Reforms in France: When Competition and Cooperation Clash

Abstract

that opportunities for funding will dismiss—if not silence entirely—academic work outside party ideology. Perhaps more chilling is the 2013 leak of an internal CCP directive called “Document Number Nine,” which outlines seven topics allegedly banned within universities and related sectors, including universal values, civil society, a free press, and questioning China’s governance. While there is little public information on the ban’s implementation, it echoes reports of a common understanding of what is off-limits, including “the three Ts”—the autonomy of Tibet, Taiwan’s status, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The CCP’s policing of these and other ideological constraints is evident in part by so-called “student informants,” who report controversial comments or teachings to party and university officials, often resulting in severe disciplinary actions against professors. Unsurprisingly, with impediments to free inquiry and autonomous governance, many Chinese scholars have had to choose to either abandon their country or their academic profession altogether. In other cases, academics have been wrongfully detained, arrested, and prosecuted. The trend has extended to students, with an uptick of reports of repression on the mainland. It is alarming that censorship and repression are occurring in China with increased frequency within Chinese higher education, through enhanced methods, and enshrined in law, as enormous effort is applied to achieve a reputation as a world-class knowledge producer. SAR’s Obstacles to Excellence challenges the current metrics in rankings to take academic freedom and institutional autonomy into consideration. Likewise, it urges China and the global higher education community to position institutional autonomy as a bedrock of academic freedom and quality universities. Embracing and committing to these values will help China cultivate truly world-class universities from which everyone benefits. Reforms in France: When Competition and Cooperation Clash