The Long Shadow of Chinese Blacklists on American Academe

The U.S. has secret travel bans with "ideological exclusion provisions" as well.

Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan's had his H1-B visa to be a professor at Notre Dame revoked due to the Patriot Act's "ideological exclusion provision" in 2004. He was also formally denied a B visa to come and speak at universities. He's now teaching at Oxford.

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is a former British member of parliament. The 56-year old grandmother Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was banned from entering the U.S. in 2003 because she was deemed a "serious threat to national security".

Cat Stevens, also known as Yusuf Islam, was banned from entering the U.S. 2004. That's the singer of "Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken", "Wild World" etc.

And so on. Of course, someone can make the case that the U.S. should not let these people in, but the same case could be made that China shouldn't let their analogous contemporaries in.

You have to wonder why when the U.S. is doing this, people complain about a foreign country, which they have no control over, doing this. In April 2001 the U.S. rammed a Lockheed EP-3 into a Chinese plane just outside the PRC border, killing the Chinese pilot, then landed on PRC territory without permission. Now we have people complaining China won't allow American commissars wishing to undermine it's power in, while of course America does the same exact thing.

One of the most important things we can do is intellectually insist on the separation of the concepts of "China" and "the PRC government".

Today, usage of the word "China" is interchangeable with the words "PRC government" both in colloquial use and in the minds of many people, particularly in China.

This makes it nearly impossible to hold a position that opposes the actions or positions of the PRC government without being seen as anti-China, and thus anti-the-people-of-China-and-their-best-interests (and holds an implied suggestion that the PRC is infallible).

Thus people, both inside and outside of China, who promote ideas like protecting the environment, freedom of speech, protecting the rights of landowners, or freedom of movement actually have Sinophobic ulterior motives and/or are trying to prevent the people of China from succeeding in the world. Viewing any differing opinion through this lens makes it nearly impossible to have honest discussions about a whole host of issues and allows the wholesale reduction of such arguments.

Until of course the PRC itself changes its position, at which point you should too.

I'm a student of the Chinese language and of Chinese history and culture too. I read some of the Chinese press in the original language, and, yes, heavy-handed government censorship is much more pervasive in China since 1949 than it has ever been in the United States. Moreover, the Chinese government does far more to "prepare" (ideologically) and monitor its students overseas than the United States does. (I can say without fear of contradiction, as an American who has lived in the Chinese-speaking world, that the United States did nothing whatever to monitor my activities overseas while I was a student. Chinese students in the United States know better than to make the same claim about the birth country government.) To sum up, the Chronicle of Higher Education here is commenting on an important issue of academic freedom that needs a lot more attention. The people-to-people exchanges of many young Chinese students coming to the United States and quite a few United States students, scholars, and journalists traveling to China are more effective in developing international understanding when China lays off trying to control the thinking of its citizens at home and aboard. I'll believe China is comparable to the United States in this regard the day that all prior restraint of newspapers and broadcast news channels is lifted, and when the ruling party of China faces free and fair elections at regular intervals (as has happened in Taiwan for about two decades now).

It's very sad to see that the Academic Freedom is compromised so much, whereas China itself is benefiting from it on a daily basis (think about number of Chinese students who are benefiting from higher education in US institutions which founded on the very basic idea of academic freedom). Moreover, the tenure committee should consider issues like this when they evaluating someone's work.

On the other hand, some other scholars were "smart" enough to steer their voice to a more positive direction. For example, articles such as "How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression" (published on American Political Science Review) is something PRC prefer than a honest criticism.

How pervasive are these blacklists, exactly? I took International Relations classes with a lecturer whose specialist field of interest is China, and his writing on the subject of China's attitude towards human rights, the resistance to democratic reform and a full-length book on Mao doesn't seem to have stopped him from being able to get a visa, or even from briefly living in China and affiliating himself to a Chinese university.

Is it possible the self-censorship is not only worse than actual attempts to censor Western scholars, but would be a potential issue for academics serious about studying China even if China had a completely free press due to fear of offending cultural sensibilities? What's the standard of academic discourse on the Rape of Nanking for scholars with aspirations to study in Japanese institutions like?

I wonder has the author ever researched on how the U.S give out VISA? or the millions of ways to get on the blacklist of US? For example, mentioning you want to pursue a career in U.S after graduating from a U.S university will cause your visa to be denied. Now that's a lot to talk about.

This feels like the next cold war. The new guy vs the established old man. Both want power and dominance. No nukes this time, that's silly. This time, it's knowledge, technology, patents, designs, and trade secrets.

I'm slightly disappointed about the level of discourse here about this. Visa issues are a side show - the real story is about the self censorship people are subjecting themselves to.

The important idea that Perry Link suggests is that US Universities should deliberately push at the very limits of Chinese censorship within China, so that academics will feel free to discuss thing within those boundaries.

It's quite a clever way of trying to avoid the self-censorship trap, which - as the author points out - is probably more dangerous than the actual censorship itself.

There's an inconvenient "solution". Start changing your full name to a very common one like John Smith or whatever is an extremely common combination. This probably has other uses as well. The passing test is whether or not someone can google you returning hundreds or ideally thousands of results.

We can rewrite large portions of the article to illustrate how citizens in Western countries self-censor to ensure they can always get a job...

I do not know why I am barred from being employed at a job. There are many possible reasons; I speak and blog often in support of labor rights in businesses and in criticism of various employers. But no recruiter or HR person will say exactly where or when I crossed a line. Giving clear punishment for unclear reasons will cause any person, whether directly involved or merely an observer, to be cautious and to censor what one says on financially sensitive topics. Businesses in the West have used this technique on their own workers for decades.