Chinese students and academics at UK universities face a “partial replication” of their home country’s “repressive surveillance dynamic”,?leading to widespread intimidation and self-censorship in China-related studies, a new report has warned.
The report,?“”, published by UK?China Transparency (UKCT), paints a picture of a field under acute strain, with academics reporting harassment from visiting scholars, pressure from university administrators to avoid sensitive topics and an atmosphere of pervasive surveillance, particularly affecting Chinese nationals in the UK.
“For Chinese nationals involved in China studies here (as students or as academics), it amounts to a partial replication on British campuses of the repressive dynamic within China itself,” states the report, which is based on 50 detailed survey responses from China studies scholars across British higher education.
One respondent describes a situation where Chinese students said that they had been approached by Chinese police and asked to monitor events at their UK university.
Another academic reports that students describe surveillance as “omnipresent”, with some subjected to debriefing interviews by officials upon returning to China.
The report also highlights cases of direct harassment. In one instance, a scholar researching sensitive topics was approached by a visiting academic from China who whispered “We’re watching you” during an event, and later interrogated the scholar about their personal history.
Another respondent recounts a severe campaign of online harassment targeting their work.
Among respondents who teach modules with Chinese national students – about three-quarters of the sample – 11?per?cent said they had altered their teaching to avoid classroom tensions or students going silent on sensitive topics.
Additionally, 58?per?cent agreed that engaging with sensitive topics made it more difficult to obtain or maintain visas for China-based fieldwork, while 12?per?cent disagreed.
While interference is a recurring theme, the report stresses that these dynamics are uneven across institutions.
“There is resilience,” it says, with slightly more respondents saying their university did enough to support safe engagement on sensitive topics than those who felt unsupported.
UKCT attributes part of the problem to universities’ financial dependence on tuition fees from Chinese students.
Sixty-four?per cent of respondents believed that this dependency influenced how administrators weighed the importance of maintaining relationships with China, compared with 16 per cent who disagreed.
Furthermore, 22?per?cent said they had been told administrators factor China relations into decisions, 10?per?cent knew it implicitly, and 52?per?cent denied such influence.
Overall, 38?per?cent felt that concerns about China relations have made it harder to pursue original investigative research, while 46?per?cent did not share that view.
The report describes these issues as a “sub-crisis” of the broader financial instability facing the UK’s higher education sector, suggesting that underfunding and over-reliance on international student income have left universities vulnerable to external pressures from authoritarian states.
“Some expressions of these problems appear to be caused or exacerbated by financial dependence on China,” the report warns.
“In this respect, the issues in China studies are a sub-crisis of the broader financial crisis in the HE sector.”
UKCT’s findings coincide with new guidance from the Office for Students (OfS), which advises universities that partnerships requiring ideological vetting of academic staff – such as Confucius Institute arrangements – might be incompatible with UK regulations on academic freedom.
UKCT had submitted extensive evidence to?OfS?consultations, and the report highlights the need for sector-wide safeguards against foreign interference.
A spokesperson for UKCT said the situation demands systemic change: “If we want to safeguard academic freedom in China studies, we need greater transparency in foreign partnerships, stronger sector-wide protocols, and a reduction in universities’ financial vulnerabilities.”
A Chinese embassy spokesperson told the BBC that the country had always adhered to its policy of not interfering with other countries’ internal affairs. THE ?approached the embassy for further comment.
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