With its growing global clout, China has become the place to be for American colleges, with the number of academic partnerships and programs there increasing each year.
But a law proposed by the Chinese government to regulate foreign universities and nonprofit organizations could put those warming relations on ice. Under the draft legislation, overseas colleges would be required to register with the national police ministry and have an official Chinese sponsor for all their activities, from study abroad to student recruitment, faculty lectures to joint research.
If the law goes into effect as written, universities may find the “cost of complying or the risk of violating the law too high,” says Carl Minzner, a professor of law at Fordham University and a specialist in Chinese law and governance. Some could suspend their work in China, or pull out of the country altogether.
Of greater concern is a provision that would extend the measure’s reach beyond China, punishing foreign organizations for activity that “endangers state security or damages the national or public interest,” including “undermining ethnic harmony” and “spreading rumors” — even if that activity happens abroad.
Potentially, a college could be barred from China and its representatives there detained and prosecuted if a student group back on its home campus protested the Chinese government’s policy on Tibet, says Ira Belkin, executive director of New York University Law School’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute. “To me,” Mr. Belkin says, “that’s really disturbing.”
The measure is the latest step by President Xi Jinping’s government to curb the work of activist scholars and scrutinize what’s taught in Chinese classrooms. But until now, the focus largely had been on academics in China and not on limiting the influence of foreign institutions.
The draft legislation, which was made public in May, is part of a package of tough national-security and antiterrorism laws. Technically, it proposes to regulate “nongovernmental organizations” and “nonprofit, nongovernmental social organizations” from outside mainland China, an imprecise term that may have led many colleges to believe that they weren’t covered by the regulations. But as Katherine Wilhelm, a China-law scholar and program officer at the Ford Foundation, writes in an analysis directed at universities, “Yes, this means you.”
“This law gives ‘NGO’ such an expansive meaning that it includes not only universities but museums, hospitals, and many other institutions that would be surprised to be included in that category,” Ms. Wilhelm writes. “It is, in short, a law to regulate people-to-people exchanges.”
Ms. Wilhelm and other legal experts point out that the law includes a specific carve-out for foreign universities that operate joint programs or institutions with Chinese universities that are already approved by Chinese authorities; NYU’s campus in Shanghai and Duke University’s in Kunshan would be covered by that exemption. If the authors of the draft law meant to exclude colleges from the measure, they could have, the thinking goes. (What’s less clear is whether the regulations would apply to American public universities, which may not meet Chinese officials’ definition of “nongovernmental” organizations.)
‘Death by Paperwork’
Under the proposed measure, colleges would be required to set up a representative office or apply for temporary permits to carry out any activity in China, no matter how seemingly minor. Want to do research collaborations, hold alumni networking events, or send a college a cappella group to compete in a singing competition? All would appear to fall under the law.
Foreign colleges and nonprofits would have to submit their plans in advance, hire Chinese staff members, and find a Chinese-government sponsor. The latter may be difficult to do, says Elizabeth M. Lynch, who runs the China Law & Policy blog. She questions whether an agency like the Ministry of Education, which presumably would be the sponsoring organization for academic collaborations, would want to take on the responsibility — and the risk — of working with potentially thousands of foreign universities.
Navigating multiple layers of bureaucracy also could prove onerous, especially for small and medium-size colleges, which could decide the administrative burdens outweigh the benefits of continuing to work in China. “Death by paperwork,” one China watcher calls the regulations.
During a monthlong comment period that ended in June, a dozen American universities, led by NYU, submitted a letter warning that the law could have a “dampening effect” on current partnerships and future engagement. The measure, they wrote, “may have the unintended and negative effect of restricting or severely reducing academic and research exchange and cooperation.”
One particularly troubling aspect of the law is that it would put colleges and nonprofits under the jurisdiction of the national-security ministry, suggesting that the government sees the groups as a potential threat. Indeed, hard-liners under the government of President Xi have accused foreign civil-society groups of playing a part in unrest both far away, in the Arab spring, and closer to home, during last year’s student-led “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong.
Under Mr. Xi, authorities have also sought to increase their ideological grip over Chinese universities, warning of the danger of Western values and banning classroom discussion of seven taboo topics, including press freedom, constitutional democracy, and the historical mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party. Earlier this year China’s education minister sharply criticized the use of foreign textbooks, saying they promote dangerous ideas.
Still, it is simplistic to view China as a monolith. For one, a number of Chinese universities reportedly submitted a joint comment letter, expressing concern about the impact of the draft legislation. And Robert Daly of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars says he’s heard of no instance of the Chinese government actually cracking down on Western textbooks or teaching, despite the bellicose rhetoric. He speculates the proposed law could similarly be selectively carried out, with the threat of enforcement leading colleges and nonprofits to rein in potentially controversial activity.
And Mr. Daly, who is director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, points out that China is not alone is seeing risks in international academic engagement. Last month a subcommittee of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing that questioned whether, in the words of the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, American colleges could be “compromising their images as bastions of free inquiry and academic freedom in exchange for China’s education dollars.”
There is, Mr. Daly says, “a turning away from engagement on both sides.”
The Chinese draft law can still be revised and must be approved by the National People’s Congress to take effect. The timeline for that decision is unclear.
Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.
