Overseas universities, not trade war, are the front line of China's rivalry with Western democracies

China has spent extensively to ensure that its point of view is heard on campuses in Western democracies. The problem is that it is also attempting to silence alternative views, and willing to use threats and violence to do so

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Supporters of China in Vancouver take part in a rally calling for an end to the violence in Hong Kong on August 17. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 12:00pm, 13 Nov 2019Updated: 12:51pm, 13 Nov 2019

Someday, perhaps soon, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump will sign an agreement resolving the US-China trade war. But the trade dispute has exposed more fundamental cleavages between China and the community of democratic nations.

The most important clashes between China and the West concern not soybean exports nor the protection of patents, but free expression and open inquiry. Nowhere are those clashes taking place more vigorously than on university campuses.

Consider the case of Nathan Law Kwun-chung, the Hong Kong student who became a leader in the city’s 2014 “umbrella movement”. Law was jailed for his activism and barred from legislative politics, but was accepted into a graduate programme at Yale University. In New Haven, 8,000 miles from home, Law began to receive death threats on social media.

One post, purportedly from a group of Chinese students in America, called for an organised campaign of harassment against him. Another threatened to dismember him. Law has had to receive special security protection – unusual for a graduate student. Hong Kong students in Melbourne rallying in support of this summer’s pro-democracy protests were physically assaulted by students from the mainland. Chinese government-funded student groups have vociferously protested against appearances by the Dalai Lama on California campuses.

All this illustrates the difficulty of reconciling an authoritarian system with the robust protection of free speech – the hallmark of higher education in democratic countries.

The warning signs of Chinese influence over campus discourse have been visible for years. Protests against the Dalai Lama date to 2008, linked to groups of students controlled and funded by Chinese embassies and consulates in the West. Foreign Policy found several instances where the Chinese government paid students to attend events with top government officials such as Xi and Hu Jintao.

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