How China Exerts Its Power – by Seth Kaplan and John Metz
Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Beijing this past February, students at George Washington University put up posters criticizing the Chinese government s policies. The posters decried the internment and execution of Uyghurs, the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and China s lack of transparency during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. They would have gone largely unnoticed had it not been for the firestorm ignited by the university s response to a student petition.
In the petition, which was sent directly to the university s president, Mark Wrighton, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association demanded that the university remove the posters, identify the students responsible, and punish them severely for insult[ing] China. In a leaked email response, Wrighton wrote that he was personally offended by the posters and promised to have them removed. Then, almost casually, he committed to determin[ing] who [was] responsible. There was a swift backlash both online, where freedom of expression advocates like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression condemned the email, and among students of the university, who organized a protest in response. Within days, Wrighton issued a statement promising not to punish the students involved.
Given the freedoms typically touted on college campuses, George Washington University s effort to limit student criticism of China might stand out as unusual. But it is part of a larger pattern one linked to a multipronged effort by the Chinese Communist Party to influence and control its image abroad. That image is particularly vulnerable now because, according to numerous countries as well as the U.S. Department of State, the People s Republic of China is committing genocide against the Uyghur people, among other human rights abuses.
To help in this project, China has developed a vast network of overlapping institutions on campus designed to silence its critics, enhance its reputation abroad, and use the strengths of the American university system particularly its research prowess for its own benefit, often in a manner that directly undermines American national security. Simply put, no foreign government has ever had both the resources and the resolve necessary to override academic firewalls against malign foreign influence in the way China does today.
And then there is another, more direct tactic: China actively monitors the speech of Chinese nationals studying in the U.S. and their actions on campus. Chinese intelligence officers use a combination of online surveillance and an array of informants motivated by money, ambition, fear, or patriotism to scrutinize student behavior. Attending the wrong speech or rally or saying the wrong thing in class can lead to the students or their relatives back in China being pressured.