At Foreign Policy, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian this week reported on efforts by the Communist Party of China to encourage students and visiting scholars to set up Party branches at their host universities. Allen-Ebrahimian’s report is based on her review of official university and state media articles celebrating and reporting on the establishment of political entities in overseas universities, situating this trend into the context of Xi Jinping’s ongoing campaigns to consolidate state power under the CCP, and to reinforce ideological orthodoxy in domestic universities, the Party, and society at large.
The group [of Chinese students and faculty from Huazhong University of Science and Technology who were participating in a summer program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)] held meetings to discuss party ideology, taking a group photo in front of a red flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, according to a July 2017 article and photos posted to the Huazhong University website. The students’ home institution had sent four teachers on the trip, directing them to set up the party cell to strengthen “ideological guidance” while the students were in the United States.
[…] The exchange students at UIUC were also asked to report on any potentially subversive opinions their classmates may have evinced while abroad, according to the student.
[…] Illinois is not alone. Party cells have appeared in California, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota, and West Virginia. The cells appear to be part of a strategy, now expanded under Chinese President Xi Jinping, to extend direct party control globally and to insulate students and scholars abroad from the influence of “harmful ideology,” sometimes by asking members to report on each other’s behaviors and beliefs.
[…] The party cells popping up on campuses across the United States aren’t the Communist Party’s only expansion abroad. The U.S.-based party branches are part of a growing network of cells located on campuses in Canada, Mexico, Chile, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, South Korea, Thailand, and elsewhere. […] [Source]
Allen-Ebrahimian, whose recent coverage for FP has tightly focused on Chinese influence and propaganda campaigns abroad, last month reported on the Party’s use of Chinese Students and Scholars Associations at host universities to promote Party-sanctioned ideology on the ground, as occurred for example last year at the University of California San Diego when a group of Chinese students protested the Dalai Lama’s invite as commencement speaker. More recently, she reported on a U.S. House proposal to require Confucius Institutes—a state program funding Chinese language and cultural studies initiatives in schools around the world that has long raised concerns over government interference with academic freedom—to register as foreign agents.
On Twitter, Allen-Ebrahimian and FP’s Asia Editor James Palmer responded to suggestions that her latest report lacks nuance, or may encourage a conflation of all overseas Chinese students with the CCP:
This is tricky, as it’s difficult to tell which “cells” (a freighted term) are grassroots patriotic, and which receive aid or keep live connections to CCP bodies. Often those lines are blurred. But the Black Hand of the Party isn’t behind everything. https://t.co/coaGq1pMTf
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
Yes, because forming their own party unit spontaneously out of patriotic loyalty is totally something that young people do overseas by themselves.
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 19, 2018
For all your snark, James, patriotic pushback among Chinese students is well documented, and to some CCP loyalty could be the way to express it. I’m not doubting the nasty phenomenon that this piece convincingly evidences, just saying we shouldn’t paint all groups as CCP-backed.
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
Indeed, that’s a version of what China does: “all foreigners in China must be acting on their governments’ behalf.” (Not saying you, FP or Bethany are saying this, just putting the corrective out there as many readers will jump to it.)
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
Oh come on. The level of difference between ‘patriotic online posts’ and ‘organizing and running a party group’ is quite considerable, and it’s bizarre naivete to behave as if this wasn’t an organized Party-run effort when there’s entire govt departments devoted to it.
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 19, 2018
Well, the UIUC one obviously is, as likely are all directly equivalent party branches on campuses abroad. More reporting is needed. All I’m saying is that we leap too quickly to tar Chinese student groups abroad with the same Party brush, which is too yellow peril for my liking.
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
But the main reason for this is that the Party is making a determined effort to influence and control Chinese overseas – one that unless we start putting barriers in its way will threaten the freedom of the students that our schools stand in loco parentis too.
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 19, 2018
Agreed. Not just students but all “children of China” living abroad, claimed by the unelected Party that masquerades as their father. Just nuancing the fact that a lot of students are genuinely patriotic and behind the CCP, obv.
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
But students who snitch on their fellows in the US to Beijing – which is happening – don’t get a pass whether they do it out of ‘patriotism’ or careerism or simple authoritarian instinct. Identifying those who do and, for instance, cancelling their visas should be a major task.
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 19, 2018
This is not tricky. These particular party cells I write about are 100%, demonstrably, and explicitly a top-down directive from party committees directing students–and usually, the teachers chaperoning them–to set up these cells for the stated purpose of ideological control. https://t.co/PcesvDa7nB
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
For the record, my tweet is about all patriotic Chinese student groups overseas, not the UIUC one that you very commendably have linked back to the state. I’m saying we need context and good reporting to differentiate which ones and and which one’s aren’t. But yes, you’re right.
— Alec Ash (@alecash) April 19, 2018
Important piece by @BethanyAllenEbr – just to be clear though, most/all of the party branches revealed here are temporary bodies set up to monitor groups of exchange students on short-term visits https://t.co/2Dpgul2zB4
— Andrew Chubb 朱波 (@zhubochubo) April 18, 2018
There are over 300,000 Chinese students in the US. I wish @BethanyAllenEbr would have intervened 1 or 2 of the overwhelming majority who aren’t part of these cells, interested in what they do, or effected by them.
— Gregory Kulacki (@gkucs) April 19, 2018
After numerous people brought this up (@alecash @kellyahammond @gkucs and others), I think it’s important to emphasize that Chinese students in the US are in a difficult position. On the one hand, they are targets of Chinese government pressure, coercion, and surveillance. /1 https://t.co/dzmyXR2Ar0
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
On the other hand, they are also potential targets of suspicion as being agents of that intimidation and coercion. In other words, they are being squeezed from both sides. Frankly, that sucks. I wouldn’t want to be in that position. /2
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
Two things are incredibly important for journalist and others following this issue. We must investigate and reveal what the Chinese government is doing in the United States and how it is trying to use and mobilize Chinese students, because that is real and important. /3
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
But we must also emphasize over and over again that most Chinese students are not involved in this, and are most frequently the victims of it. Chinese students typically need protection, not suspicion. And in our current political environment, that’s a hard line to walk. /4
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
I think one of the best ways we can do this is to define the difference between what Chinese students do because they want to and feel like, and what the Chinese government is pressuring them to do. And when we talk about the latter–let’s be loud and clear about it. /5
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
That will help us learn to recognize when something is organic student action that should be protected (even if we disagree with it), and when something is government pressure (something we should push back against in order to preserve freedoms for everyone in this country). End.
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
One more! This party cells piece is, I think, a clear and easy line — as clear as it gets. Top-down directive from the party back in China, students don’t have a choice, it’s used for surveillance and ideological monitoring. THIS IS THE BAD THING.
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
This is the far end of the spectrum–the thing to which to compare the other, far more gray-area activities we see. It is both helpful and necessary to call this what it is. IT IS BAD. It is not good for Chinese students.
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
These party cells not “soft power,” it is not “cultural activities,” it is not “free speech,” it is not “student clubs,” it is not “educational exchange.” It is the bad thing. Let us use this to help us make the case that CSSAs or whatever ARE a gray area. End.
— B. Allen-Ebrahimian (@BethanyAllenEbr) April 19, 2018
Chinese state media has in the past been known to warn of an inverse problem: that of the potential threat that “sea turtles,” or returned overseas Chinese students, pose to China’s national security. Recent state propaganda campaigns have also warned young Chinese women that their handsome foreign boyfriends may actually be foreign agents.
For more on the topic of Chinese students abroad, listen to a recent Sinica podcast in which Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn, Siqi Tu, and Eric Fish discuss the diverse experiences of overseas Chinese students.
