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§ The main points of contact for Chinese Students
and Scholars Association (CSSA) chapters in the U.S. are often intelligence
officers in the embassy and consulates. China's Ministry of State Security uses
CSSA students to inform on other Chinese on campus.
§ Let us get the FBI to round up Ministry of State
Security agents who, up to now, have been given free rein to operate in
America. Putting these agents behind bars or even just revoking their visas
will end many of the activities that endanger American campuses. The Chinese
kill CIA agents in China. The least Washington can do is declare China's
agents personae non gratae.
§ The Chinese feel emboldened to violate American
sovereignty and break laws because American administrations have let them do
these things -- sometimes openly -- since at least the early 1990s. This is as
much a Washington problem as a Beijing one.
§ Congress can also change laws to make life
inhospitable for Confucius Institutes. Legislation should bar an educational
institution from receiving any federal funds if it hosts a CI.
Beijing, in seeking influence on American college and university
campuses, has been infringing on academic freedoms, violating American
sovereignty, and breaking U.S. law. U.S. officials, neglecting their
responsibilities to the American people, have allowed this injurious behavior
to continue, in some instances for decades.
As an initial matter, some of this impermissible Chinese conduct
is harmless, even amusing. As detailed by Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic in
a landmark study for
the Wilson Center, Chinese officials in 2004 and 2007 threatened then Columbia
University professor Robert Barnett, the prominent Tibet expert, that if he did
not adopt a more favorable view of China's policies they would -- heavens! --
stop speaking to him.
Most of the time, however, impermissible conduct has taken on a
more ominous tone. Barnett, for instance, was also the target of an effort, by
a Chinese student at Columbia and a faculty member from China (at another
institution), to "depose" him for trying to protect Tibetan exiles
from harassment by Chinese students and Chinese consular officials.
In 2009, an official from the Chinese Consulate in New York got in
touch with Ming Xia, a faculty member at City University of New York, and
demanded he stop work on a documentary on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The
official, saying China could offer more "financial rewards" than he
was getting for the documentary, essentially offered Xia a bribe; when that did
not work, the official directly threatened him.
Then there was the Yang Shuping incident in June 2017. Yang gave
the commencement speech at the University of Maryland, criticizing Beijing's
environmental record and praising American democratic values. She was targeted
by the infamous Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), which called her speech
"intolerable", a word inconsistent with the notions of an
open campus. Her family back in China was threatened.
China's Communist Party, especially its United Front Work Department,
has targeted institutions of higher learning as part of an intensive,
multi-decade effort to influence American society. Chinese President Xi
Jinping, who has placed great emphasis on international propaganda efforts, in
May 2015 identified students as "a new focus of United Front Work,"
suggesting they should be promoters and implementers of Party efforts.
As a result of this direction from the top of the Chinese
political system, United Front Work Department activity, according to one
"senior US official" quoted in the Financial
Times, has "reached an unacceptable level."
Unacceptable? What the official may have found
"unacceptable" was that students from China have acted in ways that
have intimidated faculty, staff, and other students at American universities.
Chinese students have done this by, among other things, demanding schools
remove research materials, by insisting that faculty change teaching content to
suit Beijing, by trying to prevent others from criticizing China, and by trying
to force the cancellation of academic activities.
Chinese students, not surprisingly, are becoming a part of what is
known as "China's long arm."
Far more worrying than the activities of students, however, are the actions of
Chinese diplomats. Chinese diplomats, as Lloyd-Damnjanovic wrote in her
September 2018 report, have been "employing intimidating modes of
conversation."
Diplomats have also infringed on academic freedom by complaining
about on-campus speakers and events, by trying to coerce faculty, and by
threatening retaliation against American university programs in China.
The main instruments of Chinese power on American campuses are the
Confucius Institutes and CSSA chapters.
CIs, as the Confucius Institutes are known, were first established
in 2004 to provide Chinese language instruction, but they now teach Chinese
society, culture, and other topics. They have also, incredibly, organized demonstrations on
American soil, often to welcome Chinese leaders or to hound the
Dalai Lama.
The CIs operate at Beijing's direction. The 107 or so Confucius
Institutes in the U.S. formally report to the Hanban, the National Chinese
Language Office, "affiliated" with the Chinese Ministry of Education.
In reality, the Hanban appears to be a front for the Communist
Party's United Front Work Department, which is charged with managing relations
with other organizations and individuals. Liu Yunshan, once head of the Party's
Propaganda Department, in 2010 exhorted CIs to
"actively carry out international propaganda battles." CIs appear, in
fact, to be funded by the Propaganda Department. A party-state, especially one
as problematical as China's, disseminating information as a formal unit of an
institution of higher learning is nothing short of alarming, especially
considering the Party's renewed emphasis on undermining freedom and democracy
worldwide.
Possibly even more alarming are the arrangements between China and
American educational institutions. The contracts establishing Confucius
Institutes are rarely public. One might well wonder why.
According to
Rachelle Peterson, director of research projects at the National Association of
Scholars:
The contractual language the Hanban pushes on universities poses a
more substantive threat to academic autonomy. The Confucius Institute constitution requires
all universities to avoid "tarnish[ing] the reputation of the Confucius
Institutes" — an offense punishable by revocation of the contract,
immediate loss of all Hanban funds, and potential unspecified "legal
action." I examined eight signed contracts between American universities
and the Hanban, all eight of which duplicate this language almost verbatim.
The institutes, therefore, have been set up from the get-go to be
exempt from criticism. This immunity, by itself, undermines the ability of
administrators to supervise the CIs.
Even more dangerous are the 150 or so chapters of
the CSSA and their closely affiliated groups. These organizations are sometimes
covertly sponsored, funded, and, most disturbingly, directed by China's embassy
and five consulates in the U.S.
Sometimes these links are openly admitted, but often the chapters
try to hide their connections to Beijing.
The website of the University of California San Diego chapter once said it was
"a subordinate organization" of the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate.
The George Washington University chapter says it is "directed by" and
"works with" the Chinese embassy. The chapter at the University of
Tennessee requires members to swear adherence to certain positions advocated by
the Chinese government. The constitution of Southwestern CSSA -- a group of
chapters in Arizona, California, Hawaii, and New Mexico -- states that all
local CSSA presidential candidates must be approved by China's Los Angeles
consulate.
The main points of contact for CSSA chapters are often
intelligence officers in the embassy and consulates. China's Ministry of State
Security uses CSSA students to inform on other Chinese on campus. Sulaiman Gu,
a student at the University of Georgia, told Radio Free Asia that
MSS agents tried to get him to inform on fellow Chinese. Gu actually provided
RFA with tapes of MSS agents giving him requests for information on certain
targets.
Moreover, the Chinese state has, for several decades, been
organizing -- and paying for -- Chinese students to engage in demonstrations on
U.S. soil outside campuses, thereby impermissibly interfering in the American
political process.
So, what should be done about all this?
Let us start with what should not be done.
America should not, as President Trump's senior advisor Stephen Miller proposed this year, ban
all Chinese students. The U.S. is an open society, and Americans should keep it
open. That is why their country is so strong. Americans do not need to create a
climate of intimidation and fear against a racial group.
Americans also should not vilify Chinese students as a group or
forget that Chinese students and faculty members of Chinese descent are often
the targets of Beijing's influence and interference operations. In short, let
us not punish victims.
So what should America do?
First, universities can take over many of the functions of CSSA
chapters. In addition to their malign activities, CSSA chapters provide
important support services, such as helping Chinese students adjust when they
first arrive on campus. The Communist Party should not be the only institution
providing those services. U.S. colleges and universities benefit from the
tuition of about 340,000 students from China, and these institutions can
certainly offer services to support their stay.
Second, Washington should rely on existing norms, rules, and laws.
American institutions certainly can deal with whatever Beijing throws at them.
So, for instance, any CSSA chapter that hides funding from Beijing -- a
violation of college and university rules -- should be disbanded.
Most of all, let us get the FBI to round up Ministry of State
Security agents who, up to now, have been given free rein to operate in
America. Putting these agents behind bars or even just revoking their visas
will end many of the activities that endanger American campuses. The Chinese
kill CIA agents in China. The least Washington can do is declare China's
agents personae non gratae.
The Chinese feel emboldened to violate American sovereignty and
break laws because American administrations have let them do these things --
sometimes openly -- since at least the early 1990s. This is as much a
Washington problem as a Beijing one.
Third, Congress can also change laws to make life inhospitable for
Confucius Institutes. The John McCain 2019 National Defense
Authorization Act provides that an educational institution
cannot receive Defense Department funds for any program that involves a
Confucius Institute.
That is a good start, but the Trump administration should try to
extend the prohibition. Legislation should bar an educational institution from
receiving any federal funds if it hosts a CI.
Peterson, of the National Association of Scholars, told Gatestone
that there are now three bills before Congress -- the Foreign Influence
Transparency Act, the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act, and the
Aim Higher Act -- addressing the problems posed by Confucius Institutes.
Fourth, U.S. and campus officials must make sure that Communist
Party members do not abuse their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment
gives China's Party committees the freedom to convene, but they do not have the
freedom to intimidate others, especially Chinese and American students and
scholars, a violation of civil liberties.
The existence of a Party cell on a U.S. campus -- there are now several of them --
signals to Chinese students and faculty that, although they are in the United
States, they are still subject to Beijing's supervision.
This issue of Chinese intimidation on campus for me is personal.
My father, born in China, came to Cornell University in 1945 on a Chinese
government scholarship. For Chinese students in the United States, I wish for
them what my father had, the experience to study -- and live -- without fear.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of
China and a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow.
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