Internationalization: Chinese Communist Party & Western Education (Part 1)

This is the first post in a three-part series that explores why nations such as the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, Norway, Finland, France, Demark, Germany, and the like – what will hereafter be referred to as the “West” – should be very cautious about forming higher education (HE) relationships with China. At the same time, it explains how, compared to the higher education institution (HEI) model of universities and colleges, PSA can better serve internationalization goals while protecting the Western ethos of HE. Initial discussion emphasizes socio-political considerations and then turns to economic, while both sections engage academics.

Parts two and three of this series respond to social anthropologist Fei Xiaotong’s (费孝通) cultural self-awareness strategy for (inter)national harmonization and his claim that (Communist) China offers a better model for internationalization than does the West.

[NOTES: (1) Throughout this three-part series a sidebar system is used to indicate significant observations and issues not explored in the post. There are many that deserve fuller treatment, but cannot be pursued in this format. Though they are meant to enrich, the sidebars can be ignored without detriment to the reasoning presented in the series. (2) A loose endnote system is used to provide citations.]

 

Internationalization: Socio-politics and Academics

When people cross cultural thresholds, lessons are learned. Having lived, owned a business and taught in China for seven years, my understanding of the culture has improved. Before this extended residence, much of my thinking about the nation and the people was romanticised or demonised by casual media consumption. As a philosopher, I recognized that this thinking was riddled with assumption and misunderstanding that I did not earnestly seek to discover and correct. Of course, as an educator such indifference was not an option in-country.

Raising cultural awareness is one of the official aims of international HE. This encompasses awareness from the superficial to the substantial, apportioned based on the effort one puts into discovery and correction. While improved understanding of others beyond our immediate environment requires effort, a necessary precondition is opportunity.

Where personal experience is concerned, short vacations to foreign lands or online interactions raise awareness, but it is immersive extended stay that provides opportunity for substantial awareness of another culture, as it provides the opportunity for substantial cultural exchange. International students fall into this latter category. [1-2] Consequently, to substantially increase cultural awareness and exchange through education it is important to increase the opportunity for study abroad.

That said, the motives and goals for internationalization of HE are more complex than this suggests. Zolfaghari et. al. (2009) categorize into four groups the reasons for internationalization:

…political, economic, academic, and social-cultural (Knight & de Wit, 1995). The political reason is often considered more important at the national than at the institutional level. The economic reason has increasing importance and relevance in developed countries around the world. An effective way to improve and maintain a competitive edge is to develop a highly skilled and knowledgeable work force and to invest in applied research. The academic reason is linked directly with enhancing the teaching and learning process and achieving excellence in research and scholarly activities. The social-cultural reason for internationalization is changing in light of the potential impact of globalization. Higher education has traditionally been a part of cultural agreements and exchanges. Today’s globalized economy, information and communication system suggest another aspect of the social-cultural reason (Jane Knight, 1999, pp. 201-238). Knight (1999) has also added that these four types of reasons are not entirely distinct or exclusive. An individual’s, an institution’s, or a country’s motivation is a complex and multileveled set of reasons evolving over time and in response to changing needs and priorities. In another literature, Knight (1999, pp. 9-10) has listed other reasons for internationalization, which are human resources development, strategic alliances, commercial trade, nation building and socio/cultural development, cultural identity, citizenship development, national security, technical assistance, peace and mutual understanding, and economic growth and competitiveness.[3](pg.3)

Though this analysis is accepted in its substance, with respect to China important adjustments beyond the qualifiers offered in the text deserve mention. First, the characterization of political and economic reasons is Western-oriented. As adjustment, China is a developing (not developed) eastern country, where the expansion of an internationalized HEI model of HE “with Chinese characteristics” has been a political and economic priority for decades.

Second, there is no distinction in the importance the nation and the institution places on the aims of internationalization.[4] China is a “fragmented authoritarian” society and has been for thousands of years.[5-7] As such, including their employees and students, HEIs are under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which freely uses them as tools to achieve Party-preserving social, political and economic nation-building ends. To help nuance this, consider that presidents of Chinese universities are appointed by the government.[8] Or that after years of grade school political indoctrination,[9] all students in postsecondary education are still required to take courses in Marxism, or rather Marxism with Chinese characteristics, which is misleading shorthand for CCP characteristics, which in this iteration means Xi Jinping characteristics – which as far as I can tell is very far removed from Marx, especially in practice.[10-12] Or that when university students somehow managed to organize across the country and launch the peaceful (though illegal) white-paper protests against zero-COVID policies in late 2022, the CCP reversed its standing order of forced monthslong campus lockdowns and ordered students to return to their homes, in an attempt to put a halt to the anti-policy protests – which are seen by the CCP as anti-government protests that threaten (however nominally) its authority.[13-15]

Third, globalization is no longer a given. There are strong indications – even prior to the pandemic – that the world is re-setting to greater regionalization. But no matter how things settle, the reasons for internationalization of HE reach beyond the discovery and correction of misunderstandings about other peoples and nations. In fact, internationalization is used to do exactly the opposite through soft power politics that frustrate pursuit of the truth (about others).

China offers material for this lesson in its global spread of Confucius Institutes[16-37] and so-called Chinese Police Stations.[38-51] With a primary presence on university campuses, Confucius Institutes are ostensibly there to provide Chinese language (Mandarin) and cultural learning, which prima facia sits well with the social and economic goals of internationalization. However, there is plenty of evidence that these institutes are also being used by the CCP to exercise soft power politics that violate principles of academic freedom and human rights, resulting in HEIs that: close art exhibitions covering human rights violations in China; remove Taiwan flags or pictures of the Dali Lama; cancel speeches from anti-CCP speakers; edit research papers and books for material the CCP considers sensitive; sign non-disclosure agreements and contracts with secret clauses or clauses that contain vague terms that reference respecting and protecting China’s (or rather the CCP’s) reputation and laws; along with countless other self-censoring actions inspired by what Perry Link called the “anaconda in the chandelier” – a conspicuous serpent all too familiar to Chinese citizens and academics.[52]

The CCP impact on academia is consistent with that felt by the wider community from its so-called, Chinese Police Stations. With dozens located in many Western countries, Safeguard Defenders has documented how these Police Stations threaten Chinese nationals and immigrants who are outspoken CCP critics, even kidnapping them for repatriation and prosecution or threatening family members that remain in China; while Station personnel organize public protests against foreign policies antagonist to the Communist Party agenda – a telling irony given that citizens (never mind international students, tourists and immigrants) in China do not enjoy the same freedom to express themselves in protest against the CCP.[53-76]

With no less soft political power, China is the number one supplier of international students world-wide and under its authoritarian rule the CCP can without internal political, legal or social repercussions deny citizens mobility to study abroad. Consider that in contrast to Western nations such as Canada or the Unites States,[77] China uses exit border police that operate comparably to entry border police, with absolute authority to deny citizens departure from the country on whatever grounds the CCP wishes. During the pandemic the government denied citizens travel, suspended passport applications and renewals, and even destroyed passports at airports when citizens tried to exit[78-83] – not to mention internal mobility restrictions such as locking down many cities as they did Shanghai, imprisoning 100s of millions of people in their homes or makeshift quarantine facilities, starving them of food, medicine, and human contact, causing great financial, psychological and physical harm, including death. As a more common and telling example, citizens considered in any way antagonistic to the Party are routinely blacklisted and denied exit from the country, including targeted human rights lawyers, journalists, and academics, with their families not out of bounds as targets for CCP leverage.[84-96]

Given the desperate state of Western HE finance and heavy institutional dependence on all forms of internationalization, including student revenue, even the possibility to deny students mobility is an effective soft politics tool used to manipulate the principles, policies, and practices of host institutions – not to mention nations that rely on the substantial contribution these students make to the overall economy.[97-108] The lesson is a cautionary one about the political reach of the CCP and how it is not to be ignored or underestimated in the project of internationalization.

With these adjustments in place, turning from general to more specific reasons offered by Knight (1999), the list moves away from improved cultural awareness and exchange to decidedly nation-centric ends. Adding to the mix of reasons, Zolfaghari et. al. (2009) draw on the work of Hayhoe and de Wit:

Hayhoe (1989) believes that international cooperative agreements, academic mobility, international scholarships, technical and economic development, international curriculum studies, cultural values, historical and political context are the most important reasons for internationalization of higher education. In addition to Hayhoe, several reasons have been classified by Wit. From his viewpoint, nation-building and positioning, development cooperation, technical assistance, national and regional cultural identity and national standards improvement are national reasons for internationalization of higher education (Wit, World Bank & ebrary Inc., 2005, pp. 356-358).[109](pg.3)[110]

Together these present a better-balanced list ranging from academic and cultural items to de Wit’s list that leans toward the nation-centric reasons of Knight. While a nation improves its cultural identity and builds and positions itself, government impact on (the internationalization of) HE is determined by the political, legal and economic relationship the state forms with the sector.

Given that the Communist Party has absolute authority over HE, though they are not formally designated as such, it is reasonable to view HEIs in China as state owned enterprises. Such enterprises were once ubiquitous when China was more socialist, but during the 1990s in the transition to capitalism they were pared down to sectors considered vital for securing and exercising CCP authority over Party-preservation and nation-building, such as: energy, communications, banking, transportation, and natural resources.

It is no stretch to place the HE sector within this nexus of CCP control and so like Sinopec or Sinosteel, the HEIs of China are de facto state owned enterprises. In the West, though also recognized as a key nation-building tool, the relationship between HE and government is more nuanced with public and private HEIs enjoying autonomy, rights and freedoms not available to Chinese HEIs and their academic employees or students – not to mention the wider citizenry.

As an important example, consider academic freedom. There is no academic freedom in China.[111-161] In the West it is a valued cornerstone of HE that when under (government) threat can be defended by HEIs, academics and students using political, legal, and media channels. In China the political is the CCP, the legal is the CCP, and the media is the CCP. This is a literal description of a one-party system with no division in the political and legal branches of government and perhaps the most sophisticated, comprehensive censorship and surveillance apparatus in the world.[162-172] The consequence is that a list like Hayhoe’s might always take a backseat to a list like de Wit’s in a country like China where academic freedom is left on the side of the road. As the American Association of University Professors and Canadian Association of University Teachers made clear back in 2009, 

[As] the U.S. and Canadian presence in higher education grows in countries marked by authoritarian rule, basic principles of academic freedom, collegial governance, and nondiscrimination are less likely to be observed. In a host environment where free speech is constrained, if not proscribed, faculty will censor themselves, and the cause of authentic liberal education, to the extent it can exist in such situations, will suffer.[173](pg.2)

[1 SIDEBAR: As a demonstration of the entrenched duplicity and danger of Communist China (HE), look no further than the Magna Charta Universitatum of 2020, which identifies three “fundamental principles upon which the mission of universities should be based”[174]: The first principle was independence: research and teaching must be intellectually and morally independent of all political influence and economic interests; the second was that teaching and research should be inseparable, with students engaged in the search for knowledge and greater understanding; the third principle identified the university as a site for free enquiry and debate, distinguished by its openness to dialogue and rejection of intolerance. With duplicity, China has signed this foundational charter.[175] Or look at the recent debating and watchdogging in the EU over academic freedom.[176-186] There is no such discussion in Communist China.]

Returning to the analysis of internationalization offered by Zolfaghari et. al. (2009),

Overall, the reasons for internationalization of higher education are listed below in descending level of importance: mobility and exchanges for students and teachers, teaching and research collaboration, academic standards and quality, research projects, co-operation and development assistance, curriculum development, international and intercultural understanding, promotion and profile of institution, diversify source of faculty and students, regional issues and integration, international student recruitment, and diversify income generation. As Wit (2002, p. 224) has noted, briefly, it is important to keep in mind that: (1) Overall, there are strong reasons within and between different stakeholders’ groups; (2) Generally, stakeholders do not have one exclusive reason for internationalization; (3) Reasons may differ between stakeholders’ groups and within stakeholders’ groups; (4) Priorities in reasons may change over time and may change by country and region; (5) And in most cases, reasons have more implicit than explicit motives for internationalization.[187](pg.3)

This taxonomy does not address the sort of fundamental socio-political and academic contrasts identified thus far – contrasts that should instruct the reasons for internationalization and with whom it is undertaken. It also conflates why and how. For instance, “intercultural understanding” is why we internationalize and “international student recruitment” is how – a simple confusion of ends with means. That said, de Wit’s qualifying notes do provide further contextualization, particularly when he says, “priorities in reasons may change over time and may change by country and region.” Almost without exception, from the United States to Australia and from India to China, HE systems that use the HEI model face serious funding deficiencies and vulnerabilities that reorder this hierarchy. In the face of such financial realities, as a necessity of institutional survival, “diversifying income generation” has moved from the last to a near top priority.

Consider two examples of this change in priorities with personal connection to me: Cape Breton University (CBU) and the University of Wales (UW). I was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada, of which Cape Breton is a part. Its Cabot Trail – named after the 15th century Venetian explorer, John Cabot – is one of the more beautiful places on Earth when the deciduous trees alight with color in the fall, as the area blooms with international students. A public institution that was destined to close due to collapsing regional demographics and economics, between 2017 and 2021 CBU[188][189] managed to increase its operating budget by more than 80%, securing three times its public provincial grant of $23 million,[190] sourced entirely from an over 300% increase in international student enrolment that now makes up three quarters of the full-time student body – blurring the distinction between public and private institution, with negative implications for HE integrity across multiple metrics.

Founded in 1893 as the first university in Wales, UW is my PhD alma mater and in 2011 had to in disgrace reorganize and change its name because it was found to be essentially hawking degrees to unqualified international institutions, programs and students in order to meet its rising costs and diminishing public funding. It is now called, University of Wales Trinity-Saint David. A misleadingly pious rebrand given its perversion of HE.[191]

These examples are not easily dismissed when US data reveals the extent to which HEIs are in financial trouble serious enough to declare bankruptcy, peddle their accreditation, enter compromising joint-program agreements, or simply reduce admission and education standards.[192-200] Whether the financial challenges range from the casual to the catastrophic, the HEI model tempts such compromises, which the CCP does not hesitate to invite.

[2 SIDEBAR: As further related observations, consider the purchase of and financial contribution to HEIs outside of China – while inside China higher education is grossly underfunded.[201-209] At the same time, similar inroads by the West are not possible in the CCP controlled Chinese HE system. It was only in 2023 that the Party allowed state-selected foreign HEIs to operate independently in China without the usual controls, including the requirement of joint venture cooperation with local Chinese HEIs. This education opening up is only permitted in Hainan province, which is an island off the southwestern coast of mainland China; and then only in the fields of science, agriculture, engineering, and medicine - steering very far from fields of study that might even hint of socio-political content. The decision-making apparatus for such so-called independent HEIs must include a Party leader, while overall planning, coordination, macro management, and policy formulation of the HEIs is a shared responsibility with China’s Ministry of Education. This is so, while the CCP recently shutdown any foreign investment, use of foreign teaching materials or overseas-based teachers in the private education sector of China – with more on this later in the post. This is so, even as the CCP calls racism in response to some American states that tabled and passed legislation limiting the ability of foreign principals from China and other countries to purchase American land under certain conditions – while no foreign principals can own any land under any conditions in China.]

The result is a slew of socio-political and academic consequences for individuals, institutions, and nations. To further explore such consequences, consider an extended treatment of one of the common civilizing reasons for internationalization, the fostering of tolerance.[210-215]

Though tolerance is generally considered a laudable trait, it is possible to be too tolerant. Depending on the gravity, it can be immoral to not in some way interfere with an act to prevent or mitigate its negative consequences. This is true within the logical constraint of ought-implies-can and where we are morally (and in some cases legally) responsible for not only the consequences of our acts of commission but also our acts of omission, including those in which tolerance restrains interference. In a clear case like killing people because of their race, we must not exercise tolerance, whether this be in our own homes and neighbourhoods or in those foreign to ours. Likewise, we must not be tolerant of those that wish to invade and harm us in our homes and neighbourhoods, whether they are local or foreign assailants. The list goes on, with each example showing that tolerance should not be absolute. That is, tolerance is no excuse for failing to interfere in some way with acts that have patently grave unacceptable negative consequences.

Beyond the clear cases, there are what philosophers call, borderline cases. Take the example of offence.[216-224] To offend is a built-in inevitability of societies that champion personal freedoms such as those of association, religion, mobility, thought, and expression. In such open societies, we (ideally) tolerate offence, as we struggle to recognize the differences between addressing someone as a nigger who deserves to die because of their skin color and getting up from a bus bench because a black person has sat down; or art gallery walls that have mounted on the inside artistic exploration of racism and pasted on the outside neo-Nazi invitations to an effigy burning rally. The challenge is deciding in what cases of offence we must set aside the restraint entailed by tolerance and find ways to interfere with acts that offend, as we must find ways to interfere in the clearer cases of racial killing, home invasion, child sex-abuse, rape, human-trafficking, and the like.

At the same time, in the financially troubled HEI model, universities and colleges cannot afford to offend international customers whether these be individuals, institutions, or governments – especially governments that exercise absolute authority over potential customers. When finances are bottoming out, it is best to refrain from offending even a few customers. It is in this broader context that tolerance must be understood when discussing the why and who of HE internationalization.

As a pointed exercise in contextualization, to characterize criticism of forming education (or economic) relationships with Communist China as offensive (cultural) intolerance or worse, thinly veiled racism, is as unsophisticated and potentially perilous as it was to say the same of criticism launched against such relationships with Nazi Germany – though as a tragically bitter irony, the Nazi racial perspective might well have called such criticism racist.[225-227] And if you think the comparison between Communist China and Nazi Germany goes too far, offending your sensibility for tolerance, you might ask the Jewish peoples what they think of the tolerant British policy of Nazi appeasement. Better yet, argue against the comparison in the comment section below.

For my part, experience has provided ample evidence to support the comparison. For instance, my employment contracts with Chinese universities have explicitly forbidden the discussion of politics or religion with students in or out of class, with this being the only clause that was ever consistently brought to my attention. But more than that, since the CCP – or its rebrand, the Communist Party of China – forbids open, honest, critical dialogue of this kind, any such intellectual exchange we might like to have in China is banned from public or even academic settings, whether at Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai or New York University in Shanghai.

Further, since Blogger is a Google product and so blocked by the CCP because of fundamental disagreements over the freedom of information,[228-229] if a Chinese citizen does wish to participate in the exchange and provide counter-argument in the comment section, they would need to break the law by using a VPN to circumvent the CCP’s Great Censorship Wall[230-233] – and even then only if the Party is in a permissive mood and the Two Sessions are not on the horizon.[234]

In fact, airing of our respective points of view is not even permitted in more intimate settings, though over drinks at a local bar you might find close-circled friends discussing the Nazi comparison in muted tones similar to those the French Underground must have used during World War II. Or a naïve child at the Spring Festival (春节) dinner table who openly asks about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and is urgently silenced with a peculiarly loud denial of an event that is not taught in any classroom in China. Whether it is a whisper or a wail, such behaviour is a conditioned self-protective response to Communist regime persecution that ranges from police visits and interrogations to tortures and executions.[234-259]

As further context for understanding the relationship between tolerance and internationalization, such evidence is not meant to deny that some of the aims of internationalization could benefit some people in China. At the same time, it is worth noting that in this context there is no need to say, ‘Chinese people’ in China. This is because the state-run 2020 census counted a mere 845,697 foreigners in the entire country of 1.4 billion, with permanent residency holders as rare as pandas at around 2000 as of 2016 and 1500 with citizenship by 2010 – a privilege which precludes holding any other citizenship – and you can be sure none are “your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”[260-266] Ask yourself: Supposing there were no financial limitations on students, how many would Communist China permit to study in Western nations – one million, two million, five million? This is the contextual flavor of internationalization the CCP represents – with further context to be provided in parts two and three of this series.[267]

If the success of HE internationalization depends on a reasonable alignment of ethos and ends among participants, then the CCP is an obvious outlier where the exercise of academic freedom, tolerance (of dissent) and multi-culturalism are concerned, which turns China into a golden fleece where prioritization of revenue streams is concerned. This is true in a context where persistent financial troubles mean Western HEIs desperately need foreign HEIs and students to accept the invitation to internationalization; and where in the case of China, they need the CCP to permit HEIs and students to accept the invitation.

As will be detailed in the next section, the PSA model for HE internationalization can reduce the tolerance threshold for outlier behaviour that substantially contradicts or offends a Western ethos of (academic) morals, values, rights, and freedoms; while it can obviate the financial need to “diversify income generation” with international campuses like NYU Shanghai or Duke Kunshan University or University of Nottingham Ningbo China.[268-269] Such forms of internationalization are absurd, given the pronounced antipathy between the Western (academic) ethos and the CCP (HE system) I have come to know.[270-285]

As a response to this critical position, it does no good to hide behind an academic veil claiming the pursuit of knowledge is apolitical, that teachers and students prefer to ignore the machinations of governments and get on with education, as though knowledge and education are not tools in the hands of governments.[286] Nor is it acceptable to hide behind the veil of internationalization as Dean of Students, Lauren Sinclair, does when she claims that students and faculty only self-censor in NYU Shanghai to be considerate of the international community. I suppose this means it would be socially inconsiderate to discuss: the Nazi-CCP comparison at NYU Shanghai; the characterization of Xi Jinping as a new Emperor of China; the CCP policies regarding religious freedom; the role a Constitution plays in Chinese law; the scope of investigative journalism in China; or numerous other topics that might be inconsiderate but nevertheless of academic, geopolitical, or humanitarian value.[287]

In step with HEI administrators such as Sinclair, a similar hide-behind-the-veil strategy is used by less “pink”[288-289] Chinese in their relationship with the CCP. Though such citizens disagree with much that the Communist Party does and represents, because they are without right or might they have little choice but to cooperate with the Party in order to fruitfully and safely live their lives – in short, they must tolerate the CCP. This is so where after 100 years of being subjected to the many overt and covert weapons of the Party arsenal – censorship, propaganda, surveillance, social credit, pocket laws, passport confiscation/destruction, disappearances, public shaming, hukou, and so much more[290-297] – government control has become embedded in all aspects of life, from education and family to work and personal identity, from travel and recreation to business and fashion. For these citizens, tolerance of the CCP is a matter of avoidance or appeasement, in a culture with a very old and well-rehearsed saying: “The bird that sticks its head up gets shot.” (一石二鸟)

Along with the examples provided so far – most of which arise from personal experience corroborated over the years by nationals and foreigners – consider another with perhaps more impact on Western mindsets. Among the thousand-plus students I have taught from middle schools to universities and the two-hundred-plus hours of Philosophy Club I have hosted on and off of campuses, only a small number of citizens even knew China has a Constitution – though its existence is revealed to them in grade school – and none could tell me what it said – though I could tell them, which made for amusing, embarrassing, and alarming conversations.

Even with a contractual prohibition against political or religious discussion, I was able to collect this informal survey result because I simply ignored the obnoxious professional and personal censorship, conducting myself as though I had the (academic) freedom to think, express, and explore. This is what philosophers should do; this is what education should do – or at least that is the western ethos.

That I got away with it for seven years does not show the prohibitive contractual clause is toothless. Enforced or not, the very existence of such clauses is a threat to (academic) freedom and education – as conceived in the Western ethos. That I did not get fired or worse through enforcement of the clause is just plain luck – a characteristic indicator of a nation not ruled by law. This includes law such as the Chinese Constitution which ratifies several personal rights that were long fought for and constitutionally enshrined in the West such as freedom of expression – a constitution which Xi Jinping unilaterally changed in 2018, removing age and term limits for the three highest offices in the government – Secretary General, Central Military Commission Chair, and President – each of which he now holds as the new emperor of China.[298-303] I and my wife (who is a Chinese national) think it is not law that rules China, but luck and luck is arbitrary – though if you are the Emperor, you can make yourself some pretty good luck.[304]

In light of the financial vulnerability of the HEI model, the absolute authority over citizens and institutions, the absence of academic freedom, and the contempt for Constitutions, it is naïve and dangerous to believe the ivory-tower can insulate Western HE from its corruption by the CCP.

Some will say that by working with such autocratic regimes there is opportunity to change them. Three things are worth noting with respect to this opportunity. The first is a logical point. As analyzed, to tolerate is not to refrain from judgement, but it is to refrain from interference. So, working to change is obviously the exact opposite of tolerance. The second is that where the financially desperate HEI model is concerned, (Western) universities and colleges are at greater risk of being changed through soft political manipulation, than is the CCP.[305-313] The third is that when we work with and fail to change such regimes, we only make the intolerable stronger.

This is why after entering China in ignorance, staying in hope, and leaving in protest, I have taken my talents and tax dollars with me, exercising what little interference I can with the intolerable CCP – in a country where even citizens are denied intolerance.[314] Though I suppose the aim of this blog series is itself an attempt at further interference in that it gives the internationalization of HE reason to follow my example and a model with which to do so.

To continue this contextual analysis of tolerant internationalization, consider an example unique to China – square dancing.[315-318] One can curse the square dancers who blast their music creating noise pollution so extreme that conversation is without exaggeration impossible in public places such as parks or squares, but one can also tolerate the behaviour by not taking action to interfere – though the actions of the dancers interfere with our desire to have a pleasant conversation or think or read or watch a sunrise or… 

In this example, action that exhibits tolerance includes going for a walk and a talk before or after the dancers spew their morning and evening noise pollution or being fortunate enough to find a place in the public space far enough away to attempt conversation; while action that displays intolerance includes throwing their loud speakers into the sea or going through legal channels to ban square dancing in its current form.

Proponents of a tolerant internationalization will say there is a third way, or to use a more Asian description, a middle way – compromise. Conceptually, comprise requires tolerance, since it logically entails that one resigns one’s self to the fact that what is disapproved of will not be mitigated or corrected through interference. So, while one might not like the fact that Chinese square dancers play unbearably loud music and monopolize large areas in public spaces rendering them unusable by others with equal right to their use, one might strike a compromise with the dancers. For instance, dancers can continue to monopolize the physical space, but they must agree to reduce the volume of their music so that the auditory space can be equally shared by all. Again, tolerance is logically reduced to non-interference, which in this case refers to the continued undesirable monopolization by square dancers of the physical public space.

While this analysis can be reasonably charged with ignoring plenty of subtlety regarding tolerance and compromise across nations and cultures with incompatible socio-political and academic ethea - something that will be corrected in parts two and three of the series - it does not ignore the fundamentals of tolerance and compromise or their effects on internationalization of HE where Communist China is concerned. The reality is that, while a selective survey of idealized Chinese history might point to compromise as a dominant cultural characteristic, it most certainly is not a characteristic of the ruling Community Party – especially where fundamental rights or freedoms and the control of citizens are concerned. In China, intolerance of the CCP is not tolerated and compromise is a one-way street to Beijing.

Given the range of socio-political and academic contrasts that have been described, tolerance and compromise are inevitable aspects of HE internationalization. As such, important questions are: 1) For any given cross-cultural clash in values, what factors should affect the threshold for tolerance? 2) To where should the threshold be adjusted? 3) What is the relationship between the threshold and complicity?

Without question, adjustment of the tolerance threshold should not allow universities and colleges to set up shop in countries whose governments torture and kill people because of their race or gender or sexual orientation or beliefs and the like – any more than the threshold should allow Nike to move its manufacturing to countries whose governments allow exploitation of child labor and pollution of the environment to improve a bottom line. We should not tolerate such cases but do what we can to interfere with such intolerable actions wherever and whenever they occur.

But should academics, students or citizens in general tolerate a guest lecture series delivered on Western campuses by Kim Jong Un? What about HEIs entering contracts with or accepting gifts from countries such as North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or China?[319-327] What about internationalization with countries that undermine or deny rights and freedoms such as academic freedom or freedom of expression or association or mobility and the like? Such considerations constitute a pressing calculus for the likes of NYU Shanghai.

At the same time, non-interference can rise to a level of complicity in acts that cannot be exulted or excused by waving tolerance and comprise banners. The financial lifeline offered by Chinese HE is very tempting to the struggling HEI model. The consequence is tolerance and compromise in internationalization that facilitates and invites the sort of relationship the CCP represents between state and sector – tolerance and compromise that makes HEIs complicit in undermining the rights, freedoms and education of people, whether they be in New York or in Shanghai.[328]

As detailed in the next section, PSA can reduce the economic call for tolerance and compromise with respect to outlier behaviour that challenges the Western ethos, while it increases the opportunity to reap the full range of internationalization benefits.

[3 SIDEBAR: Thus far, this discussion ignores the possible use of common or indifferent values as a starting point from which values of (fundamental) difference can come to be tolerated, accepted, reconciled, or even adopted by others. In a nutshell, the reason for this is that some of the differences between (Communist) China and the West are fundamental and so affect all other values in terms of their dependence hierarchy and practical manifestation. This nutshell is cracked open in parts two and three of this series which delve deeper into the issue of tolerance and complicity in internationalization and explore Fei Xiaotong’s defense of Communist China as a superior model for (HE) internationalization.]

 

Internationalization: Economics and Academics

Education has always been an instrument for social construction and management based on the political or economic persuasion of those with power, be they inclined toward democracy or autocracy. [For the historical basis of the PSA model see this series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.] Individuals and institutions within HE have a long history of aid and abuse at the hands of those with political power, from an integrated HE system[329-331] to a tuition-free HE system[332] and from Kent State University[333-334] to Tiananmen Square.[335-346] The fact that HEIs are tools for economic construction and management is evidenced by their contributions to the economy – or more precisely the contributions of their academic employees.[347-353]

Because of this reality, serious questions about the local or international education relationships we want to form must be openly and critically explored – a task better accomplished in democracies than dictatorships. It is also exploration better conducted in a space where HE finances are sustainable. With regard to both the democratic and economic, PSA can help to protect internationalization from slipping into the complicity of comprised ethea cloaked in tolerance. Consider this claim in the context of the following personal experience.

I came to China not to teach English but to teach Philosophy and more specifically, Critical Thinking. Remember, I came to China naïve. I started at a private company, New Oriental (新东方), and quickly found my way to the public HE system in institutions that include Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai or BNUZ (a for-profit interest of Beijing Normal University in Beijing), Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College or UIC (another for-profit interest of Beijing Normal University in Beijing), and finally to Beijing Normal University proper or BNU.

In a country where the annual income per capita is $7,572 USD (¥53,000 RMB)[354-360], the unsubsidized annual fees at BNUZ are in the ¥60,000 range and UIC are in the ¥100,000, while state subsidized HEIs charge around ¥4,000. At the same time, evincing a shift in responsibility for HE from the public to the private, over the past five years the CCP has reduced its already inadequate HE spending having the expected result that HEIs across the country announced tuition hikes of 15-60% for the upcoming 2023/24 academic year.[361-363] HEIs in China also operate for-profit high schools, as do top public high schools, like No. 1 Affiliated High School Group (珠海市第一中学教育集团) at No. 1 High School in Zhuhai (珠海一中) – where I hosted a Philosophy Club – along with for-profit groups at the elementary and middle school levels, among which are the Zhuhai Wenyuan Middle School Education Group (珠海市文园中学教育集团)andZhuhai Jiuzhou Middle School Education Group (珠海市九州中学教育集团). Each of these capitalist interests charge tuition that far exceeds the nominal fees of public schools.

All of this and much more that smacks of institutionalized corruptive capitalist disparity are conducted in a supposedly socialist China. Aside from the aforementioned (academic) restriction on political and religious discussion, my employment contract at BNUZ stipulated that I was not to fail more than 10% of students. In my Critical Thinking courses failure rates ranged from 40-90%. This is so even after continuous reduction in the content to around one-third of that taught in Canadian HEIs where I was a faculty member for 10 years and even after I adjusted instruction and evaluation practices each semester based on teaching experience and student feedback.

Many of these Critical Thinking courses were part of a joint degree program between BNUZ and my alma mater and former employer Saint Mary’s University (SMU) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where Critical Thinking is one of the required credits for graduation. Though they are issued with parity, I can only imagine the level of disparity in the credence value of a SMU degree secured from Canada and one from China, since most students in this co-operative program were in my Critical Thinking classes and most had abysmal proficiency in the English language of instruction – an obvious contributor to high failure rates, though no one in charge seemed willing to admit it or do anything about it. I have little doubt this internationalization relationship is a money grab for all involved – except of course for the paying parents, the shrewder of whom see it for the purchase it is.

Each time after submitting my Critical Thinking grades, I was called into a meeting with the Vice-Dean, the Director of Teaching Affairs, and the President of the Union. With bitter irony I was to learn that this so-called union, of which I was a dues-paying member, was not a labour union meant to protect my interests in such meetings but yet another arm of the CCP control apparatus meant to protect Party-qua-institution interests by monitoring the employees and students – a practice that is being replicated in the private corporate sector, where the CCP is tightening its grip on China by “strongly encouraging” the introduction of Party unions to the private corporations.[364-370] The astonishing truth is that the right to strike was removed from the PRC Constitution in 1982 and while it is legal for workers to form or join trade unions the bureaucratic difficulty in doing so, their general ineffectiveness, and the state security scrutiny it places on individual organizers makes unionization unappealing – in a supposedly socialist China.[371-375]

[All] enterprise unions must be affiliated with the one legally-mandated body, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Any attempt to establish an independent trade union will be seen by the Chinese Communist Party as a political threat and dealt with accordingly. The only time in the history of the People’s Republic of China that an independent union was established was the short-lived Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation in the spring of 1989. The BWAF was declared an illegal organization and disbanded in the wake of the military crackdown in Beijing on 4 June 1989 [i.e., the Tiananmen Square Massacre].[376]

So, unrepresented I faced three top administrators in a closed-door meeting where they quite reasonably queried me about the high failure rates and after providing them my analysis and proposed corrective measures for future classes, they “wondered whether I might make positive adjustments to the marks and resubmit the grades.” After a few such meetings, because they never explicitly indicated and as though we were negotiating the price of a horse, I asked what they could accept as a failure rate and was told a maximum of 40% is ok, but lower is preferred.

Each time I refused to adjust the grades, though it might mean my being terminated, blacklisted or deported, with no hope of taking legal action against an institution protected by the CCP, in a country where even citizens cannot sue the Communist Party, which anyway has absolute authority over the legal system. I explained that much of Critical Thinking does not lend itself to subjective elements of evaluation, that like mathematics you either get the correct answer or you do not and that such “adjustment” amounts to a violation of my professional ethics by (inter alia) undermining the entire HE system and the credence value of its credentials. The response was always nodding solemn silence followed by cajoling along the lines of institutional fidelity and sympathy for tear-soaked students who had failed the course, all of whom it should be noted attend BNUZ because their performance on the National College Entrance Exams does not qualify them for admission to a proper public HEI and their parents are wealthy enough to afford the high tuition – a revenue stream BNU would like to see keep flowing to Beijing.

Recounting this experience is not meant to isolate BNUZ or Chinese HE as corrupt capitalist, careerist enterprises – though I believe they are – nor to imply that Western HEIs are not similarly corrupt – a casual survey of this blog will reveal this is far from my view of the Western instantiation of the HEI model. A very similar story might be told of an academic in any Western HEI, especially one that is for-profit and run using precarious employment – though without the omnipresence of an authoritarian government party union, with tanks. The purpose is to impress upon internationalization dialogue the reality that democratic and economic factors impact HE in positive and negative ways, whether the system is eastern, Western or some bastardized chimera.

Democratically, in the West the HEI model increasingly turns to proper labor unionization as a means of protecting the interests of academics - something denied their Chinese counterparts. Elsewhere this blog has argued that unionization is a mistake since the (socialist) PSA model provides a better solution to capitalist labor exploitation and coercion in the HEI model. Democracy is at the heart of socialism, especially in the context of work. As indicated, in China unions do not represent labor but rather the CCP and socialism is almost unrecognizable, distorted as it is with Party characteristics.[377-384] In the PSA model, independent academics in professional society democratically provide HE services. Unlike the HEI model, there are no bosses to cajole or coerce employees into compromising professional ethics in the (financial) interests of the institutional employer or their own career advancement – or the political interests of the government.

[4 SIDEBAR: Students and faculty are groups that have a long history in the West – and a short one in Communist China – of lending support to workers on labor strikes. However, the Communist Party takes a grim view of such solidarity. The CCP raids student organizations, detains and disappears student activists, charges them with “pocket crimes,” and ensures that their universities punish them by placing formal reprimands on their academic records and deducting social credit points which negatively impact graduation rates, while placing them under surveillance. Matters are so bad that even cash-hungry HEIs in the West are willing to severe ties with Chinese universities that sanction such actions against students. One such example is Cornell University which cut two exchange programs with Renmin University over such an incident. All in a supposedly socialist China.[385-390]]

Economically, this anecdote reveals the need to reconceptualize the financial arrangements of HE, if we are to more effectively guard its integrity, as conceived in the Western ethos. A cursory search of HE financial problems reveals what has been repeatedly addressed on this blog: The HEI model is excessively expensive and grossly underfunded by extremely vulnerable funding sources. Further, the HEI model is primarily focused on the survival and flourishment of institutions, with only secondary thought given to individuals, including the academics whose labor it exploits, the students to whose personal debt it contributes, and the both of whom it excludes from employment and education access to HE.

In contrast, PSA is substantially less expensive and so at much lower risk of being subjected to the vicissitudes of vulnerable (under)funding; while it prioritizes the welfare of individuals over institutions by (inter alia) creating the space for more academics who exercise greater (socialist) democratic control over their own labour and making HE more affordable and accessible for students. The PSA model is meant to mitigate or correct for all the ways that the HEI model goes substantially wrong, including in its internationalization, by deprioritizing the establishment and maintenance of potentially compromising financial relationships with unsuited international institutions, academics, students and their governments, and introducing increased access to cheaper study abroad.

Among the financial merits of PSA is a 50-75% reduction in the cost of providing HE. Elsewhere this blog has detailed how the model can achieve this and so the reader is referred to the following posts on the United States, Canada, and Australia. The purpose here is to explore what such a reduction can mean for internationalization.

Study abroad is very expensive – notwithstanding a country like Germany where it is essentially free, but with its own set of shortcomings that PSA addresses. This means it is primarily the wealthy that can afford to send their progeny abroad. This results in two things. The first is a socio-economic disparity in access to international HE that raises questions of equity in the opportunity for personal intellectual, social and economic advancement. The second is that the number of people who can study abroad is relatively low because there are plenty more who are academically capable of study abroad – or who would strive to make themselves capable were the opportunity made available – than there are those who are financially capable.

Elsewhere this blog has argued that it is better to live in a world that maximizes education for the maximum number of people, even if this means baristas with PhDs and MBAs. In stark contrast, valuation of HE is being narrowed to vocationalism measured by predominant return-on-investment or supply-and-demand mindsets that commodify and commercialize the sector with considerable help from capitalist-minded governments that continue to use the financially and ethically compromised HEI model.

From within this gulf, if the cost of HE can be reduced as PSA estimates, there would no longer be a need to charge international students the full extortionate cost of HE service under the HEI model – not to mention the comparably high fees charged out-of-state students in a place like the United States. International and out-of-state students are charged the full unsubsidized ticket – and in some cases additional premiums – because they are not taxpaying citizens of the region in which they enroll for studies. But a region that has reduced its HE cost by 50-75% can afford to either charge no tuition or less tuition combined with less subsidy. For instance, if the cost is reduced by 60%, then the remaining 40% might be assumed as a public expense and tuition is eliminated or the 40% might be on some measure a shared public-private responsibility. In either case the funding requirement is manageable because it is far less than that demanded by the HEI model, a model which constantly cries poor.

PSA opens the door to more (international) students from more varied socio-economic strata. Study abroad is no longer the exclusive privilege of the elite. The personal benefits of improved opportunity equity are obvious, especially in countries like India or China where education resources are relatively scarce. Though China has nearly double the number of HE students that America does, it spends 40% less on about half the number of HEIs, while the “double first class” policy allocates the lion’s share of state funding to an elite group of policy-targeted institutions – in a supposedly socialist China.[391-393]

Category	US	China
HEIs (all types)	7,021 (2016)	2,940 (2018)
HEIs (degree granting)	4,298 (2018)	1,245 (2019)
Students (all levels)	~77,000,000 (2019)	276,000,000 (2018)
Students (all levels of HE)	~20,000,000 (2019)	38,330,000 (2018)
Funding (all levels)	$972.9b (approx. 2018)	¥3.699t (2018) ($528.4b USD)
Funding (all levels of HE)	$287.8b (2018)	¥1.2013t (2018) ($171.6b USD)

 

PSA closes the door on CCP soft politics in Western HE. Increasing the variety of international student sources means a diminished need to (substantially) rely on Chinese students – a shame where the people of China are concerned, but a must where the government of China is concerned. With substantially reduced operating costs and international tuition, Western HE can tap more diversified sources of foreign tuition revenue from nations and peoples that cannot now afford study abroad. A similar diversification in export portfolio has been forced on countries like Australia which found that offending the CCP, however slight or unintended, can result in significant trade loss with China.[394-397] Under PSA, Australia and other countries can confidently reduce reliance on export of HE to China. This is the proper thing to do both in terms of HE ethics and economics.[398]

The untold lose in social, economic, and academic contributions that results from limited HE access can be mitigated where the costs are reduced and so more individuals from more diverse walks of life can afford to enter (internationalized) HE, thereby improving cultural awareness and exchange through extended study stay, insulating and increasing the economics of HE export, and widening the net for benefits from academic collaboration, innovation, and the socialization of knowledge.

With respect to the latter – knowledge socialism – Communist China provides yet another bitterly ironic lesson regarding its prospects as an internationalization partner. As indicated, the CCP allocates the lion’s share of its public funding to a select set of “double first class” HEIs, among which is its flagship state-owned HE enterprise, Tsinghua University. This institution is now a top-ranked university and a source of great patriotic pride – as well as personal pride, if you are among the lucky few who gain entry as a student or faculty member.

The product of intense design and oversight by the CCP, Tsinghua owned and operated from 1988 to 2006 the for-profit China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), which is an academic publisher and database that has essentially created a lucrative monopoly. In the development and maintenance of its monopoly, Tsinghua and CNKI have been sued several times for theft of intellectual property and breaches of contract; while it is currently being investigated for anti-trust violations.

This publishing monopoly essentially helps the government fund HE by moving money from the state to its academic employee paychecks and then back to the state coffers as academics are exploited and defrauded through the CNKI, which is now under the control of the state-run enterprise, Tsinghua Tongfang Co. Ltd. For decades these corrupt government and capitalist practices have been an affront to (knowledge) socialism. With emphasis, this is not some independent, wayward, backwoods institution that somehow managed to slip under the ubiquitous government radar. It is the pride and joy of the nation and the deliberate creation of the CCP – in a supposedly socialist China.[399-416]

[5 SIDEBAR: In a decidedly anti-knowledge-socialism move, the CCP is shutting down access to CNKI for foreign entities.[See citations in [399-416]] Though this is yet another shade in the true colors of the CCP, it is perhaps not much of a loss given that China does virtually no foundational research and has a shocking record of intellectual property theft and fraudulent publication. On a note related to PSA, the publishing benefits of the model also recommend it over the HEI model. For instance, academics are not subject to employment conditions that prioritize publication over teaching, as is common in the HEI model. Since PSA academics own and operate their own professional private practices, they exercise independent control over their work, including how much (if any) publication they wish to produce. Also, with this liberation from institutional demand for publication and research (monies) that help propel HEIs up the ranking ladder and substantially determine hiring and promotion of academic employees, PSA enables professional academics to be freer with the knowledge they generate, moving toward knowledge socialism in a way that the HEI model simply cannot allow because it embodies and prioritizes institutional and individual material competition. PSA can overcome the capitalization of knowledge, while it offers economics and infrastructure for open publishing.]

Economically, by reducing the cost of HE provision and expanding internationalization, PSA amplifies the already impressive financial benefits to host regions. Beyond the revenue contributions international students make directly to HEIs, education is ranked 6th among service exports in America, contributing $38.96 billion to the national economy and 415,990 jobs in 2019/20.[417] In Australia education is the third largest export category and in 2019 provided 250,000 jobs and $40.4 billion to the national coffers.[418] The Canadian story is comparable with a contribution of $21.6 billion and support for almost 170,000 middle class jobs,[419] while for 2021/22 international students boosted the UK economy by £41.9 billion.[420] This sort of economic benefit is experienced around the world where for each 10% increase in the services HE provides there is a 0.4% increase in GDP per capita.[421]

Unlike the HEI model, PSA can amplify these socio-economic benefits, while reducing dependence on desperate prioritization of diversified revenue streams that invite unacceptable tolerance and compromise in education and economic relationships which are vulnerable to disruptive socio-political and financial forces beyond the control of host regions. To illustrate the benefits of this risk-avoidance, consider exactly what sort of relationships should be formed with a country like China that essentially over night shut down an entire education sector employing millions and worth billions in USD.[422-433]

The so-called “double reduction” policy wiped out private tutoring companies, including billion-dollar concerns listed on Western stock exchanges and the investments of millions of people, requiring all subject tutoring companies to register as non-profit, while foreign investment is prohibited in the sector as is the use of foreign materials or online teachers residing outside of China – hardly a paradigm of internationalization.[434] But perhaps more alarming is how the policy savagely disrupts the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens, producing the exact opposite effect of its aim to reduce the financial and psychological burdens on parents and students.[435-437] This is because the ill-conceived policy failed to make obvious necessary adjustments in other parts of the education system. At the same time, enforcement of the policy is difficult, lax, and ripe for corruption, though effective enforcement is necessary for true equity of education opportunity.

The CCP made no significant adjustments to the valuation and volume of content covered in the National College Entrance Examinations (gaokao - 高考) and other national testing, including the Senior High School Entrance Examination (zhongkao - 中考) which ultimately determines if a child will go on to university or vocational studies, the quality of HEI they will attend, and the field of study in which they will be enrolled.[438-439] Nor were additional HEIs opened to relieve family anxiety regarding the limited and therefore competitive access to HE, especially the overwhelmingly preferred university path. Nor was competition reduced by adjusting the double first-class funding formula to more evenly resource HEIs, tempering the drastic disparity in quality and reputation among institutions. Nor was the way in which administrators and teachers in public schools are promoted and paid adjusted away from heavy dependence on student zhongkao and gaokao performances – though their workloads were dramatically increased with ill-prepared and poorly incentivized after school programs that public schools were made to implement as compensation to the families that lost legal access to private tutoring in their struggle to cross the “one log bridge” (独木桥).[440]

The double reduction policy dramatically reduces the hours students can receive legal private subject tutoring and set industry pricing restrictions that are not commercially sustainable, thereby diverting much of the tutoring to illegal trenches rife with decreased quality and increased price. At the same time, because no concomitant adjustments were made to the system, the pre-existing financial and psychological pressures on families and schools not only remain, but have increased thanks to the added risks associated with black market tutoring supplied by the type of individuals that are willing to break a national law or emperor's edict, depending on your CCP sympathies.

At the same time, immunity is extended to parents who desperately seek tutoring services because, though the CCP has no trouble using the law to tell parents how to raise their children,[441-450] they know perfectly well that criminally charging parents for purchasing illegal private tutoring in this environment would soon bring their house of authoritative (education) cards tumbling down. The added pressures are not limited to parents and students, but also affect the teachers.[451-459] The health of this triadic relationship is essential to effective education and psycho-social development of students. 

[6 SIDEBAR: My speculation on “double reduction” is that the CCP intends to use it to further its policy of elite HEI development (e.g., double first-class) and push more students into vocational colleges. The country has major shortages in vocational labour that are expected to get worse and there is no cooperation between government and industry to provide recognized certified training to such labour. At the same time, each year from 2019-23, rising from 16% to around 20% of university graduates were unable to find employment - according to dubious understated official stats - pushing ever larger numbers to take the grueling Chinese graduate and civil service entrance exams, which have incredibly low admission rates. The government has recently released a policy decision to forcibly direct 50% of students into vocational high school, which has the necessary effect of making zhongkao the bottleneck that chokes parents and students.[460]]

To nuance this, though education opportunities remain highly competitive and continue to fuel demand for private subject tutoring, parents now face added pressure to protect from exposure their sources of illegal tutoring, making them reluctant to share resources with other parents – a reluctance they must instill in their children to prevent inadvertent exposure of resources – where prior to the double reduction policy, service providers were publicly regulated and known for their price and quality. Or consider that public school teachers have always substantially supplemented their income – as have HE faculty – by offering to students private tutoring services in the subjects they teach. I know public school teachers who in this way supplement their income to the tune of ¥500,000+ a year, where average teacher salaries are in the range of ¥60,000 to ¥120,000 – which is a very broad estimate because, like so much of CCP tax-dollar spending, this public expenditure apparently ranks as a state secret. Though this moonlighting has always been officially illegal as it embodies obvious conflicts of interest, the widespread practice is routinely ignored by the government. But to further underscore the absurdity of double reduction, the policy has now made legal such subject tutoring by teachers, allowing them to earn a maximum of ¥50,000 per year and secure improved promotion prospects[461-463], while engaging in the conflicts of interest that lend themselves to extortion, fraud, and other corruption of the education system and exploitation of students and parents. In all of this, notice how whether private subject tutoring is legal or illegal, the government coffers benefit by shifting the public expense and responsibility for proper education in a viciously competitive system to the private expense of parents. This is a move that obviously does nothing to reduce the financial and psychological strain on parents and students – in a supposedly socialist China.

Is this the sort of internationalization partner to be sought after, never mind heavily dependent upon? It is a very risky investment in a partner who at best is incompetent and at worst down right devious, and who in its unassailable HE policies and practices with Chinese Communist Party characteristics fundamentally deviates from a Western ethos – a deviance with which we should be neither tolerant nor compromising.

[7 SIDEBAR: The CCP’s Ministry of Education has now banned the use of any books with foreign authors, languages, or mention of countries, while in elementary and secondary there can be no use of literature with foreign authors – while children of the Politburo go to international schools from K12 to HE, in a situation that exactly mirrors the Qing Dynasty. These are hardly the actions of a world leader in (HE) internationalization.]

It is perhaps easy to claim that Western governments and HEIs are also incompetent, devious, risky, exploitative, inequitable, violators of the Western ethos that shift financial responsibility for HE to the private sector. In short, they are corrupted internationalization partners, no less so than one finds in the case of China. But that would miss the point of this three-part series. All cards on the table, I would take a corrupted Western system over a corrupted CCP system any day. Consider two final nuances that help substantiate this claim.

First, as indicated, through its Tsinghua University monopolistic capitalist publisher, CNKI, the CCP is (knowingly) complicit in extorting and defrauding money from the private pockets of academics, money that is used to (inter alia) help fund the public HE system – as the CCP is (knowingly) complicit in both illegal and legal subject tutoring by grade school teachers which privately subsidizes the public school system. This charge cannot be mitigated or avoided by using scapegoats and claims of ignorance – though this is a favored tactic used by the CCP, while it is first to take exclusive credit for any designed or accidental successes. The reality is, if you want to be the general, then you have to accept responsibility for all that happens on the field of operations, especially when your propaganda casts you as an infallible leader.

The nuance is found in the observation that those who took initial action against CNKI and sued to stop the exploitation and corruption were (retired) academics – not the CCP. These brave, principled, but decidedly isolated and politically weak academics faced what is essentially a division of the state-owned enterprise Tsinghua University which reports $3.2 billion in revenue for 2021, without labor unions, without the right to sue the state, without job or pension security, where eight candidates are selected for one position in last-man-standing hiring practices, and so on. Through its monopolistic and exploitative practices, in 2021, CNKI offered gross margins of 53.35% and revenue of $192 million to its state-owned holding company, Tsinghua Tongfang Co. Ltd. In 2022 the CCP initiated an anti-trust investigation that resulted in a $12.5 million fine – as a response to monopolist abuse of HE, academics, and the socialism of knowledge that has continued unchecked for decades.[464-470]   

Second, as indicated, I hosted a Philosophy Club during my residence in China, something I did for many years before as part of my academic community service. It is a free gathering of minds, open to all who want to sit down and philosophically explore any topic the group introduces. In China, I have hosted these clubs off and on campus, though only with the required express permission of the university administration – something not needed in the West. A few months before we left China for good, my wife was at the local police kiosk near the base of our building complex running an errand for our absent landlord. The officer with whom she needed to speak was on the phone, but a couple of other officers spoke up.

They asked if she is the one who is with that foreigner who lives in the complex. Though she has lived under CCP rule all her life, she was still taken aback by the inquiry. She confirmed. They then asked if I am the one who hosts a meeting in the café up the road. She confirmed. They asked if I am doing anything disruptive, anything that might be upsetting or inciting the people. She denied. They then directly threatened that I better not be or there could be trouble. Before leaving, she thought to ask how they heard of the club. Though they did not have to answer and already possessed the answers to the questions they had been asking, the officers wanted to flex the considerable reach of the CCP surveillance apparatus and so showed her a flyer advertising the club. This flyer was designed by a friend of ours who works at a private corporation and was an internal circulation inviting staff to an evening out for coffee and philosophy. Like the HEIs I worked at, this corporation has a Party union, which is likely the police source of information. The nuance is that I am not a notable academic worthy of any surveillance, so one can only imagine how the CCP surveils those that are and those that collaborate with them – never mind those that might dare to “cause trouble” with free (academic) thinking.

All nations and peoples draw from the same pools of positive and negative attributes, making comparison a matter of magnitudes not binaries. What this post aims to show is that the means and motivation to respond to the challenges of integrity and corruption are also relative, and in this regard Communist China is very far from the West in magnitude. As such, without hesitation I would choose Western over CCP corruption.

[8 SIDEBAR: This post has omitted an obvious example which clearly demonstrates this difference in magnitude – one that is addressed in part two of this series. One needs to look no farther than Hong Kong to find the CCP version of internationalization. The world outside of Communist China knows the political, policy, and policing moves made by Beijing that contradict its farcical “one country, two systems” policy. But for the expressed purposes of this post, the reader is encouraged to focus on moves the CCP has made to change all levels of Hong Kong education in ways that suit the interests of the Party, including its censorship and overhaul of: textbooks, Liberal Arts curriculums, institutional administrations, individual career promotions and appointments, history, and much more – as teachers and academics flee Hong Kong.[471-485] In part two of this series, there is further discussion of these magnitudes (with respect to Hong Kong).]

Concluding Remarks

This cautionary warning against internationalization with China is directed at the CCP and the nation it is building, not the vast majority of Chinese people under its rule. Contrary to the propaganda, the Party is not the people. In China, the nation is not the people. Both of these are relative new comers, like a new set of clothes. Perhaps more so than any other place on the planet, here the people are the people. That said, heeding this cautionary warning is likely to have negative consequences for the people – of whom only around 100 million are Party members – but in the end it is the people of China who must ultimately take action to correct the corruption of their nation and its HE system with Chinese Communist Party characteristics.

I am doing what I can by leaving and offering (international) HE under PSA. Western HE should do what it can by not being complicit in the corruption of its own HE integrity. And as the Chinese people already face considerable government barriers in doing what they can, the West should not exacerbate matters with complicit acts of tolerance and compromise that in the name of internationalization support CCP rule.

Internationalization of HE is an undertaking complicated by political, financial, cultural, lexical, logistical, and even pandemical factors. But within the right HE model the rewards are worth the effort. The current HEI model of universities and colleges is not the right one. In contrast, supposing the United States or a Canadian province were to adopt PSA as its HE model, then they would enjoy better conditions within which to develop international HE across metrics such as: economics; academics; innovation; integrity; access; affordability; tolerance; cultural awareness; politics; and more.

Though PSA is a very personal matter for me, this was an unusually personal post, and a long one. Thank you for sticking with it to the end. I encourage you to read parts two and three of this series, which respond to a notable defense of China not only as a good internationalization partner, but a far superior one to that of the West. Please feel free to engage the model with comment or collaboration.

ENDNOTES:

[1-2] https://www.iie.org/research-initiatives/graduate-learning-overseas/findings/durations/ & https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5a49e448-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/5a49e448-en

[3] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505713.pdf

[4] https://www.scielo.br/j/ensaio/a/jbXVsXXLk9tDstWZdcyXrcb/?format=pdf&lang=en

[5-7] https://www.csis.org/podcasts/pekingology/fragmented-authoritarianism-xis-china &  https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231858 & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49631120

[8] Han, S., & Xu, Xin. (2019). How far has the state ‘stepped back’: An exploratory study of the changing governance of higher education in China (1978–2018).” Higher Education, 78(5), 931–946.

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58301575

[10-12] https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_voa-news-china_china-pushes-xi-jinping-thought-part-college-education/6198507.html & https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_chinas-new-mandatory-curriculum-focuses-xi-thought/6209984.html & https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Xi-joins-Marx-and-Mao-as-required-course-at-China-s-top-colleges

[13-15] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230210075627838 & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20221209070807431 & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20221129152058507

[16-37] https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2022/07/08/out-with-china-in-with-taiwan/ & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/senators-question-the-college-board-about-ties-to-china & https://www.nas.org/reports/outsourced-to-china & https://www.nas.org/reports/after-confucius-institutes & https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/Outsourced%20to%20China/NAS_confuciusInstitutes.pdf & https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/After%20Confucius%20Institutes/After_Confucius_Institutes_NAS.pdf & https://www.nas.org/reports/corrupting-the-college-board & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/cracking-down-on-illegal-ties-to-china & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/chinas-confucius-institutes-might-be-closing-but-they-succeeded & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/how_many_confucius_institutes_are_in_the_united_states & https://www.aaup.org/report/confucius-institutes & https://www.aaup.org/file/Confucius_Institutes_0.pdf & https://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/3EBA5A9B-6FD8-46EF-9DC5-7D47514AD56A/0/AAUPCAUTSTATEMENTOVERSEASCAMPUSESfinaltext.pdf & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20170426121906298 & https://www.williamjperrycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication_associated_files/Chinese%20Confucius%20Institutes%20in%20LATAM.pdf (can’t be reached with this link any longer) & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220630152610783 & https://www.voanews.com/a/controversial-confucius-institutes-returning-to-u-s-schools-under-new-name/6635906.html & https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-time-for-a-new-policy-on-confucius-institutes/ & https://theglobalamericans.org/2022/02/soft-power-confucius-institutes/ & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20140626193417299 & https://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1539702/us-and-canadian-academics-demand-changes-confucius-institutes & https://2017-2021.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CCP-on-campus-FINAL.pdf

[38-51] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-are-chinas-alleged-secret-overseas-police-stations & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 & https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/19/china-police-state-outposts-00092913 & https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000187-95ad-d238-a5c7-b7edfaef0000 & https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/patrol-and-persuade-follow-110-overseas-investigation & https://safeguarddefenders.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Patrol%20and%20Persuade%20v2.pdf & https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-center-public-security-bureau-safeguard-defenders-transnational-crime-1764531 & https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-us-stations-canada-1.6818889 & https://adf-magazine.com/2023/01/report-chinas-overseas-police-stations-silence-dissent-threaten-host-nations/ ) & https://youngkim.house.gov/media/in-the-news/lawmakers-call-end-ccps-influence-us-education & https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_china-tries-muffle-those-living-abroad-intimidating-their-families/6192452.html & https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_china-tries-muffle-those-living-abroad-intimidating-their-families/6192452.html & https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/19/uk-warns-china-against-intimidating-foreign-nationals-in-britain & https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/china-scrutinized-for-secret-police-watching-and-intimidating-chinese-dissidents-abroad

[52] Perry Link, “China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier,” New York Review of Books, April 11, 2002. http://www. nybooks.com/articles/2002/04/11/china-the-anaconda-in-the-chandelier/.

[53-76] https://www.dw.com/en/hong-kong-student-arrested-upon-return-from-japan-sparks-fears-over-security-laws-reach/a-65418216 & https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/26/xis-grip-may-have-tightened-he-still-has-chinas-long-history-democratic-protest & https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/ & https://china.usc.edu/looking-protesting-china & https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/china-must-respect-fundamental-freedoms-stop-its-crackdown-on-protests/ & https://freedomhouse.org/article/china-despite-restrictions-citizens-conducted-hundreds-protests-across-china-recent-months & https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/CDMNov2022FINAL_0.pdf & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/we-all-saw-it-anti-xi-jinping-protest-electrifies-chinese-internet & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/13/shanghai-covid-restrictions-fuel-fears-of-another-lockdown & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64592333 (about protestors gone missing) and https://www.npr.org/2023/01/11/1148251868/china-covid-lockdown-protests-arrests (about protestors gone missing) & https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/state-and-social-protests-in-china/9758A610A0F88CD87A99A42DEC12F47D & https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/12/01/china-protests-white-paper/ & https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/opinion/china-covid-protests.html & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinese_pro-democracy_protests & https://www.scmp.com/article/740532/beijing-slams-door-political-reform (the 5 no’s) & https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/china-ramps-up-central-planning-to-stifle-dissent_b_884435 (the 5 no’s) & https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/full-text-of-the-oxford-consensus-2013/ (contrast to the 5 no’s) & https://www.readingthechinadream.com/xu-jilin-modern-politics.html & https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/full-text-of-the-oxford-consensus-2013/ (contrast with the 5 no’s and connected with academic freedom) & https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/28/china-netizens-censors-in-cat-and-mouse-game-amid-covid-protests?traffic_source=KeepReading

[77] https://www.quora.com/Do-you-go-through-an-immigration-check-when-departing-Canada-on-international-flights

[78-83] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/detained-democrat-03022023173329.html & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-borders-04242023142536.html & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/professor-stopped-05082023171626.html & https://safeguarddefenders.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Trapped%20-%20China%E2%80%99s%20Expanding%20Use%20of%20Exit%20Bans.pdf & https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/2/china-steps-up-use-of-exit-bans-against-government-critics & https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-exit-bans-multiply-political-control-tightens-under-xi-2023-05-02/

[84-96] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62830326 & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-62751295 & https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2822%2901051-0 & https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-zero-covid-policy-pushes-society-to-the-limit/a-63862471 & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/17/what-was-it-for-the-mental-toll-of-chinas-three-years-in-covid-lockdowns & https://www.reuters.com/world/china/it-felt-like-my-insides-were-crying-china-covid-curbs-hit-youth-mental-health-2022-08-29/ & https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.596872/full & https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/25/china/china-zero-covid-discontent-reopening-mic-intl-hnk/index.html & https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/03/china/china-covid-lanzhou-child-death-outrage-intl-hnk/index.html & https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/27/more-anti-covid-lockdown-protests-in-china-after-deadly-fire_6005772_4.html & https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3201146/more-zero-covid-protests-china-after-deadly-lockdown-fire-xinjiang & https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/28/china-netizens-censors-in-cat-and-mouse-game-amid-covid-protests?traffic_source=KeepReading & https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/03/china/china-covid-lanzhou-child-death-outrage-intl-hnk/index.html

[97-108] https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/education/chinese-students-an-extraordinary-stimulus-to-the-economy-20180809-h13qli & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48542913 & https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/december-2022/education-reliance-china/ & https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Economic-benefits-of-international-students-by-constituency-Final-11-01-2018.pdf & https://www.nber.org/digest/202212/contribution-international-students-us-labor-supply & https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-11-02/debates/3C4BEC2C-86AC-4508-85CF-16CD1B0AC9A9/InternationalStudentsContributionToTheUK & https://www.mpowerfinancing.com/blog/1-5-million-49-billion-counting-surge-international-students-generates-exponential-impact-u-s-canadian-economies & https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-students-economy-expl-idUSKBN2492VS & https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/trade-liberalization-and-chinese-students-us-higher-education.pdf & https://globalmigration.ucdavis.edu/devastating-economic-consequences-pushing-foreign-students-out-country & https://www.nafsa.org/policy-and-advocacy/policy-resources/nafsa-international-student-economic-value-tool-v2 & https://www.nafsa.org/sites/default/files/media/document/NAFSA_Methodology_Economic_Value_2022.pdf

[109] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505713.pdf

[110] https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jis/article/view/1893/930

[111-161] https://www.readingthechinadream.com/guo-yuhua-farewell-sina-weibo.html & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/release-10232020110759.html & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/publisher-sentence-02092021100358.html & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/professor-stopped-05082023171626.html & https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-and-china#.ZGE1HHbMJPZ & https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/21/china-government-threats-academic-freedom-abroad & https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/they-dont-understand-fear-we-have/how-chinas-long-reach-repression-undermines & https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/Chapter-Four-Jiang.pdf & https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/new-threats-to-academic-freedom/ & https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CESCR_China.pdf & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53567333 & https://www.readingthechinadream.com/jiang-shigong-probing-the-imaginary-world.html & https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/resources/free-to-think-2022/ & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20201120133357669 & https://theconversation.com/academic-freedom-is-paramount-for-universities-they-can-do-more-to-protect-it-from-chinas-interference-163647 & https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/they-dont-understand-fear-we-have/how-chinas-long-reach-repression-undermines & https://www.isanet.org/News/ID/6293/ISA-Statement-on-Academic-Freedom-and-Mobility-in-the-Peoples-Republic-of-China & https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/13/its-time-to-get-loud-about-academic-freedom-in-china/  & https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/22/hong-kong-university-academic-freedom-dissent-china/ & https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1294689.pdf & https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-universities-selfcensorship-china & https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/nobel-laureates-accuse-china-of-attempting-to-censor-taiwanese-chemist/4014112.article & https://www.npr.org/2020/01/20/796377204/chinese-universities-are-enshrining-communist-party-control-in-their-charters & http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/109554/1/dit_com_2018_01_04_the_chinese_communist_party_has_growing_sway_in.pdf & https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_voa-news-china_who-jailed-chinese-professor-xu-zhangrun/6192532.html & https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/authors/xu-zhangrun/ & https://thechinaproject.com/2022/08/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-xu-zhangrun/ & https://chinaheritage.net/xu-zhangrun-%e8%a8%b1%e7%ab%a0%e6%bd%a4/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Zhangrun & https://bitterwinter.org/wang-jiafang-falun-gong-professor-persecuted-for-23-years/ & https://www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net/china & https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-27/in-chinas-universities-targeted-attacks-on-intellectuals-raise-memories-of-the-cultural-revolution & https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/12/china-urged-disclose-location-uyghur-academic-tashpolat-tiyip & https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/02/china-un-experts-denounce-criminalization-linguistic-and-cultural-rights & https://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/docs/2001_03_05.pdf & https://chinaheritage.net/journal/my-tsinghua-lament/ & https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-imposes-national-security-risk-assessments-for-university/ & https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-csis-cautions-canadian-universities-to-be-on-alert-for-international/ & https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000113234.page=2 & https://www.umass.edu/senate/sites/default/files/Statement%20on%20Government%20of%20Colleges%20and%20Universities.pdf & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-charles-lieber & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/cracking-down-on-illegal-ties-to-china & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/china-made-me-do-it & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/the-thousand-traitors-program & https://www.nbr.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/publications/ustr_written_comments_301_tariffs-may2018.pdf & https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/170/fallacious-and-misleading-new-york-posts-attack-on-nyu-shanghai & https://www.vice.com/en/article/43k9jn/nyu-shanghai-quietly-added-pro-government-course-at-behest-of-chinese-government & http://oncenturyavenue.org/2020/02/nyu-shanghai-students-and-staff-respond-to-new-york-post-article-on-schools-self-censorship/ & https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/hong-kongs-contested-academic-freedom/ & https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/observations/multiple-challenges-hong-kongs-academic-freedom

[162-172] https://www.hrw.org/tag/mass-surveillance-china & https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/surveillance-state-social-control-in-china/ & https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-and-beyond-journalist-ventures-inside-chinas-surveillance-sta & https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Chinas-Surveillance-Ecosystem-The-Global-Spread-Of-Its-Tools.pdf & https://freedomhouse.org/report/china-media-bulletin/2021/chinas-information-isolation-new-censorship-rules-transnational & https://www.nchrd.org/2020/04/retired-professor-arrested-for-calling-covid19-ccp-virus/ & https://www.nchrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Persisting-in-Resisting.pdf & https://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/3EBA5A9B-6FD8-46EF-9DC5-7D47514AD56A/0/AAUPCAUTSTATEMENTOVERSEASCAMPUSESfinaltext.pdf & https://www.scmp.com/article/740532/beijing-slams-door-political-reform (the 5 no’s) & https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/china-ramps-up-central-planning-to-stifle-dissent_b_884435 (the 5 no’s) & https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/full-text-of-the-oxford-consensus-2013/ (contrast to the 5 no’s)

[173] https://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/3EBA5A9B-6FD8-46EF-9DC5-7D47514AD56A/0/AAUPCAUTSTATEMENTOVERSEASCAMPUSESfinaltext.pdf

[174] Magna Charta Universitatum 2020 — Observatory Magna Charta Universitatum (magna-charta.org)

[175] Signatory Universities — Observatory Magna Charta Universitatum (magna-charta.org)

[176-186] https://www.swisscore.org/trends-and-developments-in-academic-freedom/#:~:text=Academic%20freedom%20is%20a%20fundamental,European%20Universities%20Initiative%20(EUI). & https://www.the-guild.eu/publications/statements/the-guild_statement-on-academic-freedom_june-2021.pdf & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230411083503394 & https://eua.eu/news/1045:eua-outlines-university-perspective-on-defending-democracy.html & https://www.leru.org/publications/challenges-to-academic-freedom-as-a-fundamental-right & https://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/en/document/EPRS_STU(2023)740231 & https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/740231/EPRS_STU(2023)740231_EN.pdf & https://download.ei-ie.org/Docs/WebDepot/Academic%20Freedom%20and%20Its%20Protection%20in%20the%20Law%20of%20European%20States.pdf & https://www.leru.org/news/academic-freedom-in-europe-action-is-needed & https://www.csee-etuce.org/en/news/education-policy/5227-threats-to-academic-freedom-across-europe-a-new-european-parliament-report & https://esu-online.org/publications/report-survey-on-academic-freedom-institutional-autonomy-and-academic-integrity-from-a-student-perspective/

[187] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505713.pdf

[188] Good Lord Cape Breton | HESA (higheredstrategy.com)

[189] Cape Breton. Yet Again. | HESA (higheredstrategy.com)

[190] Cape Breton, You Have to be Kidding Me | HESA (higheredstrategy.com)

[191] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-13862552

[192-200] https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-many-colleges-and-universities-have-closed-since-2016/539379/?referrer_site=www.educationdive.com & https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/closed-colleges-list-statistics-major-closures/ & https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dozens-colleges-closed-abruptly-recent-years-efforts-protect-students-have-n1235617 & https://hechingerreport.org/with-higher-ed-in-crisis-the-lack-of-financial-oversight-is-glaring/ & https://dealstream.com/united-states/colleges-for-sale & https://www.buyingandsellingschools.com/College-Universities-For-Sale & https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2019/11/27/dawn-of-the-dead-for-hundreds-of-the-nations-private-colleges-its-merge-or-perish/?sh=548b65c9770d & https://www.chronicle.com/article/college-closures-2014-18/#id=all_all_all

[201-209] https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/chinese-money-is-flooding-into-american-higher-education-with-little-transparency/ & https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-china-bought-cambridge/ & https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshmoody/2018/10/19/chinese-companies-are-buying-up-closed-colleges/?sh=1681eada428a & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/schools-02252021125933.html & https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3209842/us-lawmaker-calls-review-private-schools-and-military-academies-owned-chinese-firms & https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/07/how-chinese-government-buying-its-way-uk-universities & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/cracking-down-on-illegal-ties-to-china & https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/illegal-ties-to-china-updated-september-29-2022.pdf & https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/illegal-ties-to-china-updated-september-29-2022.pdf

[210-215] https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/internationalization_policy_statement_0.pdf & https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/affirming_academic_values_in_internationalization_of_higher_education.pdf & https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000266241 & https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/10/26/essay-how-colleges-should-respond-racism-against-international-students and https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jis/article/view/1893 & https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jis/article/view/1893/930

[216-224] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/u-of-c-offends-chinese-government-1.898139 & https://qz.com/1064435/australian-professors-and-universities-are-being-shamed-into-apologizing-for-offending-chinese-students & https://www.foxnews.com/us/gwu-president-personally-offended-art-china-human-rights & https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2169440/chill-and-fear-classroom-students-are-recruited-report-teachers & https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/a-teacher-in-china-learns-the-limits-of-free-expression & https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/chinese-professor-removed-after-reports-from-informant-students/4464684.html & https://www.chronicle.com/article/instruction-under-surveillance & https://irp.fas.org/world/china/docs/cia-sis.pdf & https://2017-2021.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CCP-on-campus-FINAL.pdf

[225-227] https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/turning-a-blind-eye-to-chinese-malfeasance-does-not-advance-justice & https://www.ft.com/content/b6ce2cba-d7d5-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17 & https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/opposing_communist_chinese_spies_isnt_racist

[228-229] https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/138307/how-google-took-on-china-and-lost/ & https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2018/11/google-must-not-capitulate-to-chinas-censorship-demands/

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[304] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/asian-journal-of-law-and-society/article/rule-of-law-in-a-partystate-a-conceptual-interpretive-framework-of-the-constitutional-reality-of-china/95A25AD5F1E816ACB7BD46287A3E06B8

[305-313] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/09/cambridge-university-press-headed-for-showdown-with-china-over-censorship & https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/21/cambridge-university-press-to-back-down-over-china-censorship & https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-damaging-influence-and-exploitation-us-colleges-and-universities & https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-universities-selfcensorship-china & https://www.canta.co.nz/newsarticle/125916?newsfeedId=1453011 & https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41104634 & https://www.thefire.org/news/george-washington-university-recants-promise-uncover-chinese-government-critics-after-artists & https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/they-dont-understand-fear-we-have/how-chinas-long-reach-repression-undermines & https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-controls-its-top-students-in-germany/a-64901849

[314] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-students-labour-insight/inspired-by-metoo-student-activists-target-inequality-in-china-idUSKCN1LL0FB

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[354-360] Adjusted net national income per capita (current US$) - China | Data (worldbank.org) & https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3086678/china-rich-or-poor-nations-wealth-debate-muddied-conflicting & https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189968.shtml & https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/chin-a19.html & https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271 & https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Xi-Jinping-claims-victory-over-poverty-but-the-numbers-don%E2%80%99t-add-up-52449.html & https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Li-Keqiang-tells-provinces-to-tell-the-truth%e2%80%99-about-the-economy-51688.html

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[391-393] Double First-Class university and discipline list policy update (internationaleducation.gov.au) & The Chinese Double First Class University Plan (cwauthors.com)  & Implementation measures released for China’s new world-class university policy (internationaleducation.gov.au)

[394-397] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-17/australian-trade-tension-sanctions-china-growing-commodities/12984218 & https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/how-strained-china-australia-relations-hit-trade-coal-barley-beef-wine-2023-01-06/ & https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-trade-china-commodities-tim-idUSKBN287099 & https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/09/australia-china-decoupling-trade-sanctions-coronavirus-geopolitics/

[398] https://wenr.wes.org/2019/12/the-financial-risk-of-overreliance-on-chinese-student-enrollment

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[417] Education Service Exports (trade.gov)

[418] Australian international education ‘a cheap fix’ | Times Higher Education (THE)

[419] Canada's International Education Strategy (2019-2024)

[420] https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/05/16/international-students-boost-uk-economy-by-41-9-billion/

[421] https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/05/16/international-students-boost-uk-economy-by-41-9-billion/

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[434] China's "Double Reduction" Education Policy: A brief guide for Canadian companies (tradecommissioner.gc.ca)

[435-437] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-parents-fret-after-government-bans-for-profit-tutoring-firms-2021-07-26/ & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/03/chinas-crackdown-on-tutoring-leaves-parents-with-new-problems & https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738059322001031

[438-439] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013176 & https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2019-02/13/content_5365341.htm (in Chinese)

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[441-450] https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/working-paper-children-and-the-law-in-china-an-overview-of-recent-reforms/ & https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1243992.shtml & https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eat-sleep-love-xi-chinas-new-rules-for-parenting-zvlfpjq9g & https://www.businessinsider.com/china-draft-law-punish-parents-children-bad-behavior-2021-10 & https://reason.com/2023/01/18/actually-the-ccp-is-the-worst-co-parent-imaginable/ & https://as.cornell.edu/news/chinese-state-used-parent-child-relationships-serve-political-goals & http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/98164/1/Family%20Law%20in%20Action.pdf & https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-technology-business-health-games-ba88276e6f9089a3b9bc65fc19cc0880 & https://www.opendoorsus.org/en-US/stories/chinese-parents-religion-pledge/ & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/abortion-curbs-02102022131719.html

[451-459] https://thechinaproject.com/2022/03/08/chinas-education-reform-is-resulting-in-overworked-teachers/ & https://www.sohu.com/a/526653048_484992 (in Chinese) & https://www.ocerints.org/%20socioint22_e-publication/papers/Li%20Jie%20Wang.pdf & https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/31/parents-fears-are-the-chinese-communist-partys-biggest-nightmare/ & https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011185 & https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_16922632 (in Chinese) & http://ir.psych.ac.cn/handle/311026/39566 (in Chinese) & https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_16922632 (in Chinese) & https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1009380

[460] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013176

[461-463] https://thechinaproject.com/2022/03/08/chinas-education-reform-is-resulting-in-overworked-teachers/ & https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3142857/chinese-teacher-running-illegal-after-school & https://thechinaproject.com/2021/12/08/bad-news-beijing-kids-tutoring-is-back-and-its-free-for-everybody/

[464-470] https://www.thtf.com.cn/en/about_us.html & http://en.sasac.gov.cn/ & https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-authority-launches-probe-into-chinese-academic-database-cnki-2022-06-24/ & https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3177897/chinas-largest-academic-research-database-cnki-had-years-alleged-market & https://www.internationalhighereducation.net/api-v1/article/!/action/getPdfOfArticle/articleID/3552/productID/29/filename/article-id-3552.pdf & https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1265574.shtml & https://mlexmarketinsight.com/news/insight/chinese-academic-database-giant-cnki-fined-87-6-million-yuan-for-abuse-of-dominance-english-version & http://www.eyeshenzhen.com/content/2022-05/23/content_25144459.htm

[471-485] https://www.ucanews.com/news/china-tightens-grip-on-hong-kongs-education-system/96296 & https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1293246.pdf & https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/11/566909240/worries-grow-in-hong-kong-as-china-pushes-its-official-version-of-history-in-sch & https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/hongkong-lam-11252020091432.html & https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-05/hong-kong-orders-schools-to-teach-sweeping-pro-china-curriculum#xj4y7vzkg & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/15/new-hong-kong-textbooks-will-claim-city-never-was-a-british-colony & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210831131547216 & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/hong-kong-schools-in-crisis-as-teachers-and-students-flee-toxic-political-climate & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220128133638956 & https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220624172602552 & https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/22/hong-kong-university-academic-freedom-dissent-china/ & https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-10/hong-kong-s-brain-drain-worsens-as-expats-locals-flee-city#xj4y7vzkg & https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/18/asia/hong-kong-university-nsl-china-intl-hnk-dst/index.html & https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/22/hong-kong-education-beijing-colony/ & https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149374/1/Vickers%20Morris%20HK%20CE%20article.pdf