OPINION:
The greatest mistake American universities, think tanks and policymakers make when engaging scholars from the People’s Republic of China is assuming that both sides participate in the same intellectual system. They do not.
American academics operate within a culture that prizes free inquiry, open debate, dissent and the pursuit of truth wherever it leads. Chinese scholars operate within a political system that demands unanimity of opinion. Challenging the Chinese Communist Party on any matter, big or small, can end a career, deepen surveillance or trigger criminal punishment.
To treat these two groups as intellectual equals in a free marketplace of ideas is not enlightened but rather dangerously self-kidding.
The issue is not whether Chinese scholars are intelligent or capable. Many are. The issue is whether they are free.
Under such circumstances, virtually all academic exchanges with China’s scholars are not genuine dialogues but merely the importation of officially sanctioned CCP perspectives into institutions built on intellectual freedom.
This matters because Americans instinctively assume that academics are independent. The CCP does not.
Equally troubling is the emergence of a professional class of Western “China experts” whose credibility depends on continued access to China.
Many academics, journalists and policy analysts implicitly treat repeated trips to Beijing, Shanghai or elite Chinese universities as proof of expertise. Yet this raises an uncomfortable question: Who receives access and who does not?
The most respected independent scholars of modern China — such as Frank Dikotter, Perry Link and others who have produced some of the most penetrating analyses of CCP governance — have often faced restrictions, hostility or outright exclusion from China because of their willingness to challenge official narratives.
Meanwhile, many of the Western experts who enjoy regular invitations, prestigious conferences and elite access tend to remain within boundaries acceptable to Beijing. This does not necessarily mean they are agents of influence. It does mean that China’s gatekeeping system rewards compliance and punishes dissent.
The CCP understands that access itself is a form of leverage. Scholars who fear losing visas, invitations, research opportunities or professional relationships have powerful incentives to self-censor. Over time, this creates an ecosystem in which the most visible “experts” are often the safest experts from Beijing’s perspective.
Perhaps the most intellectually corrosive consequence of these engagement networks is the emergence of a “Blame America First” mentality among segments of the China studies community.
Whenever Beijing acts aggressively — whether through military coercion against Taiwan, repression in Hong Kong, intimidation of foreign governments, industrial espionage or human rights abuses — the first instinct of many commentators is not to evaluate CCP behavior on its own merits.
Instead, they immediately search for an American action that supposedly provoked China.
This framework effectively strips the CCP of agency while assigning Washington responsibility for nearly every deterioration in bilateral relations. Such analysis often mirrors Beijing’s preferred narrative: China merely reacts; America initiates. China merely defends; America provokes. China merely responds; America escalates.
A scholarly community that reflexively interprets events through this lens ceases to function as an objective analytical enterprise. It becomes an amplifier for CCP messaging.
Student exchange suffers from the same China syndrome. For Beijing, universities are not autonomous institutions standing apart from the state. They are instruments of national power. That difference lies at the heart of the danger.
Academic exchange with the PRC thus carries enormous national security risks for the U.S.
The United States allows hundreds of thousands of Chinese students and researchers access to American campuses. Before the pandemic, approximately 370,000 Chinese students studied in the United States. American universities opened their libraries, laboratories, classrooms, archives and research programs to them.
Meanwhile, China’s communist government makes it extremely unsafe and unwelcome for Americans to study in China. The result is an absurd imbalance. Today, about 270,000 Chinese nationals are studying on U.S. campuses, yet the number of Americans studying in China has dwindled to fewer than 1,000.
For every American studying in China, roughly 300 Chinese nationals are studying in the U.S. Many of them are in critical areas of next-generation technology and innovation of enormous national security sensitivity. According to the Chinese Ministry of Education’s statistics, nearly 90% of those studying abroad in advanced industrial countries have returned to China, contributing to China’s rise as a communist hegemon.
Meanwhile, the tiny community of Americans studying in China faces censorship, surveillance, restricted access and political constraints.
This is a Cold War level of academic decoupling, except that with the Soviet Union, we were smart enough not to allow the Soviets to flood America’s free campuses.
The tragedy is that America’s greatest strength — its openness — is being turned into a vulnerability. Academic freedom depends on reciprocity, transparency and independence.
The CCP rejects all three. Chinese universities do not permit American scholars to operate with the same freedom that Chinese scholars enjoy in the United States. Chinese researchers are often expected to serve state objectives, including military-civil fusion programs and talent recruitment efforts aimed at acquiring foreign knowledge and technology.
The CCP’s own policies make clear that academic exchange is viewed not merely as education but also as a strategic asset.
This is why engagement must never become accommodation. A free society cannot preserve academic freedom by refusing to acknowledge those who seek to exploit it. The purpose of engagement should be to learn about China, not to serve as a platform for CCP narratives, to cultivate future American proxies or to legitimize a system that denies its own citizens the freedoms American universities take for granted.
Until Chinese scholars can enjoy in Beijing the same freedoms they enjoy in Boston, Chicago or Berkeley, Americans should stop speaking of “academic exchange” as if it were a reciprocal relationship. It is not.
It is an encounter between an open society and a closed one, and only one side is taking risks.
• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.
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