Chinese students are not free. Richard Stonehouse - WPA Pool/Getty Images
“Surreal.” This was how Professor Michelle Shipworth described her ordeal at University College London, after a Chinese student complained about an innocuous presentation slide on slavery in China. Instead of leaping to her defence, UCL accused her of being anti-Chinese and endangering its lucrative income from Chinese students. After she was banned from teaching her “provocative” energy and social sciences course, her case was taken up by the Free Speech Union, which presented documentary evidence of what they called “undue deference to the sensitivity of some Chinese students that is utterly incompatible with academic freedom”.
Shipworth is not the first to run into trouble. And that’s because the problem is more profound than many realise. Many universities need these students. Were their fees to disappear entirely from Britain, with no other income found to replace them, many institutions would go under within a year or two. Some universities will even accept Chinese students without proper qualifications or basic English-language skills, so great is their desire for the fees.
Sometimes, issues arise because many Chinese students have been moulded by the jingoistic politics of authoritarian China. Xi Jinping’s promises to deliver the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and “Reunification of the Ancestor-land” make Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra seem gentle by comparison. The emotion this inspires can move people to respond aggressively to perceived slights upon China’s character. Such displays of nationalism may be sincere, or they may be a means of improving one’s own reputation, fishing for a reward or promotion, or going viral on CCP-controlled social media. Universities should back academics in the face of pressure from these nationalists.
The problem, however, is more complicated than a bunch of young chauvinists making noise on UK campuses. As the charity I run, UK-China Transparency, has shown, the CCP has institutionalised its presence at British universities. Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) are present on roughly 100 British campuses. Most are formally registered as student societies under the authority of university student unions and typically describe themselves as “branches” of a central UK CSSA based at the Chinese embassy in London. This acts as an overseas office for an organisation controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, which conducts influence operations abroad and was name-checked by MI5 in 2022. Most CSSAs publicly admit — though sometimes only in official documents published in Mandarin — that they are under the “guidance”, “control” or “leadership” of the embassy, which runs training programmes and networking events for CSSA leaders.
We also have Confucius Institutes on 30 campuses. These centres are typically organised as partnerships between one Chinese university, one British university and the Chinese government. Although nominally for language teaching, they have in fact been involved in a whole range of activities, from events in Parliament to teaching undergraduate courses. One teaches Chinese traditional medicine and offers massages to the general public, for a fee. UK-China Transparency has shown how staff from China teaching in British Institutes have to follow CCP “discipline” rules that would oblige them to inform on university members if requested. Rishi Sunak promised to ban them but, as former foreign secretary James Cleverly admitted in an interview, the decision was reversed because of fears about CCP retaliation.
And if that’s not “surreal” enough, consider the China Scholarship Council’s footprint in Britain. This Chinese government body gives stipends to hundreds of PhD scholars in the UK, selecting them on the basis of their political leanings as well as their academic merit. British universities then pay these scholars’ fees. Like CSSAs, scholarship recipients are formally obliged to accept “guidance and management” from Chinese diplomats in the UK — with penalties imposed on them and their families if they fail to do so or otherwise negatively impact China’s national security. As with Confucius Institutes and CSSAs, all these expectations are spelled out in official documents — in Mandarin.
Meanwhile, the CCP has active eyes and ears on British campuses in the form of party members, which includes, for example, many visiting academics. All CCP members have taken an admission oath, by which they vow to obey the CCP, uphold its “discipline” and guard CCP secrets. They agree to act on the CCP’s behalf, and face special sanctions and punishments if they fail to do so, along with rewards for good behaviour.
Although the subject receives periodic attention from politicians, this scandal has essentially been ignored for a decade or more. Britain is only now beginning to come to terms with the CCP’s presence on our campuses. Likened by one scholar to a “python in the chandelier”, the Party is always looming — even if it strikes only occasionally. And it is those students and academics with family in China who feel most keenly the CCP’s presence. Most simply self-censor, knowing that their university is not a “safe space” for free discussion. Better to keep schtum than say something about Tibet or democracy in China which is reported back, because the consequences can be dire.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe“Were their fees to disappear entirely from Britain, with no other income found to replace them, many institutions would go under within a year or two.”
Then they’re not much cop as academic institutions, are they? Let them find another source of students, or let them fold.
I was about to make the same point. It’s not just Chinese students: the expansion of higher education by the Blair government and the subsequent establishment of student loans has turned university education into a disaster. The rise of wokery on campus is not an accident: it is the inevitable consequence of the altered funding model that has turned students from grant recipients into paying customers, who consequently now hold a balance of power over universtity administrators and academics that is the reverse of what used to exist.
The point is that there are too many people in higher education and far too many courses that do not contain sufficient academic rigour to deserve the distinction of degree status. The sector needs to be stripped back to the point where the economy can afford a grant system, and get rid of student loans.
Excellent point.
Universities now teach students what to think; not how to think.
Expansion of pseudo University education is one big con.
In order to participate in any serious degree level education, especially STEM, you need IQ of at least 110 (most likely 115).
So it is statistically impossible for close to 50% of the given age cohort to do proper degree, unless:
1) you lower academic standards, especially in STEM subjects.
2) you create subjects for morons like gender studies, African studies, making nursing or video editing into degree etc.
Exactly. And then invest in developing technical skills, right from the early years, that moves into a comprehensive apprenticeship system. Education is hopelessly obsessed with academia and so many pupils who are not academic – particularly boys – have ‘intelligent hands’ that need and deserve technical training.
Universities arose to provide an environment where scholars could communicate and collaborate. Now we have the Internet. That doesn’t mean we don’t need any universities, just many fewer and more specialised.
Like the decadent and enervated Romans of the Jubilee period of the High Papacy we have discovered that we can live off the glories of our ancestors and charge visitors for the privilege of visiting.
The late Duke of Edinburgh once said, ‘tourism is a form of national prostitution’ – What might he have said of mortgaging the inetllectual autonomy of our ancient universities in this way?
Its hard to believe that UCL , one of our leading academic institutions with a worldwide reputation would go under in a year or two . We are fed more lies as usual. I an utterly sick of it.
Why do you find that hard to believe?
‘Reputation is the empty noise of fools’ as the Anti-Academician once said
One can’t be certain, of course, but the best figures I can find are that UCL has about 15000 Chinese students, contributing about £500k of tuition fee income, more than half the £800k total. The institution runs at about £100k surplus. So if the Chinese students disappeared overnight, it would certainly be a major shock. But the article said “many”, not “all”.
Do you mean 15,000 Chinese students? I just read an article in The Critic that said there were 10,000 Chinese students that make up about 25 percent of the student population at UCL.
..
You numbers do not make any sense, sorry.
15k of Chinese students would generate at least 450 million of annual income if you apply usual foreign student fee of 30k per year?
I think his k’s are meant to be m’s.
It might no ‘go under’ but were the number of foreign students drastically cut the financial shortfall would necessitate accepting students with lower academic qualifications and potential. The result would cause a rapid decline in reputation.
But article and many other sources claim that problem is poor quality of foreign students on average.
UK universities developed global reputation when they were very few foreign students, never mind from non English speaking countries.
I remember when I worked as a teaching co-ordinator at UCL up until 10 years ago, that one of our MSc courses was almost cancelled because there went enough students. Suddenly, the numbers increased with a huge influx of Chinese students.
Overseas applications from places like Brazil and the Middle East dried up because those students went home and taught in their own universities, which is fair enough, however, the gap has been filled with Chinese students. Universities cannot afford to turn them away.
The sad thing is that UK and European students are not encouraged to join because they don’t bring enough money to the university.
Well you don’t know about Michael Spence who was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sydney before moving to UCL. Spence turned UoS into a business with much talk about the university’s “brand”, allowed the entry standard to decline to accommodate foreign students and allowed all sorts of China friendly activity, including take-overs of student representative organisations.
Perfect for UCL to develop policies that led to Michelle Shipworth’s ordeal.
I have to agree John. If you rely on ‘dirty’ money and a culture of fear to survive then you have no right to call yourself a place of higher learning….you are simply an academic s**t!
Great. So why not just sell them a degree from a real UK university without the tedious business of having them come here, and pretending to examine them?
We could just sell them the certificates and they can go away happy to mum and dad with their Imperial College degree in engineering or whatever. Just make sure not to offer them a job here.
Come on, one has to keep up appearances…
In answer to your first sentence, good I’d say, there are FAR too many universities in the UK.
Having taught at KCL for 25 years, before leaving in 2018, I must say, the Singaporean students we had were delightful, free-thinking and not at all ideological. Looks like I got out just in time.I dread to think what it’s like now.
UCL, Imperial, Warwick, etc are all top-flight Universities and have plenty of Chinese students. The problem is that the (UK) fees nowhere near cover the cost of running the Universities. Let them in and take their money but if they act up, send ’em packing. The brand value is too valuable to them and Chinse Universities are sh£t. They’ll keep coming.
Surely the plan is to send students to prestigious universities only until there are enough qualified graduates returning to teach in Chinese universities. Then the spigot will be turned off and students will be expected to attend those Chinese universities. It might not happen in 10 or 20 years, but the seeds are being sown. Dangerous to build an academic economy on something with a use-by date.
Let’s forget issue of universities funding in uk and consider long term problem.
Why would you train your enemy to defeat you economically if not militarily?
How come all the uk universities survived before huge influx of foreign students, which only happened in the last 20 years?
What about shutting down at least half of Mickey Mouse universities in UK and allocating money to good ones?
Just because John Major never got degree and felt compelled to create universities for morons like him, does mean we should carry on with his daft idea.
Close 90% of them down. Demolish the buildings and salt the earth .Most of them are the enemies of free speech and of freedom itself.
Toadies of an ancien regime we no longer need in this country.
“Displaying “White Paper” remains a sign of protest.”
Something I have considered here too, to be honest.
You know you’ve slipped from Great Power status when you become an arena for the imperial ambitions of other nations.
London has become like 1920s Shanghai. It is now a passive recipient of others instead of an actor on the world stage. What a disaster.
Starting with the 1922 Washington Disarmament Treaty and the severing of the Anglo-Japanese Naval Alliance.
It’s kinda been that way since the end of WWII. History books five centuries from now will record that the USA and USSR basically divided Europe between themselves and integrated them into their economic and political empires. Insignificant details like the names of the minor nations and their theoretical independence will be largely forgotten.
The difference is that USA did it successfully and Soviets did not, as proven by the collapse of Soviet Block and USSR.
Love the comment! 🙂
Since WWII Britain’s foreign policy has been made in the USA, like Germany’s. And that of the rest of Europe. Boosted post-1991. Now, that’s what you have to call real power and influence. WWI being the real inflection point.
All true but institutions and countries with backbones can push back e.g.
1/ The Australian economy is dependent on exports to China and has been subject to threats and sanctions but the Australian outrage at Chinese tactics ensured that Australia emerged as one of the most vehement opponents of Chinese expansionism and extra territorial interference. The work of the United Front department within the Chinese community in Australia caused particular offence.
2/ The most important Chinese influence operation was the attempt to castrate US academic research into contemporary China by refusing visas and access to any even mildly critical analysts thus ensuring widespread self censorship. Nevertheless Trump and Navarro ignored the pro Chinese line, reversed US policy, imposed duties on Chinese exports and successfully encouraged US companies to disengage from China.
My impression is that we have passed peak Chinese abrasive arrogance at least for the time being. After the 2008 crisis the Chinese began to regard the West as a spent force. After 2012 and the election of Xi Jinping, they embraced the view that Chinese global supremacy was imminent and began to throw their weight around. Under Obama, there was little reaction which only encouraged them. The appearance of deliberately abrasive “wolf warrior diplomacy” represented perhaps the high water mark. Since 2017, however, China has paid a significant and growing economic price and more recently have drawn the appropriate conclusions. There is no longer room for own goals. Since 2022, normal diplomacy has resurfaced.
I am not normally a fan of assertiveness courses but in this case perhaps all U.K. Vice Chancellors need to be sent on one. They should learn how to defend their values if their universities are not to come to be regarded with contempt. In the current more pragmatic phase of Chinese behaviour , they may have more opportunity for push back than they realise.
‘PUNCH’ had the right idea in 1903.:-
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQj7Kp4s5amVGELrRAreJviIWt5nHFUQWuJ96oJmAtk3w&s
Em … 9th may 1857: punch185 (better picture)
Thank you, I couldn’t find a better image! And was dubious about the 1903 accreditation given the mode of dress etc!
New Chinese leaders have short hair.
Duplication.
Very well said! One correction for your final para: you don’t need a course to teach assertiveness; only to teach you how to identify as being assertive.
The Australian economy is also dependent on Chinese exports (since little is made here anymore). The housing market is propped up by Chinese purchasers (even if many houses and flats sit empty) and the academic market is propped up by Chinese students. Many courses at our best universities are given over to group work, with the results shared evenly. That way, in at least some instances, people without the necessary language skills get carried along by those who are willing and able to do the work. Having said that, many of our overseas students are the best and brightest, and a real delight to teach.
“Some universities will even accept Chinese students without proper qualifications or basic English-language skills, so great is their desire for the fees”.
The writer doesn’t name any of these universities, and in 19 years working with Chinese students whose parents want them to study in UK universities, they have always had to provide proof of both academic qualifications, the Gaokao for undergraduates and a bachelor degree for post-graduate study and an acceptable international English language test certificate, usually IELTS (The International English Language Testing System). The same proof has to be submitted to the Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration in order to obtain their student visa.
Many universities also provide pre-session English language courses.
Finally, according to student statistics released by UK Higher Education for 2021/22, the UK’s highest number of international students came from China, with 151,690 students enrolled.
A student of mine studying a science bachelor degree at a Scottish university pays annual tuition fees of over £27,000.
Don’t be a schmuck. Go visit any campus in any western country and strike up a conversation with some random Chinese students and put their “certified” English language schools to the test. Then go talk to the professors who are pressured to give passing grades to those English-proficient Chinese students. It’s not particularly reassuring that you would be content to surrender centuries of cultural and political evolution at £27,000 a shot.
With deference to your regard for the unimpeached integrity the King’s English, I don’t think you do your cause any service by your indulgence in coarse guttersnipe Americanisms.
I am always interested to hear what people have to offer on these responses, especially when it comes from personal experience. Yourself included. But you do yourself a disservice.
That’s a bit harsh, it was only his opening sentence after all.
The second sentence could also have been improved upon but otherwise he was factual and succinct, and crucially, CORRECT, don’t you think?
You seem more interested in whinnying about how frightful Mr Anjim’s Americanisms are than paying attention to what he said. It was crisp, direct and clear. Perhaps you didn’t like it. The problem is yours.
Sir, I challenge you to prove that the English-language requirements are generally taken seriously by the academic institutions. The anecdotal evidence of foreign students, hopefully lost because of their language shortocming, suggests the opposite.
This cheap essay by Sam is political, way beneath the usual standards of this journal. My guess is you’re talking here to our own state security services, the flip side of Sam’s target.
We all assumed you retired, Chinese stooge.
Your fairy tale of foreign students amazing English language skills does not line up with experience of anyone who spoke to them (and there are many foreign students in London).
Even if their language skills were amazing, why would anyone in the West want to train enemy combatants who want to defeat us economically if not militarily?
“Sometimes, issues arise because many Chinese students have been moulded by the jingoistic politics of authoritarian China”.
We are not told about the content of the ‘innocuous presentation slide’, however, in 1979, the year of ‘opening up’, China was one of the poorest countries in the world. In 1978 real per capita GDP in China was only one-fortieth of the USA level and one-tenth the Brazilian level.
Today China is second only to the United States.
As for ‘authoritarian’, In his book “Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress”, Steven Pinker quotes Johan Norberg:
“The Chinese people today can live almost however they like, buy a home, choose an education, pick a job, start a business, belong to a church, (as long as they are Buddhists, Taoist, Muslims, Catholics or Protestants), dress as they like, marry whom the like, be openly gay without ending up in a labour camp, travel abroad freely and even criticise aspects of the Party’s policies, (though not its right to rule unopposed).”
Having lived over nine years in the country since 2002 I tend to agree with Johan Norberg who’s a Swedish author and historian of ideas, devoted to promoting economic globalization and what he describes as classical liberal positions. He is arguably most known as the author of “In Defense of Global Capitalism and Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future”.
Thank you for this first hand perspective.
CCP shill.
What a propagandist you are
Try criticizing the CCP and see where it gets you.
‘buy’ a home w/ a 70 year lease from the CCP
Liakoura: in your second and third paragraphs, you conflated per-capita GDP with total GDP. They are grossly different measurements. Were you trying to confuse readers? To be clear: Americans are on average much more wealthy than Chinese. China is nowhere near the top of the list for per-capita GDP.
Johan Norberg, like you, is another of Lenin useful idiots.
You say he is devoted to economic globalisation.
But economic globalisation is only beneficial to maybe 20% of people in the West.
There is no long term value to the West in the world dominated by China.
You are just willing to give free pass to Chinese dictatorship for few crumbs from their table.
These views are unacceptable to Westerners, irrespective of the madness, chaos and financial mismanagement of Western countries.
Your comment reminds me of a recent interview in Moscow about the sham election of Putin. A member of the Russian public was asked what she thought about not having a viable alternative to Putin on the ballot paper. The interviewee asked back with obvious irritation: “Why do you expect us to do what YOU do? Why do you expect that what is right for YOU, is right for us? We are not like you, and we don’t like you very much.”
The ills of the West are far more divisive, metastasised, amorphous, and hence more damaging, than what I escaped from in the late 1980s in a communist country in Europe.
Two years before the wall came down the signs of communism failing were obvious, so after Chernobyl I escaped to get my kids to safety expecting a far bloodier transition, than what transpired, went through refugee camp etc. to settle in Australia.
Australia has the pristine reputation of a highly advanced Western democracy. We have all the institutions, all the laws, regulations, transparency structures, all the reports, all the budgetary evidence of a law-abiding heaven on Earth. This facade is so perfect, I lived within a 10km radius in Melbourne 1988-2008 from where a stalker’s onslaught of crimes against me started in 2009, and knew nothing of Australia’s absurd crime reality. Hungary is of course a very imperfect country now, and her shortcomings were evident to everyone 30-40 years ago.
I was a migrant success story (university education in English up-to postgrad level, becoming financially comfortable / an e-commerce world-champion etc.) until a highschool-dropout stalker coworker – whom I never even dated – decided to use me as a demo-dummy for his own risk-free criminality and crimes he gets committed on his behalf.
The stalker had (still has?) unrestricted access to data via his IT Helpdesk Assistant job at the Victorian Electoral Commission, like where to find people in witness protection.
The stalker’s enjoyment of the power-trips he gets without any price to pay is obvious, as he does victory laps around the targets of his crimes with a r*tarded grin on his face – when he is in a safe environment himself, e.g. at work, where the Head of the IT Department enjoyed his crimes so much, he used to giggle with excitement, when he saw something exceptionally vile. I had to observe him countless times, as he finds it necessary to flaunt over and over and over again what he gets away with.
Crimes ranging from sick psycho signs left for me of his countless house break-ins while I worked long hours/stepped out only for 30 minutes – keeping me under flaunted 24x7x365 surveillance, through a biker’s violent physical assault with a weapon causing permanent injuries in 2018, to Geneva Convention violations in Clare O’Neil*’s electorate since 2019. My last forced war-crime experience less than 10 hours ago – writing this at 14:17 on 24 March 2024.
I didn’t know the biker at the time of his unprovoked assault in 2018. He presented to Victoria Police himself, and volunteered an obviously false statement, yet walked away without any worry in the world.
The biker later attacked me on LinkedIn for sharing the photo I took of him while he was abusing me, and seconds before he started assaulting me. Since he was wearing a helmet, mask, and tip-to-toe protective gear, he was unrecognisable in the photo I shared.
The attack against me on LinkedIn for asking about de-escalation, since in Australia we are not even allowed to carry pepper-spray for self-defence, came during working hours, within 30 minutes of me posting the question, and under the full name of a Senior Technology Architect/Test Manager at a prestigious company.
The intensity of the attacker’s vulgar brutality on LinkedIn was so overwhelming, I missed that he referred to an aspect of the assault while abusing me on LinkedIn that only the assailant and the victim would know. I noticed this years later, hence I found out the biker’s identity.
None of the stalker’s crimes show up in any statistics, none of them have ever been punished. Thousands of crimes over 5,000+ days.
It was me, who had to find a new job, when I tried to report the stalker’s crimes as a public servant witness to my management in 2012, it was me who lost the ability to earn a salary in Melbourne, Australia in 2017, because of the risk crime-spillovers pose to entities I interact with, it is me, who has to find day-to-day survival strategies against crimes committed against me night after night after night while I am at home on my own, trying to sleep. Crimes using remote-weapons-grade capabilities in the million $ home I have owned in Clare O’Neil’s electorate since 2001.
It is me, who lost family members, all but one of my friends, my health, my quality of life, $ millions – more than 14 years of my life, and any hope of ever being free from crimes. In a city like Melbourne, in a prosperous country like Australia, in a leafy suburb of million $ homes.
The stalker and his government/military insider accomplices are just fine. I cannot even discuss what the immediate symptoms and after-effects of war-crime incidents I am routinely forced to endure are with a doctor, because the technology does not exist outside of government/military circles. If I tried to ask for advice, I would risk getting locked up “for my own protection”. So I have to literally grin and bear what I am subjected to.
Given the scale of criminality flaunted against me, there is no guarantee I would be safe from the same/worse, if I moved, so I am staying put. None of us could realistically hope to outrun/hide from Australia’s government/military insider criminals with decades of organised-crime experience and rock-solid untouchability cemented by section 194 of the IBAC Act.
I was only one of at least seven of the stalker’s concurrent targets just from the Victorian Electoral Commission 2009-2012.
No one but the stalker would know how many targets he has had over several decades, the range/spread/volume of crimes he committed against these targets himself, what crimes he has been getting others commit on his behalf in exchange of data he steals. As one of the stalker’s targets at our shared workplace, I couldn’t avoid noticing his less than moderate abilities, his cringe-worthy cowardice, when he is not in his criminal role.
The stalker has dozens of accomplices. I lost count after 50 in one of the bizarre biker group harassment events. Australia’s corrupt police officers have been committing bizarre crimes likely since Australia came to existence to discredit crime witnesses & victims. It works wonders.
The stalker has Victoria Police accomplices (we have no FBI equivalent, our police have no duty of care/accountability, while having a monopoly on what is a crime) flashing their uniforms as they do their parts against the stalker’s victims, and crime-as-a-service providers who have access likely via their day-jobs to government/military-grade remote weapons on demand, without any risk of prosecution. Since at least 2019.
Crimes against me were committed with production-line consistency, efficiency & quality already in 2009. The severity of impact of the crimes delivered to my home increases continuously. My only escape would be to commit suicide.
I am so outraged and horrified by what I am forced to learn, I lost all fear. I won’t be committing suicide any time soon.
#ididnotstaysilent
—
* Clare O’Neil is the gender-quota darling Minister for Cyber Security & Home Affairs (no less) in Australia’s current Labor government.
Ms O’Neil evidently believes in her own excellence, and the world to have a desperate need to witness this excellence.
Ms O’Neil poses in carefully stage-managed photos as a Babe In The Woods 007 Barbie with squinty eyes and an impressive pout under a perfect make-up, framing that pretty face with a carefully sculpted heroine hairdo, sharing her pearls of wisdom that no doubt would earn a preschool report card worthy of putting on the fridge in any suburban household.
Ms O’Neil’s performance would be hilarious, if the consequences weren’t so devastating.
Ms O’Neil ignored my pleas when, in 2015, I realised that Victoria Police block public servant witness reporting attempts of crimes punishable by 10 years in jail.
Ms O’Neil is likely to be re-elected over, and over, and over again, like she has been since 2013.
I’m really not sure whether this comment is a pïss-take or not. Using Steven Pinker’s Panglossian take on the world to describe China’s wonderfulness is seriously funny. The poster has evidently never been on the wrong side of either China or globalism. Lucky him.
I taught Master’s degree courses at a Scandinavian university. The majority of students on the course were from China. The Chinese students were of mixed ability and mixed language skills, but what struck me about them was that none of them regarded education as an opportunity to broaden their horizons or have their beliefs challenged: their sole focus was in getting a qualification. I realise that the same could be said of other students, but it was more obvious in the students from China.
Of the ones that I got to know well (through supervising their projects) more than half did not want to be in Europe, but had been advised, or in some cases instructed, to study here.
Academics have been extraordinarily naive in thinking that they can treat students from China as a cash cow, without any repercussions. That is just not the way that the Chinese state operates. Beijing maintains a ranking of all departments of all universities in the developed world. If a university department does anything which might cause that ranking to drop, then that has consequences for the career prospects of the Chinese students studying in that department.
Yup! A classic case of Western belief that other folks have the same principles and moral frameworks as ourselves.
Just what, exactly, are universities spending all this Chinese money on? Salaries for professors teaching Chinese studies? Subsidies for other students? Let’s see the accounting.
The government uses it to reduce funding of universities, the universities spend it on buildings to justify the fees.
They wouldn’t need as many buildings if they didn’t have the Chinese students.
They’ve got themselves in a Catch 22.
Huge salaries with substantial annual increases for vice-chancellors for a start!
While it is now bog-standard for a university lecturer on the first rung of the ladder to be given a temporary contract for a laughable wage with zero benefits or security. So our universities have gone pretty much the way of the rest of the country: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and now the professionals are getting poorer too.
100% true, Coralie! I taught at a British higher education institution as full-time senior lecturer for eight years. During that time I received annual cost-of-living increases on my salary of typically 0.0.25-05% (once about 1.1% – woo hoo!). During the same period our Vice-Chancellor had his salary elevated annually by 10-18%. In my previous job I managed the same number of people and a budget twice the size as he did and my annual salary was one quarter of what what he loaded into his bank account each year! It stinks!
If Britain or any developed Western nation has any hope left in the face of the malign enveloping influence of the CCP, it would be a good start for our revered institutions (you know, the ones that spent centuries nurturing the intellectual and political framework that made possible all of that intellectual property stolen by or gifted to the CCP) to stop genuflecting to these creepy dogmatic pinheads, regardless of the loss of income.
I do seem to remember a not too faraway time when Universities could actually function without full fee paying Chinese students. It did involve the State providing a greater contribution, but that is a price worth paying to protect one of your country’s foundational pillars.
A critical part of that will be standing up to this god awful insidious wokeness that has been weaponised by the CCP and its useful idiots in the western liberal media to cower people into an irrational fear of appearing “racist” when they dare stand up to these CCP lackeys masquerading as students.
Talk about digging your own grave, and then apologising to the executioner for getting some dirt on their feet.
.
“Talk about digging your own grave, and then apologising to the executioner for getting some dirt on their feet.”
Nail on the head if someone ever hit it.
Surely education is the most important investment a nation can make yet we no longer invest in our own young people.
I agree, but have to ask: is the system so broken that it is no longer an investment worth making? I suspect that close to half the population of the US, UK, and Aus (including people within the sector) think the higher ed sector is already spending too much public money for too little benefit. I don’t have an answer.
Terrifying
I mean who doesn’t have fond memories of the days when we all had our “an innocuous presentation slide on slavery in China” in our “social sciences” class? Where is this world going to…
An article that is so important and so relevant.
CCP has so-called “police stations” across Europe to control and supervise the Chineses diaspora. Evil and insidious.
Be aware.
WARNING: conspiracy theory
So at last there is an awakening about this issue. Once one recognises this possibility the bizarre claims of part of our manipulated academia and media start to make some sense.
Covid came from bats (although no such infected bat has ever been found), men can metamorphose into women, we can stop climate change by reducing our emissions (while others persist in increasing theirs) and we can mentain our wealth if our central bank prints enormous amounts of currency and then lends it to the government.
I believe some in China are hoping to undermine our culture and assumptions (by undermining our universities) and then plan to flood us with Fentanil. We did it to them 150yrs ago. What goes around comes around.
See:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/americas-opioid-crisis-is-coming-to-britain/
Exactly. What’s going on in the universities, media, corporate culture and governments of the UK, US, Canada and EU is a form of warfare benefitting the Chinese/Russian/Iranian axis. This is an existential threat to the West. Unless we stop supporting their many craven, treasonous enablers we are doomed.
“Some universities will even accept Chinese students without proper qualifications or basic English-language skills, so great is their desire for the fees.”
Too true! This certainly was the case at the English university where I was a senior lecturer from 2009-2017. Most of my Chinese students used their smart phones to translate as I lecturer as they did not understand spoken English; nor did they understand written English – and their work was so sub-standard it was risible. But the university’s management put enormous pressure on us to pass these students! This reprehensible institutional behaviour was one of several reasons why I quit higher education.
Don’t blame you for leaving!
If I understand it, foreign students, applying for entrance to an English (or US or Cdn) university are supposed to have passed English-language proficiency tests, but I think the process is a rubber-stamp. The main thing is that they pay up.
Someone close to me told me that he was working on a group project in university. The professor found out that a part of the work was plagiarized; it was the contribution of one foreign student specifically, but then the entire group was threatened with a failing grade. It is also recalled that the plagiarizing person’s English was extremely poor; how could he/she otherwise participate in the project if not by plagizaring? (The professor subsequently lightened up, and didn’t give them all an F, but …. )
The wheel turns and turns – during my university lecturing career I have experienced complaints from pro Shah Iranians, Taliban, born again Christians and now upsetting students who demand a ‘safe place’. Time to retire I think!
You won’t regret it (from someone who knows!)
It would be really helpful if online retailers, like Amazon, would clearly indicate if items are ‘Made in China’ in their sales displays. I for one would not buy anything made there. At the moment, one only finds out the ‘Made in China’ angle when one unpackages bought items when it is too late.
I couldn’t agree more.
Wasn’t it PM Johnson who refused to have source of manufacture for all to see and make choices on the goods we buy?
What better way to c**k a snook at the overbearing chinese state than to hit them economically?
We need to know who is profiting from our £££££s
maybe his sinophile Dad leant on him….
I recently bought a pair of Wellington boots on Amazon. When they arrived they had ‘Made in China’ stamped on the soles. I would have been happy to have paid 3-4x as much for them to have been made elsewhere – preferably Western Europe or North America.
Reality is, unfortunately, that most items at budget end of the market are made in China.
Even higher up value chain it is the case (Apple?).
There is an aspect to this phenomenon that is not at all restricted to schools. A real side effect from the wokeness spreading through many western societies is a propensity to designate any topic out of bounds if it risks offending people of color. Canada has an inquiry under way on foreign interference and there have been some alarming recent disclosures on the extent to which espionage concerns about two Chinese scientists working in Canadian labs were kept quiet through accusations of racism.
If you want to know who rules you, see who you cannot criticize. These institutions have created uncomfortable beds for themselves, and events like this are hardly limited to foreign students. In the US, the permanent staff gives every indication of being terrified of its temporary children. The result has been a serious tumble in academia’s level of respect among laypeople.
CCP influence is a serious matter, and the UK will face pressure from the other side as well. Most of the Confucius Institutes in the US have been shut down and a lot of students in areas of research relevant to defense and national security, like computing, AI, chip technology, etc. were unceremoniously deported during the Trump administration and since. The Biden administration has quietly continued these policies in the same way they’ve quietly continued the tech sanctions and China tariffs. We’re past the point of debating whether to confront China in a second cold war. The only thing being debated at this point is the best way to pursue it.
That’s because China has managed to do something no American politician or party has been able to do for several decades, build a broad base of popular support for a set of policies and establish a solid political consensus that nobody dares to question. Closing factories, Uyghur camps, Hong Kong crackdowns, saber rattling over Taiwan, and then COVID; just about every American has some reason to dislike and/or be suspicious of Xi’s China. Anti-China policy is about the only thing that both parties and popular opinion agree on. As such, it’s the one thing that won’t be affected by the US’s domestic squabbles. Everybody in the American sphere of influence is going to feel that sooner or later. At some point, the US won’t just be excluding Chinese students from sensitive research, they’ll also be excluding anyone who doesn’t also exclude Chinese students from sensitive research. It’s time to pick a side. There will be consequences either way, and there will be consequences for anyone who tries to stay neutral as well.
There is a long history of western companies being robbed of their IP (intellectual property) by Chinese interests (gov, biz, academia; they’re all one). Canada had a very successful telecom company called Bell Northern Research. It was successfully plundered by Chinese concerns from within the company walls; Bell Northern Research went down the drain, and HuaWei was born.
On Canada’s (former) pride and joy: Hockey Night in Canada — HuaWei in 2018 became a lead sponsor, its massive banner triumphal and prominent behind the main announcer’s desk in the national studio of our very corrupt national broadcaster, CBC. Just another sickening outcome for Canadians, who used to identify with Hockey Night; used to think the CBC was a force for national good, and “bringing Canadians together” (play the sound of a man wretching in background).
Don’t get me started about Don Cherry.
Well, in 2018, the US policy to China was just starting to shift. Trump had launched his trade war but little else had been done. Almost all the US’s China policy has come since then. The CCP screwed us all because our corporate overlords couldn’t get those billions of Chinese customers out of their mind. They looked the other way hoping the decision would pay off at some point. It didn’t. China never meaningfully opened their domestic market to international competition but used western corporate greed to steal IP and avoid retribution for their anti-competitive practices. The US has wised up since then. One hopes others will do the same.
Yet another problem that can be laid at the door of Tony Blair. His decision to expand universities has been a total disaster. Many Uk students have neither the need or the ability to benefit from university, they would do rather better in life with vocational training or a good apprenticeship.As universities expanded I found it more and more difficult to find college courses for my apprentice butchers. In the end I was employing a private training company.University vice chancellors have inflated salaries and benefits. A contraction in universities would free up staff for more employment and would relieve the pressure in housing in towns like Brighton that are in danger of becoming dormitories for students or airb’n’b.
d
It was not Tony Blair.
It was failed bus conductor John “shirt in underpants” Major.
British universities have over-expanded, searching for customers (they don’t think of them as students) in every corner of the globe. A contraction is overdue. And this is hardly the first time that an hostile foreign power structure makes use of the overblown British university sectors and terrorizes it. The supporters of a supposed “religion of peace” got there first.
This cringing appeasement of an autocratic genocidal regime is bad enough when universities partake and so ruin their own academic independence, but when a government does so it usually ends in disaster for the entire nation.
Trahison des clercs
And this would be… bad? We need a massive cultural & institutional clear-out & universities are the perfect places to start.
I was thinking the same thing. Nearly 40% of 18 year olds are going to university atm which is ridiculous but apparently you need a degree to be anything now; a policeman, a nurse, soon an estate agent! We are allowing 2/5’s of the working population to start out in life with a massive debt around their necks. It will not end well.
If UK universities need Chinese money, they have to do as the CCP says.
Gosh, Sam, it’s all terribly sinister. Perhaps if we listen, they might tell us the secrets of their success? Something like: ‘Hard work, enthusiasm, and unity’ compounded by ‘social conservatism’. And by golly, by gosh, they’re required to take an oath to serve their country? Even more sinister. Perhaps we could just quietly take stock of their methods, and copy them.
Says the number-one autocracy fan. There’s a surprise.
Given what academia has foist upon the world in the past 40 years or so, I find the prospect of academics living in terror rather cheering.,
And in this case ironic, since most are pseudo-Marxist.
As opposed to openly Stalinist, like yourself.
They are given the choice of money or defending democracy and free speech, and some take the money.
China on the left and islam on right. Interesting mix for UK
Surreal?
At least China is predictable, their power is known.
Try the power bikers like the MEEHAN & MARCUCCI wield for size.
Bikers, whose day-job salaries are paid by their victims’ taxes at places like Victoria Police, the Australian Signals Directorate, and Australia’s Defence Force. They brag about their government security clearances on social media, openly self-identify as drug traffickers and attack crime witnesses like me even on LinkedIn. They are so certain – rightfully – of their untouchability, they use vulgar brutality under their own full names.
Australia’s bikers don’t limit their “influence” to warnings: they practice coercive tech control in 2024 delivering (state of the art?) physical harm likely via the Power Over Internet protocol – in the victims’ own homes. In Melbourne, in Clare O’Neil’s* electorate as a cherry on top, since at least 2019.
My own last dose of biker attention less than 6 hours ago – writing this at 9am on 21 March 2024. In my own home, as it is usually the case.
Bikers either don’t get charged with crimes in Australia, or they walk free from court because witnesses refuse to testify. They flaunt their easy crime wealth with the bone-chilling innocence of toddlers showing off a new puppy.
Australia’s drug market is so lucrative, cartels divert their shipments to Australia from Europe and North America. They employ “doors” like Graeme MAYNE, ex-Victoria Police officer at DHL.
George MARROGI runs his crime empire from prison evidently without any hindrance.
Prison personnel who cannot be tricked, bought or coerced are no doubt subjected to the same Geneva Convention violations I have just experienced (again) – in their own homes.
Remote physical harm is not limited to grown-ups of course, everyone is fair game, including young children of the incorruptible for Australia’s bikers, because who is going to stop them? They ARE the police, we have no FBI equivalent.
My experience with remote physical harm started in 2019, when I declared self-representation against corrupt Victoria Police at court.
They forced me to fight at court as an accused criminal in an admitted silencing attempt about crimes I witnessed as a public servant Business Analyst 2009-2012 at the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), crimes I have been subjected to since 2009 evidently in exchange for data a stalker ex-coworker whom I never even dated steals via his IT Helpdesk Assistant job at the VEC. Data like where to find people in witness protection. I won anyway. Prosecutors bluff.
There is no authority in Australia to which to report even a physical assault with a weapon causing permanent injuries, since violence is normalised to keep Aboriginal men out of jail.
I stopped trying to report cyber-crimes in 2016 to anyone, when I realised that Victoria Police block crime reporting attempts even for crimes punishable by 10 years in jail, and they have a monopoly on what is a crime. If Victoria Police refuse to acknowledge a crime as crime, it never happened. This explains both: Australia’s fabulous crime statistics, and authorities’ complete cluelessness about crime, let alone crimes using government/military-grade tech.
This means war-crimes committed in Australia, in Melbourne, in 2024 are risk-free for Australia’s government insider bikers “borrowing” tech that doesn’t exist officially outside of the bikers’ day-jobs.
#ididnotstaysilent
—
* Clare O’Neil is Australian Labor’s gender-quota darling Minister for Cyber Security & Home Affairs (no less). Her incompetent, clueless hubris would be hilarious, if the stakes weren’t so high.
My first thought is to wonder whether the great majority of Chinese students come to Britain as some kind of deliberate propaganda and influencing move. The best political students never nevertheless nationalistic provide strength in numbers uncover for the more insidious CCP agents. Surely China has enough universities of its own and considers them at least the equal of British universities?
It’s only natural that a brilliant, superb journal like this which crucially and valiantly fights back against our cultural decline and loss of self-confidence should have ties with our state security services. Hence Sam’s “volunteer” Institute. But there are more productive approaches than crude opposition to a successful competitor.
Like what?
Acknowledge that China and the UK have seen a mutual inversion of values since the height of the Cold War. The UK and West absorbed the toxins of pseudo-Marxism as a solvent to its strong culture, while retaining nominally liberal governments over a largely disunited and ungovernable people. China absorbed the wisdom of classic free trade liberalism tinged with a modest dose of Mercantilism, returning to Confucian values, much as a parallel to Japan in the Meiji Restoration, retaining a nominally communist government but with a far more socially conservative and united, nationalistic people. What, then, do the Chinese international students represent, exactly? And take it from there. The seeds of convergence and re-inversion.
Excellent!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this!
I never saw this angle so clearly before!
I had a gut feeling about much the same, mainly from my experience of studying with Chinese students for my MBA in Melbourne Au, my fellow gym class members, etc.
I hope you write more on other fora.
Please give us some pointers if you do.
I will keep an eye out for your comments in future on this forum.
Such a pleasure, Katalin, very gracious and kind, thank you. I’m from Sydney but now in Italy, hoping to do more on this shortly.
Blimey. You’re a soft touch.
What a magnificently fatuous concentration of cliches. It’s a superb example to add to those described in Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language.’ A triumph of AI.
I’ve lived in Thailand for 20 years and have met, and worked with, many locals who’ve been educated at highly regarded universities in the UK, Australia, US. Many have a level of written and spoken English which seems far too poor for them to have obtained a legitimate degree. Subjects like maths and data science would be obvious exceptions but there’s no way they’re held to appropriate standards in the humanities.
Something very strange is happening with the voting buttons. For example, before I upvoted John Murray’s comment it was shown as having 25 “likes”. When I voted for it, that number immediately went down to 5. Has anyone else experienced this?
This has been going on for decades. Have seen Western professors giving these students who could barely speak English a good grade. Am Chinese by descent so look like them I guess though studied neither in Britian nor China. Felt like had to make a comment on this but really don’t care much about this issue as am not really bothered by this issue. Bots who are spies of their governments, whichever country it is, are scary though. Foreign student enrolment seems like a easier problem to solve than other societal issues or perhaps it is a complicated thing to work out? Have yet to think about or work out my stance on this but universities and countries should have their independent autonomy, no? XO