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First Letter: A

Academic Freedom

Written by Katja Drinhausen on .

Brief

The freedom to develop and disseminate knowledge and ideas is often regarded as indispensable for scientific and socio-economic progress. The UN treats academic freedom as a human right, one closely connected to freedom of expression. This includes access to information, institutional autonomy and the ability to share insights within institutions of learning and the public realm. Academic freedom faces multiple restrictions and challenges worldwide, including ethical, political, financial and security-related constraints. 

China officially lauds the ideal of academic freedom and its importance for progress, but requires adherence to Party-defined norms. Even as the country strives to be a global leader in science, it pursues an approach designed to keep ideological risks at bay and ensure that science serves national goals. In general, social sciences face stronger political restrictions while natural sciences benefit from significant freedom and financial support, with notable success in certain fields.

Analysis

The Party strives to secure China’s position as a global leader in science, talent and innovation by 2035. The PRC has more than 1,200 universities and invests heavily in the natural sciences and the build-up of elite research institutions and think tanks with global impact. In 2020, Xi Jinping stated that China should foster international exchange and become a centre for “scientific openness and cooperation.” But this openness is subject to political imperatives.

Early in its history, the Party staunchly advocated academic freedom, but it quickly moved to control China’s intelligentsia. Political movements, such as the Anti-Rightist Campaign in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the ‘60s and ‘70s, persecuted hundreds of thousands of scholars. Even after their rehabilitation in the late 1970s, institutions of higher learning remained under Party control—a principle that became further entrenched after the 1989 Tiananmen student protests.

That said, the 1990s and 2000s was a relatively open era when growing numbers of Chinese academics studied abroad. They brought new ideas and trends in scholarship back to China, from law to international relations, journalism and feminism. Political science and economic departments debated the role of the state, while even Party-run training schools welcomed foreign academics. The Party began tightening control in the late 2000s, culminating in Document No. 9, a communiqué circulated in 2013 that warned against threats emanating from “mistaken views and ideas in […] public lectures, seminars, and university classrooms.”

Universities should be ideological “strongholds” of the CCP. In line with Xi’s calls to uphold a “unity of academic freedom and norms”, the government increasingly promotes notions of responsibility (责任) and self-awareness (自觉) that place Party-state rationales at the centre of research and education. In 2019, Fudan University deleted a rare commitment to “freedom of thought” from its charter, joining other universities in including loyalty pledges to the CCP in their statutes. Universities have long been under a dual management system by a president, usually with strong academic credentials, and a parallel structure of Party secretaries and committees. In recent years, political steerage, monitoring of research and education, and vetting processes for international exchanges have substantially increased.

As China’s leadership regularly emphasises, research must support national strategic goals, contribute to breakthroughs in key areas and help build an autonomous knowledge system. Universities receive substantial funding for natural sciences, technology, and engineering. Social sciences in turn should support the development of an “academic discourse system with Chinese characteristics” (学术话语体系) that highlights the advantages of China’s political system and approaches.

The retreat of human rights scholars after 2015, the disbandment of student groups advocating for workers’ rights, and repeated censorship of economists since 2022 reflect expanding red lines. The Hong Kong student activism in the 2010s and the White Paper protests in 2022 likely boosted new measures to ensure “ideological security”, including patriotic education curricula and expanding censorship. The growing political pressure reverberates beyond China’s borders and can impact research, publications and campus activities abroad.

Nonetheless, scholars and experts in China continue to explore and debate a wide range of issues.In areas where scientific progress is desired, China often offers more freedom than other countries. Availability of large datasets, public funding, and limited restrictions e.g. on stem cell research as well as support for new technologies such as AI have helped make China a leader in many fields and desirable counterpart in research collaboration.

Aid

Written by Marina Rudyak on .

Brief

In Europe, as in other major industrialised donor countries, aid is broadly understood as the transfer of resources from rich (donor) to poorer (developing) countries to promote social and economic development. A common view is that aid should be charitable, or at least contain a gift element, though in practice it has often been shaped by the political, strategic, and economic interests of donors.

In Chinese usage, by contrast, “aid” is largely conceived as mutual and reciprocal. Official discourse distinguishes between Western “development aid” (发展援助) and Chinese “foreign aid” (对外援助) to stress that China is not a “donor country”. Instead, it defines its aid as South-South Cooperation, framed in terms of “equality”, “friendship” and “mutual benefit”. While aid may be reciprocated directly through goods or resources, politically, it is linked to relational power: recipients are expected to return the favour by supporting Chinese positions, for example in international organisations.

Analysis

The first recipients of Chinese foreign aid were North Korea and North Vietnam in 1950. After the Bandung Conference of 1955, aid was extended to recently decolonised countries. From the outset, it was a strategic tool to help break China’s international isolation: economic aid was reciprocated with diplomatic recognition, and vice versa. Zhou Enlai explained in 1956 that despite China’s poverty it was helping others because “we have understood that economic independence is fundamental to political independence” – meaning independence from the West. On a 1964 tour of ten African countries, Zhou promulgated the “Eight Principles of Chinese Foreign Aid”, the core of which – that aid should not be tied to any political conditions except for the non-recognition of Taiwan – still applies today. Foreign aid also helped the PRC secure the China seat in the UN in 1971 with the support of developing countries, while Taiwan was excluded.

With Reform and Opening in 1978, high levels of aid spending came under scrutiny, as China – then among the world’s 20 poorest countries – needed the scarce resources for its ambitious development. Yet Deng Xiaoping concluded that giving aid was a strategic necessity. In 1980, the State Council noted, referring to China’s UN accession: “China helped others, and they supported us [in return]. The international status China has achieved is inseparable from the support of friendly countries.”[1] The assumption was that since aid was reciprocated in the past, it would be reciprocated in the future. Following this logic, Chinese aid rose sharply again after 1989, when international sanctions followed the Tiananmen Square crackdown and Taiwan sought to re-enter the UN in 1990. To this day, Chinese officials stress to African leaders how grateful China is to “African friends who supported China […] in restoring its rightful seat in the United Nations.”

In Chinese discourse, “aid” is a broadly defined concept: almost anything within the logic of “you need it – we have it” can be called aid. It can mean helping countries fight poverty, or foreign investment and construction by Chinese companies supported by export subsidies. Since aid is often bundled with trade and investment, all Chinese development finance, whether commercial or concessional, may appear as aid to recipients. Official Development Assistance (ODA) databases in Cambodia and the Philippines, for instance, include both concessional loans and non-aid preferential export buyer’s credits from China. This makes Chinese aid appear bigger than it actually is, also relative to DAC donors.

The Chinese approach to aid is pragmatic rather than charitable. A controversy that illustrates the different understandings erupted early in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when China sent protective gear to Italy labelled “The friendship road knows no borders.” While Italy’s Five Star Movement presented it as a “gift”, journalists accused China of masking commerce as generosity. Yet, Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that China was willing to provide aid by exporting medical supplies despite domestic shortages – suggesting the misunderstanding lay with Europe. For China, export was aid.

When giving aid, China certainly expects reciprocation. But by ascribing to developing countries the ability to reciprocate, it symbolically creates relations of equals – a dimension often overlooked in the West.

[1] Party Literature Research Centre of the CCPCC (PLRC). 1982. “中共中央、国务院关于认真做好对外援助工作的几点意见 (1980 年 11 月 8 日)”  [Several Suggestions by the CCPCC and the State Council on Doing Good Work in Foreign Aid (8 November 1980)]. In: 三中全会以来重要文献汇编 第1卷 [Collection of Important Documents since the Third Plenum. Volume 1], 727–29. Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe.

Autonomy

Written by Jerker Hellström on .

Brief

While the term “autonomy” lacks a generally accepted definition in international law, it is often understood as political or governmental autonomy, i.e., self-government or independence of action at the internal or domestic level.

Through a compromise between the sovereign state and peoples who strive for self-determination, states may use autonomy arrangements to protect their territorial integrity while safeguarding the rights of minorities, and to avoid discord. However, governments differ in their compliance with such commitments. State actors striving to assert more control over autonomous areas in the name of national unity and territorial integrity may, for example, see a need to limit the degree of autonomy of self-ruling groups.

For its part, the Chinese government has continuously redefined the concept of autonomy and what it entails. Tibet, Xinjiang, and three other Chinese regions hold the official status of being “autonomous” within the People’s Republic of China. The PRC government has promised that Hong Kong would enjoy a “high degree of autonomy” from Beijing and made similar vows to the citizens of Taiwan should they ever embrace the Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership. Nevertheless, China’s redefinition of autonomy in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong has prompted scepticism over its ability to deliver on its promises of autonomy to the people of Taiwan.

Analysis

Some of the first states to establish institutions of formal autonomy were socialist regimes.  According to CCP policy, China’s ethnic minorities enjoy regional autonomy in communities where they live in higher concentration – “under the unified leadership of the state”. Moreover, Chinese law stipulates that a governor of an autonomous region must belong to the ethnic minority which exercises autonomy.

Nevertheless, actual power rests not with the governors but with the regional Party Secretaries, who have almost exclusively belonged to the Han majority population. Chinese legal scholar Yu Xingzhong concludes that the political system specified in the PRC Autonomy Law “certainly does not correspond to what is usually understood [by] the term ‘autonomy’”.

The CCP in 1951 signed an agreement with Tibetan representatives in which it promised the Tibetan people the right to exercise national regional autonomy under the PRC government. The Tibetan government with the Dalai Lama as its head would govern the Tibet Autonomous Region, but it eventually became evident that it was merely a transitional and temporary arrangement which would not involve the preservation of Tibet’s political, religious and social institutions. The Dalai Lama’s subsequent call for “genuine autonomy” (within the PRC) has been dismissed by Beijing as an attempt to overthrow its grip on power.

The “autonomous” institutions of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), strongly resemble those in China’s other autonomous regions. For instance, Xinjiang’s People’s Congress is subject to central veto power, and China’s supreme court retains supervisory power over courts in the region. The Party-state’s efforts to fight the so-called “three forces” (三股势力) – separatism, extremism and terrorism – in Xinjiang have further decreased the prospects for genuine autonomy. Rather than responding to calls for dialogue on the issue of autonomy, Beijing has adopted hard-line policies involving large-scale arbitrary detention of members of Muslim minority groups and other measures which “may constitute … crimes against humanity” according to a UN assessment.

For Hong Kong, the Chinese government vowed to preserve its way of life for at least fifty years after the handover in 1997, according to the “one country, two systems” formula, and a “high degree” of autonomy. PRC laws would, by and large, not apply in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and mainland officials were not to interfere in the regional government’s affairs. Nevertheless, the Chinese foreign ministry in 2017 stated that the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 – by which the PRC had vowed to maintain Hong Kong’s autonomy – was “not at all binding for the central government’s management over Hong Kong”.  The Chinese regime has in recent years restricted basic rights in the HKSAR, with reference to four vaguely defined crimes: secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign forces.

Beijing’s position on Taiwan is that it will eventually unify the de facto independent territory with the PRC, but that it will enjoy an autonomous status similar to that of the HKSAR. The Chinese government’s deviation from its original promises to Hong Kongers, Tibetans and Uyghurs on the issue of autonomy has however contributed to scepticism among Taiwan’s citizens towards the proposed “high degree” of autonomy, should they one day be governed by the PRC.

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