Webinar 4: China- Online, MS Teams

The Global Observatory on Academic Freedom (GOAF) is pleased to announce the next session of its Webinar Series “How Academic Freedom is Conceptualised, Codified, Enacted and Contested: Country and Region Health Checks”, focusing on China this time. As a major global higher education system shaped by distinct political, intellectual, and institutional traditions, China offers a critical context for examining how academic freedom is understood, practised, and contested under conditions of intensified state oversight and global interdependence.

Academic freedom in China is increasingly shaped by processes of securitisation, evolving knowledge traditions, and growing geopolitical tensions. This webinar brings together a set of perspectives that examine how universities have come to be framed as sites of national security concern, how academic freedom is negotiated in practice within and beyond China, and how Chinese intellectual traditions inform alternative understandings of the role of scholarship.

The session will focus on the securitisation of higher education under Xi Jinping, including how ideological and international engagement may be framed as security concerns, as well as related institutional practices. It will also consider how scholars and institutions navigate constraints on academic freedom in collaborative research contexts across different disciplines and settings. In addition, the discussion will reflect on the perceived paradox of academic freedom in China through the lens of Confucian knowledge traditions, where scholarship is often linked to governance and social responsibility. Finally, the webinar will place China within broader global discussions, exploring its relevance to ongoing debates on academic freedom, as well as questions of resistance and resilience.

Meet the Speakers

Benjamin Mulvey

The Securitisation of Chinese Universities in the Xi Jinping Era

This paper explores the extent to which Chinese higher education has become a national security concern under General Secretary Xi Jinping’s leadership. To do so, it draws on ‘second-wave’ securitisation theory, demonstrating the broader analytical value of this framework and highlighting its urgent relevance for understanding how higher education is increasingly being brought under the purview of national security across the globe. The paper analyses how Chinese universities have been transformed into arenas for ideological securitisation, where dissent and international collaboration are increasingly framed as threats to both regime and research security. Through an analysis of policy texts, state media reports and institutional practices, it examines how discursive constructs, such as the framing of ‘Western’ ideology as subversive, and the linking of those deemed to be internal ideological threats to this external threat, have legitimated the securitisation of Chinese universities. It also details the everyday or mundane security practices, including surveillance, training sessions and political education which have contributed to this process of securitisation. These developments are situated within a broader trend of rising nationalism and tightened control over knowledge production. The analysis underscores how the securitisation of higher education impacts academic freedom and creates barriers to international collaboration.

Biography:

Benjamin Mulvey is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, Programme Leader for the MSc in Education, Public Policy and Equity, and Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research within the School. He was previously a Research Grants Council Post-doctoral Fellow at the Education University of Hong Kong, and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Sydney and University College London. He is co-editor of Compare: A Journal of International and Comparative Education and serves on the editorial boards of Global Networks, British Journal of Sociology of Education, and International Studies in Sociology of Education. His research is interdisciplinary and has been published in journals across the fields of education studies, sociology, and geography. He has published extensively on international student mobility between Africa and China, as well as on social inequalities in transitions from higher education to the labour market and issues of academic freedom in the Chinese context. His work has appeared in journals such as Higher Education, Sociology, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and he is regularly invited to contribute to and comment in international media outlets including The Economist, The New York Times, and Times Higher Education.

Mette Halskov Hansen

Chinese ‘Academic Freedom’ in Practice

In this era of multi-method securitisation of academic knowledge production, Chinese and European scholars and universities face new and intensifying challenges to collaboration. Many Chinese universities continue to formally uphold the ideal of academic freedom in developing research questions, selecting methodologies, and publishing results. However, scholars and institutions in both Europe and China engaged in collaborative research are increasingly met with suspicion from media or political actors, accusations of naïveté, screening of background, or even outright surveillance and censorship. How do scholars and institutions in China navigate structural constraints on academic freedom when developing new projects or collaborating with partners operating in different political contexts? Conversely, how do European scholars and universities deal with the tightening securitisation landscape both within Europe and in China? The presentation addresses these questions, and highlights differences between research in the natural sciences and the social sciences/humanities, as well as variations between universities in China. It draws on decades of personal experience in interdisciplinary collaborative research in China, along with recent insight gained from a leadership role in the University of Oslo, Norway.

Biography: 

Mette Halskov Hansen is Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo. She has done anthropological research in China since the late 1980s, mainly in rural areas, publishing about education and identity among ethnic minorities in China, Han Chinese migrations to ethnic minority areas, and processes of individualization in mainstream high schools in rural China. She has been the PI of several large-scale interdisciplinary research projects about, for instance, the individualization of Chinese society, the human and social dimensions of air pollution in China and, most recently, spiritual environmental movements in Asia. Her works include Lessons in Being Chinese (University of Washington Press 1999), Frontier People (Hurst&Co 2005), Educating the Chinese Individual (University of Washington Press 2015), The Great Smog of China (AAS Shorts/Columbia University Press 2020) and Religion and Ecological Crisis (Leiden University Press 2026). She is currently a member of the editorial board of The China Quarterly, and she recently served for four years as vice-rector of the University of Oslo. Personal website: https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/people/aca/chinese-studies/tenured/mettehh/index.html

Qiang Zha

The Paradox of Academic Freedom in China

Academic freedom seems to be perceived with different norms in China. While China’s academic freedom appears to be constrained, people in China don’t necessarily share such assessment. Many attribute this situation to political control in the country. This presentation, however, aims to shed light on this paradox from the perspective of the Chinese knowledge tradition or Confucian tradition. Put explicitly, this paradox can be linked to the Confucian knowledge tradition whereby knowledge is less a matter of understanding the world than of changing it, and scholars are expected to “cultivate the self, manage the family, govern the country, and bring peace to the world.” More explicitly, scholars ought to seek unity of knowledge and action through their roles as “action intellectuals,” often and more effectively within the political regime—for example, taking a government office and testing their knowledge in the tasks of managing that office—rather than seeking knowledge for its own sake or functioning as an independent social critic. Some argue, such a knowledge tradition is likely to stymie innovation, as it tends to less encourage entrepreneurial scholars.

Qiang Zha is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, York University in Toronto, where he served as the Director of Graduate Program in Education in 2017-2020. He was appointed as a York University Provostial Fellow in 2021-2022, and as the Interim Director of York Centre for Asian Research in 2023-24. His research interests include international academic relations, global brain circulation, internationalization of higher education, global competence education, experiential learning, and differentiation and diversity in higher education.

Eva Pils

China's Pressures on Global Academic Freedom

Under China’s consolidated autocracy, academic censorship has become so normalized that free academic expression can appear exceptional. While global trends of autocratization—encompassing both authoritarian consolidation and democratic erosion—have increasingly constrained freedoms of thought, expression, research, and teaching, China stands out for the depth of its institutionalized repression and cooptation tactics. Some of these are rooted in national systems, tied to specific legal and institutional frameworks, while others are transnational, reflecting the interconnected nature of academic life. This talk will address China's central role in this global landscape to understand the narrowing of spaces for independent inquiry, but also some actors' resistance and resilience in the defence of academic freedom as a human right, and these struggles' global repercussions.

Biography:

Eva Pils is Professor of Human Rights Law at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where she holds a Humboldt Professorship, and a member of the FAU Research Centre for Human Rights. Her research focuses on autocratic conceptions and practices of governance, legal and political resistance, and the dynamics of complicity with autocratic practices. Before joining FAU in 2024, she was an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Professor of Law at King’s College London.