Well, which is it, Wilby? Some of the alarm-raising about the threat of Chinese influence over British universities “may be scaremongering” by “Tory MPs and thinktanks and rightwing papers such as the Telegraph—always eager to find reds under the bed”? Or the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on academia is evidently a real and massive threat?
In his column “Academic freedom is precious—so why have UK universities sold out to China?” for The Guardian (which is not The Telegraph), Wilby goes so far as to observe, regarding funding that corrupts academic standards:
In recent years, concerns have occasionally emerged about normal academic processes being compromised to protect university income. In 2014, for example, the University of Bedfordshire was accused of bending its rules to allow students sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government to retake an exam three times….
In the past few years, however, the situation has changed dramatically. A single source of income has become so important that its loss could spell financial disaster for at least a dozen leading UK universities. That source is China. And China is an authoritarian state that controls not only its leading companies but also, in large measure, the behaviour of its citizens….
Unfortunately, China does not play by what are generally understood as market rules. Still less does it accept the practices of disinterested and dispassionate academic inquiry to which British universities still try to cling, if less tenaciously than they once did.
If you want proof of that, read a document approved by the ruling Chinese communist party congress in 2013. It was secret but translations are available. “We must…allow absolutely no opportunity or outlets for incorrect thinking or viewpoints,” the document states. It explicitly rejects western concepts of civil society and universal values.
Wilby also notes that the Universities of Liverpool and Nottingham have campuses in China, that Cambridge has a “Chong Hua professorship in development studies” endowed by charity “controlled by the family of a former Chinese prime minister,” that Huawei and a Chinese state-funded agency have provided funding for Jesus College, Cambridge, and that “At least 10 UK university laboratories depend on significant investment from Chinese defence firms.”
The phrase “at least,” used twice in the quoted text, implies that there may be more than ten university labs getting funds from the Chinese Communist Party (“Chinese defence firms”) and more than a dozen “leading UK universities” that would be in big trouble if the CCP pulled its funding. Et tu, Wilby, with the scaremongering?
No, it’s not scaremongering. Such connections often have to be uncovered. That is to say, Western institutions on either side of the Atlantic that are in hock to the Chinese Communist Party don’t necessarily brag about it. So it is reasonable to suppose that more may be happening along these lines than has yet been reported.
What Wilby reports is plenty enough to warrant concern, as well as further inquiry. So how is it that when others not of his party or paper make the same reports and express the same concern, their reports and warnings “may be scaremongering” by the sort who are “always eager to find reds under the bed”?
Wilby acknowledges what others refuse to see, great. But if there’s scaremongering in various right-tilting quarters about reds under the bed—presumably, consisting of exaggerating the nature and/or apparent extent of Chinese influence on British universities—why be coy about it? Give details.
If he couldn’t, if the jab is arbitrary, Wilby should have stuck to his subject and devoted some other article to sniping at Tory MPs and think tanks and right-wing newspapers who on the subject of CCP influence on British academia see just what he sees. After all, the Tories and right-wingers who get his goat are probably not quite as bad as the Chinese Communist Party.
