Americans.
"There's a feeling of uneasiness about the deteriorating political situation in China and in East Asia and Southeast Asia generally," said Prof. Mair. 

"It's also students not wanting to spend time in the polluted environment of China, with their parents also having a big say in this."
The political standoff has spilled over directly into Chinese studies. 

With U.S. government funding for foreign language study declining, many American universities and lower level schools have joined a Chinese government program which supplies teachers and teaching materials, but concerns about political undercurrents have seen a number of universities drop out recently.
Other observers say that many China study programs haven't evolved with the changing needs of students, leaving too much focus on language and culture. 

Students from science, technology, engineering and math departments have been discouraged by parents and professors from studying in China out of concern that such courses would be difficult to find in English.
"I originally was planning to study abroad in China, but with an electrical engineering major, there were simply too many requirements," said a first-year graduate student at the University of California, San Diego.
With the cost of U.S. higher education rising dramatically, many students, worried about mounting educational debt, are rethinking overseas studies.
"We need to figure out how to restructure our programs to become more relevant and worthwhile for [students'] new realities," said David Moser, academic director of the CET Beijing Chinese Studies & Internship program at Beijing Capital Normal University. 

"Students now are strapped for cash, apprehensive about their futures, and very pragmatic and conservative. They want classes and experience that will translate into jobs and CV-building."
This has involved greater demand for internships and work opportunities. 

"Nearly every program in China [is] now focusing on providing internships," Moser said. 

At the same time, however, full-time job opportunities for foreigners are becoming scarcer in China with the economy slowing. 

In addition, some jobs that foreigners used to fill are now being taken by Chinese students returning from their own overseas studies.
"I have gotten the sense that [American students] perceive that economic opportunities in China for recent graduates are not as dynamic as was the case in 2009," said Williams' Crane. 

"Competition from Chinese students, many of whom now have attended high school as well as college in the U.S., and who are comfortably bi-cultural, has become more acute in the past few years."