By Niall McCrae:
The VC was in his counting house, counting all his money. Four hundred and one, four hundred and two, four hundred and three thousand. The top of the Ivory Towers is a highly remunerative position, as the incumbent gains reward for the painstaking work of scholars and students below. And vice-chancellors can satisfy themselves with their contribution to a progressive, multicultural world.
British universities have plunged into China, gaining a steady flow of fee-paying students while developing collaborative ventures with Chinese institutions. The tremendous talent and industriousness of the hundred thousand Chinese students in Britain boosts university performance in the global league rankings. Walk into the canteen of a leading university and you will hear as much Mandarin spoken as English. Tower blocks of apartments have been built for Chinese students, most of whom integrate very little with the host country and culture.
From the perspective of the Communist Party of China (CCP), students are not merely individual people seeking knowledge and a gateway to a fulfilling career, but foot-soldiers for spreading Chinese influence across the world. Confucius Institutes, of which 29 exist in the UK, are ostensibly to promote cultural relations, but they are also engaged in CCP propaganda.
In November 2019 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Tom Tugendhat MP, issued a scathing report on universities’ failure to defend academic values in the course of tapping into the Chinese market. The Russell Group of leading British universities denied any evidence of Chinese interference, but the committee noted ‘alarming evidence about the extent of Chinese influence on the campuses of UK universities’. Hong Kong protestors are intimidated, any mention of Taiwan is suppressed, and some Chinese students are reported to the embassy or state authorities.
Many commentators suggest that the coronavirus pandemic will bring globalisation to a shuddering halt. But I’m not so sure. If anything, it is likely that Chinese students will be sought more than ever in the dire economic aftermath of the Covid-19 shutdown (while fewer places will be available for British school-leavers). And China will gladly send them.
University administrators keenly promoted the EU and demonised Brexit as an inward-looking, xenophobic act of self-harm. They moralised the debate, associating the Remain side with tolerance, inclusivity, multiculturalism and openness. But their progressive ideology seems to be forgotten when dealing with China, a secretive surveillance state that persecutes minorities and pollutes the planet. Vice-chancellors and academic staff are too busy attacking Trump to worry about the more blatant dictatorship of President Xi. The ogre in the White House is a shared enemy.
As a senior lecturer at a London university, I have some experience of how Chinese state abuses are conveniently ignored. My healthcare faculty is heavily involved in a partnership with a Chinese university linked to a major city hospital. This huge, modern hospital is involved in the lucrative global organ transplant business. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but…
For some years I have been a member of a parliamentary campaign against organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China, chaired by Jim Shannon MP and Lord Alton. Falun Gong followers and Uighur Muslims are particularly targeted, the latter for halal organs. Unlike in other countries with voluntary donor systems, bodily parts are readily available. I have written on this Gothic horror in the Epoch Times and Salisbury Review.
One day, I spoke to a colleague about the organ harvesting scandal, and my unease with the faculty dealing with a hospital engaged in this immoral activity. This colleague had the ear of a senior member of the faculty, whose response was a shrug of the shoulders. Undoubtedly my knowing too much would have barred me from any faculty trip to China, although I would have refused on principle anyway.
The Foreign Affairs Committee recommended a system of sanctions for any organisations or individuals found to be acting against academic values. Instead of pursuing global commercialisation at any cost, universities must retrieve their moral compass and assert Enlightenment values of freedom of speech, democracy and justice. However, universities must face the consequences of appeasing China.
We did not do business with Nazi Germany or the USSR, so why do so with the brutal totalitarian People’s Republic of China?
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