Chinese military researchers exploit western universities

Study shows US and UK scientists aiding high-tech progress for People’s Liberation Army 
By Kathrin Hille in Taipei

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping inspecting forces of the People's Liberation Army. A study shows the PLA's scientists have contributed to the development of Beijing's military technology by collaborating with researchers at western universities 

China has sent thousands of scientists affiliated with its armed forces to western universities — especially in countries that share intelligence with the US — and is building a web of research collaboration that could boost Beijing’s military technology development.
 About 2,500 researchers from Chinese military universities spent time at foreign universities — led by the US and UK — over the past decade, and they hid their military affiliations, according to a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank partly funded by Australia’s department of defence.
 The research effort focused on members of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of countries with which the US shares an intelligence relationship: the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Over the past five years, researchers affiliated to the People’s Liberation Army published more joint papers with scientists from the UK and the US than with those of any other country. 
 The findings will fuel the debate raging in some western capitals over how to control the flow of cutting-edge and especially dual-use technology to Beijing — one of the main fronts in their struggle to adapt to a rapidly rising China.
 The PLA’s international research collaboration “focuses on hard sciences, especially emerging and dual-use technologies”, said Alex Joske, author of the report that is being published by ASPI today.
Dual-use technology has civilian and military applications.
 While the US and other western militaries have expanded exchanges with China’s armed forces, the scientists the PLA sends abroad usually have no contact with military officers in their host countries. Instead, the focus is on collecting knowledge to power China’s military technological progress. 
 In 2015, the science publication Shenzhou Xueren wrote about an interdisciplinary project between the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and the University of Cambridge.
The article said the collaboration would produce the next generation of supercomputer experts for China and eventually “greatly enhance our nation’s power in the areas of defence, communications, anti-jamming for imaging and high-precision navigation”.
 Mr Joske found that navigation technology, computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) were the dominant areas of exchanges after reviewing collaborations between Chinese and foreign scientists since 2006 and statistics on Chinese researchers who were sent abroad.
 In one example, several researchers visited UK universities and are continuing joint research on topics such as combustion in scramjet engines, which could power hypersonic aircraft capable of flying at six times the speed of sound.
Wang Zhenguo, deputy chief of the PLA’s scramjet programme and head of the department of postgraduate studies at the NUDT, has co-authored 18 papers with foreign scientists.
 Huang Wei, an NUDT scramjet researcher and aircraft design expert for the PLA’s General Armaments Department, worked on his PhD while visiting the University of Leeds between 2008 and 2010, a researcher at the UK university told the FT.
Luo Wenlei, another NUDT scramjet researcher, wrote his PhD thesis on scramjet engines at Leeds in 2014.
 Both Huang and Luo, as well as Luo’s doctoral thesis supervisors, have published together with  Wang on scramjets.
Derek Ingham, a professor at Leeds and one of Luo’s thesis supervisors, did not respond to a request for comment.
 Qin Ning, a professor at the University of Sheffield involved in some of the exchanges with Chinese scramjet experts, said their joint research was "academic" in nature.
 He added that a number of EU-China collaborative projects strongly encouraged by the university — with the participation of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is administered by the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, China’s weapons industry regulator — had produced “fruitful collaboration”.
Scientists working in PLA universities do not mention this affiliation when applying to western universities or publishing in English, but present themselves as members of civilian-sounding academic institutions instead. 
 One of the persistent pushes for international technology collaboration has come from the PLA’s Rocket Force, which includes China’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes. 
Major General Hu Changhua, one of the leading missile experts at Rocket Force Engineering University, spent three months at Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen in 2008, while Zhou Zhijie, another lecturer at RFEU, was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester in 2009. Both concealed their affiliation with RFEU and named the Xi’an Research Institute of High Technology, a non-existent institution, instead, the ASPI report said.
They continue to publish in English under this fake affiliation, entries in digital science publication databases show. 
 Yang Jianbo and Xu Dongling, two professors at Manchester, published a book with Maj-Gen Hu and Zhou in 2011, and have continued to collaborate with RFEU researchers, according to entries on ResearchGate, the online database of scientific papers. 
Yang and Xu did not respond to requests for comment.
Zhou did not respond to a request for comment.
Maj-Gen Hu could not be reached for comment.
 Among universities in the US, which hosted about 500 visiting scholars from PLA-affiliated schools over the past decade, Georgia Tech scientists published the highest number of joint papers with PLA researchers, according to Mr Joske.
 Liu Ling, a professor at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing who works on big data and cloud computing, has co-published papers with scientists from the NUDT according to the digital library of IEEE, a scientists’ association.
 She told the FT that her work with NUDT visiting scholars “has been on pure (fundamental) research” and unrelated to military applications, adding: “While I am not familiar with all of Georgia Tech collaborations, I know for sure that I have never worked with PLA directly”.
 However, defence experts cast doubt on such a distinction. 
While many staff of PLA-affiliated universities are so-called civilian cadres who focus on scientific work and are not supposed to be used in combat, they are still members of the PLA.
NUDT is supervised by the Central Military Commission, China’s top military body.
 In 2015, the US government added NUDT to its list of organisations that require case-by-case licensing for the transfer of any item to them, including technology, under the Export Administration Regulations.

Chinese Government intrusion into Western universities sparks push for collective action

• Five Eyes partners considering collective response to Chinese interference
• Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warns Australian universities needed to be resilient
• Australia is taking a leading role in the discussions

By Andrew Greene

The fear of Chinese Government intrusion into Western universities is sparking a push by Australia's closest allies for a more coordinated response to Beijing's aggressive tactics.
Having observed attacks on academic freedoms in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — discussions have begun in diplomatic and security circles about whether the Five Eyes intelligence partners should respond collectively to the threat, so there are no "weak links" which can be exploited.
So far nothing formal has been proposed but senior national security figures have told the ABC Australia is taking a "leading role" in publicly highlighting the situation.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Frances Adamson warned Australian universities needed to be resilient to Chinese interference.

The concerns over China's activities were brought starkly into focus last week in a rare public speech by the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Frances Adamson, who warned Australian universities needed to be resilient to Chinese interference.
"The silencing of anyone in our society from students to lecturers to politicians is an affront to our values," Ms Adamson told the Confucius Institute at Adelaide University.
Her contribution has been noted by senior government figures and the diplomatic community as a deliberate and important acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation.
Ms Adamson's intervention is the latest in a series of tougher statements from Australian officials condemning Beijing's activities, which began with the Prime Minister's comments on the South China Sea during the Shangri-La dialogue in June.
"Australia is giving China what it wants in terms of education for its students — so it's time for the Federal Government to insist the Chinese comply with Australia's values and interests," a senior foreign diplomatic figure told the ABC.
The Canberra based diplomat concedes any move by Australia to clamp down on Chinese interference would need to be matched by other Five Eyes intelligence partners who compete heavily to attract the same international students to their universities.
One of the most senior national security figures in Australia says there is now a "like mindedness and shared understanding" among Five Eyes allies of how China's pervasive and subversive influence has penetrated into each nation.
Earlier this year a Four Corners investigation revealed the extent of influence by the Chinese Communist Party on international students studying in Australia.
Last year security concerns were raised over plans to install Chinese-owned technology on a powerful supercomputer used by government agencies and Australian universities.

International experience
United States
According to the New York Times over 300,000 Chinese nationals now study at US colleges, more than five times the number recorded a decade ago.
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations have drawn criticism for their on-campus activities in trying to silence groups whose views do not align with Beijing's.

United Kingdom
In August Cambridge University Press announced it would reinstate online journal articles critical of Beijing which it had blocked in China at the request of the Communist government.
The incident has highlighted the pressure exerted on British academic institutions by the Chinese Government.

New Zealand
The smallest of the Five Eyes intelligence partners is seen by analysts as a "soft" target for Beijing's growing "soft power" diplomacy.
Diplomatic figures believe China's interference on New Zealand campuses is similar to the tactics employed in Australia.

Western Academic Prostitution

China Bullies Western Universities Because They Let It
BY CHRISTOPHER BALDING 

Cambridge University Press’s announcement that it had removed 300 articles of the China Quarterly from its Chinese website at the request of regulators reignited the debate on academic freedom in China. 

Following massive pushback, the publisher announced that it would not censor the requested articles and even went so far as to make them available for free. 

But the incident should be a warning to Western universities, academics, and publishing houses that they must reconsider how to engage with a China intent on censoring ideas both at home and abroad.
It’s not the China Quarterly articles themselves — a ragtag bunch going back to the 1960s, which seem to have been arbitrarily chosen using keywords like “Tiananmen” and “Xinjiang” — that mattered for the hundreds of scholars who immediately protested the decision. 

It was the fact that a respected publication was bending the knee to censorship and what this represented about the broader complicity of Western organizations, universities, and academics in helping China export its academic censorship around the world.
Over the past decade, the number of Chinese students studying abroad has increased rapidly. 

In 2000, there were fewer than 50,000 students, but by 2015 more than 500,000 were heading overseas every year. 

Many Chinese students welcome the escape from an education system that values rote memorization over critical thinking and requires multiple classes, usually slept through, on communist ideology.
Western universities rushed to meet demand. 

They sent recruiters and negotiated agreements with third parties to sell Chinese students on the idea of studying abroad. 

Elite universities hurried to open campuses or sign partnership agreements with Chinese universities. Twelve universities — including Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and Johns Hopkins — have established degree-granting partnerships with Chinese universities to meet demand for their educational services.
Some critics within academia raised concerns about cooperating with China’s notoriously illiberal universities, where censorship and self-censorship is the norm. 

This has deepened since Xi Jinping took office in 2012; Chinese professors avoid giving interviews to any media even on uncontroversial topics, with one well-known Chinese professor noting, “In the last 40 years, freedom of speech for intellectuals has never been constricted as severely as it is now.” 

The crackdown on academic speech has strengthened sharply in the last few years, with Western textbooks being removed from classrooms and academics silenced. 

The central government recently has also begun to restrain online media and entertainment in order to demonstrate ideological loyalty in the lead-up to the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, planned for October.
Little effort is made to hide the restrictions at Chinese universities, which openly publish censorship guidelines for faculty that forbid criticizing the Chinese constitution, party leaders, and discussing religion. 

Other informal prohibitions include discussion of specific topics such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square. 

According to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on U.S. universities in China, Chinese students respond with self-censorship, avoiding any taboo topics for fear classmates may “report on whatever the students say.”
Meanwhile, professors in Chinese universities expect to have party monitors report on how closely their lectures conform to approved ideology, and ambitious faculty who want to move into leadership roles at any university must be party members. 

Recent audits carried out by the all-powerful Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which leads the ongoing anti-corruption campaign that has also functioned as an ideological purge, critiqued elite Chinese universities like Peking and Tsinghua, known for their relative openness to Western ideas, for weak “ideological and political work.”
Western universities’ traditional response to criticisms on China’s restrictions on free inquiry was to claim that they could help liberalize their Chinese counterparts by establishing contact with them. 

What has happened instead is that they’ve ended up importing Chinese academic censorship into their own institutions. 

Cambridge University Press censoring on behalf of Beijing is not the first time elite British universities have opted for the bottom line over principle in accepting Chinese censorship contributions.
A recent study by the U.S. National Association of Scholars found widespread evidence that the Confucius Institutes, Beijing-funded centers for “Chinese culture and language” in foreign campuses, limit what can be taught and discussed not just in their courses but throughout universities. Confucius teachers are paid by the Chinese Ministry of Education and are required to adhere to Chinese laws on speech even when teaching overseas. 

As the report noted, “Some reported an outright ban on discussing subjects that are censored in China.… [U]niversities have made improper concessions that jeopardize academic freedom and institutional autonomy.” 

Western universities are not just accepting censorship; they are signing up for it.
Western universities that have established partnerships with Chinese universities for degree-granting programs have faced similar problems. 

While publicly stating their support for academic freedom, Western universities have accepted the reality that they must impose a censorship regime to exist in China. 

The GAO report noted that one Western institution’s faculty handbook includes “language that protects academic freedom but also encourages self-censorship to prevent externally imposed discipline.”
Even foreign students now have to take propaganda classes mandated by the government.
China even has its embassies and consulates direct Chinese student groups, coordinate protests, and gather information abroad on reluctant participants. 

The University of California San Diego considered canceling a speaking engagement with the Dalai Lama after pressure by Chinese student groups that work with the Chinese government, and some universities, like North Carolina State, have even rescinded their invitations to the Tibetan leader. Many students and scholars have encountered Beijing-directed pressure and censorship at events around the world.
The latest fiasco from Cambridge University Press is a business decision. 

Cambridge University Press claimed that it risked being blocked in all of China unless it complied with the censors’ demands. 

Given China’s decision to block the articles after they were restored, the publisher’s fears were well-founded. 

But either way Cambridge University Press should have made a stand, instead of folding at the first chance. 

Worryingly, Cambridge University Press is not alone in its dereliction of duty. 

Many other well-known institutions and professors regularly acquiesce to Chinese authorities or their counterparts on a range of issues bearing on academic freedom. 

Cambridge University Press’s sudden discovery of its spine is admirable, but the publisher’s initial unwillingness to refuse the request underscores how reluctant institutions are to risk their Chinese cash cows.
Aiming for a diverse student body or announcing opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration ban is a low-cost form of opposition that helps a university establish liberal credentials at home. 

No foreign university, however, has demonstrated willingness to show the same level of opposition to demands made by the Chinese government that it would deem unacceptable at home. 

The opportunities are too big, and their principles turn out to be surprisingly pliable.
Western universities, academics, and publishing houses face a stark choice. 

If they continue to obey Beijing, they make themselves complicit in promoting censorship and human rights violations. 

If they walk away, they turn their backs on large revenue streams and potential donors.
Yet good intermediate steps can be taken in dealing with Communist Party demands to impose censorship on Chinese research abroad. 

First, university libraries should consider unsubscribing from publishing houses or journals that promote censorship by their complicity. 

Markets that do not promote censorship are ultimately much more important to Cambridge University Press than China. 

Second, professors should refuse to submit, review, or cite journals that promote censorship by complicity.
Universities need to change the entire way they think about China.
Universities selling their brand to China are much too willing to sell their principles as part of the package. 

The idea that U.S. universities in China operate with any real academic freedom is delusional; if they are to engage, they must accept that they are part of the party machinery.
Domestically, Western universities with strong privacy and freedom of speech protections should not be afraid to stand up for those values. 

Whether it is inviting a scholar to speak on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution or the Dalai Lama, universities should not cave to insecure demands by Beijing on what is and is not acceptable discussion about China. 

Chinese students who harass teachers or fellow students over nationalistic issues, as just happened at the University of Sydney in Australia, should be censured by university authorities, not pandered to.
Additionally, Western democracies should take action against Beijing-directed intelligence efforts on university campuses and the direct running of student groups from Chinese embassies. 

If universities value freedom of thought and assembly, they will need to promote these ideals by making students feel secure that they are not being monitored and reported on in China. 

Western governments and universities, which often protest U.S. military recruitment efforts, seem much more sanguine about Beijing intelligence efforts and direction.
Finally, punitive measures by Western universities and academics need to be considered. 

Children of Chinese senior party officials who, on paper, make less than $20,000 a year are attending elite U.S. universities and enjoying the benefits while their parents rail against the dangers. 

(The usual course is to claim that a “foundation” or “sponsor” has sent them, as happened with Bo Guagua, the son of the now-fallen leader Bo Xilai. Bo Guagua was also suspended from Oxford University for his poor performance, only to find himself unusually and fortunately restored the next year, at a time when his father still seemed like a useful contact for the university.) 

These schools would be justified to at least consider a moratorium on the acceptance of the children of senior Chinese officials. 

Furthermore, academics who go to China on consulting contracts or as honored persons need to consider limiting the public kudos they give to a system that goes against the values they claim to hold dear.
The naive hope that simple interaction would yield a liberal turn in China has done nothing to stop one of the biggest crackdowns on independent voices in Chinese academia since the Cultural Revolution. 

Western universities face an actual test of their commitment to free speech, rather than the cheap rhetoric they’re keen to offer at home.

The Goebbelsian Confucius

How China Is Invading Western Universities With Communist Propaganda
By Benedict Rogers 

Fifteen years ago, I travelled to Qufu, the birthplace of China’s most famous philosopher, Confucius, who lived from 551-479 BC. 

I had lived in and travelled around China, including Hong Kong, for much of the previous decade and wanted to learn more about the source of so much of Chinese culture’s ancient wisdom before returning to Britain.
I had been given a copy of The Analects of Confucius, a collection of his thoughts, by a Chinese friend. 

I smiled when I read that “while his parents are alive, the son should not go abroad to a great distance. If he does go on a long journey, he must tell his parents the definite place he is going to.” 

I was 18 when I first went to China, to spend six months teaching English in Qingdao before going to university. 

Confucius would be relieved to know that at least my parents knew.
“Neglect of moral culture, disregard for learning, reluctance to stand forward before a just cause, and failure in correcting what is wrong -- these are the things which are troubling me,” Confucius said. And today, they are troubling me too. 

In particular, in China and among those in the West who kowtow to China’s rulers.
China today is a bully, severely violating the human rights of its own people but also increasingly spreading its corrupt net around the world to silence dissent and extend its influence. 

It has done this through business, internet trolling, diplomacy and, at its most extreme, by kidnapping critics from other countries. 

But one of the most sophisticated and dangerous tools it has is the misuse of Confucius’ name.
According to an official Chinese government website, there are now 500 “Confucius Institutes” around the world - with the aim of 1,000 by 2020. 

In 2015, their budget was $310 million, and from 2006-2015 China spent $1.85 billion on Confucius Institutes. 

On the surface, these institutes exist to teach Chinese language and promote Chinese culture -- a Chinese equivalent of the British Council, American Centres or the Alliance Francaise. 

Unlike their western counterparts, however, Confucius Institutes are directly funded and controlled by the Chinese government, but embedded within universities around the world, giving China influence over the curriculum. 

Moreover, while the western equivalents, to varying degrees, exist to promote democratic values, concepts of an open society, critical thinking, the rule of law and to strengthen the capacity of civil society, Confucius Institutes are the antithesis, working to spread the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda and silence any dissenting voices.

This has now been exposed in a new documentary film, In the Name of Confucius, written and directed by Chinese-born Canadian film maker Doris Liu. 

The 52-minute film features a Chinese teacher called Sonia Zhao, who left China to take up a post with a Confucius Institute in Canada. 

“I thought the Confucius Institute was a cultural organisation,” she says. 

She quickly discovered, however, that as an employee, even in a western democratic country, she felt nervous “all the time”, worrying about whether what she might say would cause trouble. 

“I had to think twice before I said anything.”
At the heart of Sonia Zhao’s story was the fact that she is a practitioner of Falun Gong, a Buddha-school spiritual belief that emphasises truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. 

Since 1999 Falun Gong has been very severely persecuted by the Chinese regime, because it became so popular that it was practised by an estimated 70 million people -- and for a regime nervous about any large gathering of people, this felt threatening. 

Even though Falun Gong is a peaceful spiritual movement, it was met with brutal repression, resulting in hundreds of thousands of practitioners jailed and many dying as a result of torture or as victims of China’s barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting.
“I had been hiding my belief for many years,” says Zhao on camera. 

“But I didn’t expect that going abroad, a place I thought would be free, that I’d still be restricted”. 

In a reconstruction of the moment she went through her employment contract, Zhao -- played by Chinese-born Canadian actress and prominent campaigner for human rights, Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin - discovers that the Confucius Institute prohibits teachers from being Falun Gong practitioners -- or from associating with them. 

Topics such as Tibet and Taiwan must also be avoided. 

“The Confucius Institutes have exported China’s persecution against Falun Gong to foreign countries in a hidden way,” argues Zhao.
The documentary then exposes the blatant Communist propaganda that exists in Confucius Institute literature used in schools and universities in western democracies. 

Texts promoting the teachings of Chairman Mao are being taught to children in Toronto, for example. As one parent put it, “something like this should not exist in a democratic country, pretty plain and simple”.
Yet the list continues. 

An American singer studying at the University of Michigan happily performs a Chinese song at a Confucius Institute function, with these words: “They sing about their new life, they sing about the great party. Ah, Chairman Mao! Ah, the Party! You nurture the people on this land”.
Officials in Beijing don’t make much attempt to hide the real purpose of Confucius Institutes. 

Largely independent from their host universities, these institutes are controlled from Beijing, with a constitution and bylaws drawn up by the Chinese regime with little transparency. 

Xu Lin, the Director-General of the Confucius Institute headquarters, known as ‘Hanban’, says on camera that their work is “an important part of our soft power. We want to expand China’s influence”. 

In a crude exertion of power, she adds: “The foreign universities work for us.”
The most shocking part of Doris Liu’s film is the naivity, and outright, unashamed complicity, of some western academics. 

In a shocking interview, Patricia Gartland, chair of the Coquitlam Confucius Institute, and Melissa Hyndes, chair of the local school district, extol the success of their work and are dismissive of any risks. 

“We never had any concerns of any kind,” Gartland tells Liu. 

Any controversy, she adds, is simply the result of “xenophobia”.
When Liu asks whether western academic organisations should accept funds from governments that disrespect human rights, Gartland simply disagrees with the question’s premise. 

And when a question about religious persecution in China is raised, the two Canadian education officials terminate the interview. 

The then chair of the Toronto District School Board Chris Bolton is similarly dismissive of concerns about human rights -- and when the questioning becomes a bit too uncomfortable, he asks the film maker to leave. 

If I had closed my eyes and tuned out the accents, I would of thought these three were Chinese government representatives.
The Toronto District School Board, however, was not entirely filled with pro-Beijing stooges. Confronted with the evidence, the board ultimately voted to terminate the district’s relationship with the Confucius Institute. 

Others, such as McMaster University, have done the same. 

In the United States, the American Association of University Professors have called for a re-think, citing “unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China“, and two universities, Chicago and Pennsylvania State, cut ties with Confucius Institutes -- as have at least three in Europe.
In the Name of Confucius focuses on Canada, but the problem is worldwide. 

In Britain, there are at least 29 Confucius Institutes, attached to major universities such as Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Cardiff and University College London. 

There are also 127 Confucius ‘classrooms’ in schools around the United Kingdom -- teaching from texts that promote the Chinese Communist Party.
And yet in an op-ed for the Times Higher Education supplement in 2015, the President of Imperial College, Alice Gast, expressed her wish for the UK’s universities to be “China’s best partners in the West”. 

The UK ranks first among European countries in welcoming this Chinese influence -- a point celebrated in China’s state media as marking a “Confucius revolution”.
Except it is not a ‘Confucius’ revolution, but the exporting of the values of a brutal, corrupt, cruel dictatorship. 

“An oppressive government,” said Confucius, “is to be feared more than a tiger”. 

We need to wake up and stop this collusion, before it is too late. 

In the Name of Confucius is a film everyone involved in China policy and education policy should watch. 

Confucius must be turning in his grave.