A prominent Chinese dissident who moved to the US after being fired by Peking University last year warned on Thursday of the dangers of academic exchanges with China, saying Beijing sent spies as visiting academics.
Xia Yeliang (夏業良), an economics professor, was expelled from Peking University in October amid a broader crackdown on dissent, having drawn the ire of school officials for blog posts calling for democratic reforms and the rule of law in China.
He took up a post at Washington’s Cato Institute last month.
At his first public event at the think tank, Xia said the fact that so many high-ranking Chinese officials sent their children to study abroad showed a lack of trust in China’s own education system and a desire to “borrow the good fame and name” from prestigious US universities such as Harvard and Stanford.
“I just have the warning for all those top universities in the USA: You think you’ve got some benefits through cooperation with China, but who will win in the future? It’s hard to tell. How can you say the Cold War has been ended; there’s no enemy for the US anymore?” he said.
Xia pointed to the build-up of China’s navy, including the acquisition of new aircraft carriers and asked: “I don’t want to exaggerate the situation, but ... why do you want to build that — only for fun?”
He said US colleges must not compromise fundamental values such as freedom of speech in pursuit of money from the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who come to study in the US every year.
“American institutions are so lacking in money?” he asked, adding: “If Hitler is here and he tries to make some cooperation with Western universities and give them money, then you would like to accept that cooperation?”
“Some people say you can’t compare like that, but some aspects are quite similar,” he said.
Xia said he was not advocating cutting off all educational exchanges, but urging caution — especially when it came to visiting Chinese academics.
“Every year among those top universities there are some visiting scholars, and among them I can definitely say there are some people who are actually spies,” he said. “They don’t do any research — probably they just do some surveys for their boss.”
Thomas Cushman, a sociology professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where 136 faculty members signed a letter to Peking University last year expressing concern about Xia’s treatment, said US universities were bringing in billions of dollars a year from an estimated 235,000 Chinese students in the country.
The Wellesley letter was prompted by the fact that the college signed an agreement on student and faculty exchanges with Peking University in June last year, and Cushman said it was vital that academic freedom was not compromised by such deals.
He expressed concern that the financial allure of such exchanges could lead to pulling of punches and self-censorship when it came to discussing topics deemed sensitive to China on US campuses.
“There is a presence of Chinese politics in American universities now that wasn’t there when I started off in academia, and we need to look at it carefully,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia