Academic Exchange or Political Infiltration? America's "Openness" Is Being Weaponized by the CCP [Zhiding Lecture Hall Enlightenment Forum, Miles Yu] EP259

This article explores the political infiltration and national security risks behind U.S.-China academic and educational exchanges. It points out that Chinese scholars and experts lack freedom as they are constrained by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) system, that the Western China studies circle often falls into a cognitive framework of blaming the United States first, and that a large number of Chinese students going to the U.S. to study cutting-edge technology has created a serious imbalance. The author calls on the United States to stop treating non-reciprocal exchanges as normal interactions and to prevent an open society from being exploited by a closed system.

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Welcome to the Zhiding Lecture Hall Enlightenment Forum, I am Miles Yu. One of the most common mistakes made by American universities, think tanks, and policymakers when interacting with Chinese scholars is assuming that both sides operate within the same intellectual framework, but that is simply not true. The American academic community is built on a culture of free inquiry, open debate, expressing dissent, and pursuing the truth wherever it leads, allowing scholars to discuss freely. However, the environment in which Chinese scholars operate is a system that demands ideological conformity and obedience to political authority. In China, challenging the position of the Chinese Communist Party on any issue, large or small, comes with a price—ranging from career impacts to surveillance, or even criminal penalties. Treating these two groups as equal participants in a free marketplace of ideas is not being open-minded; it is a dangerous form of self-deception. The issue has never been whether Chinese scholars are intelligent—many of them are indeed exceptionally talented. The real question is whether they have freedom. Under such conditions, many exchanges with China's academic community are often not genuine intellectual dialogues, but rather a process of importing viewpoints approved by official CCP authorities into Western institutions originally founded on freedom of thought. This matters because Americans intuitively assume that scholars are independent, but the CCP does not want them to be.

Equally concerning is the emergence in the West of a group of so-called China experts whose professional reputations often depend on their ability to maintain continuous access to China. Many scholars, journalists, and policy analysts view frequent travel to Beijing or Shanghai, or being invited to events at top Chinese universities, as symbols of professional status. However, this raises an unsettling question: Who gets in, and who is locked out? Some of the most respected independent scholars of China, such as Frank Dikötter and Perry Link, are precisely those who dared to challenge the official narrative, resulting in the deepest analyses of the governance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet, for this very reason, they are often restricted, suppressed, or directly barred from entry. Conversely, Western experts who are frequently invited to important conferences and enjoy top-tier treatment almost always observe boundaries and never cross the lines deemed acceptable by Beijing. This does not necessarily mean they are acting as propagandists for China, but it illustrates one thing: the CCP's access-review system rewards compliance and punishes dissent. The CCP is well aware that the access-review system itself is a tool of influence. When scholars worry about losing visas, invitations, research opportunities, or academic ties, a strong incentive for self-censorship is created. Over time, the China experts who most frequently appear in the media tend to be those whom Beijing considers the safest and most harmless.

The greatest intellectual corrosion caused by these exchange networks is the cultivation of a knee-jerk, blame-America-first mindset within certain circles of China studies. Whenever Beijing takes aggressive action—whether it is military pressure on Taiwan, the suppression of Hong Kong, threats against other countries, the theft of industrial technology, or human rights violations—the first reaction of many commentators is not to examine the behavior of the CCP itself, but to immediately ask whether some US action provoked China. Under this framework, the CCP is portrayed as the passive party, while the US is cast as the root cause of all problems. Such analyses often align with Beijing's preferred narrative: China is merely responding, while the US is actively provoking; China is only defending itself, while the US is escalating conflict. When the academic community becomes accustomed to interpreting events from this perspective, it ceases to be an objective analyst and instead becomes an amplifier for the CCP's messaging.

The same problem exists in student exchanges. For Beijing, universities are not autonomous institutions independent of the government, but rather tools of state power. This fundamental difference lies at the core of the risk. Consequently, US-China academic exchanges also entail significant national security risks. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, approximately 370,000 Chinese students were studying in the United States, and American universities opened their libraries, laboratories, classrooms, archives, and research resources to them. On the other hand, the CCP has made studying in China both unsafe and unwelcoming for American students, resulting in a severe imbalance. Today, while about 270,000 Chinese students are on American campuses, the number of American students studying in China has plummeted to fewer than 1,000. In other words, for every American student studying in China, there are roughly 300 Chinese students studying in the United States. Even more notably, many of them are enrolled in next-generation critical technology fields such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and advanced engineering, which involve highly sensitive national security interests. According to statistics from China's Ministry of Education, nearly 90 percent of Chinese students studying abroad in advanced industrialized countries ultimately return to China to build their careers, becoming a vital force in the rise of China's hegemony. In contrast, the few American students remaining in China must contend with censorship, surveillance, information restrictions, and various political constraints. To some extent, this is reminiscent of the academic decoupling during the Cold War, except that when facing the Soviet Union back then, the US at least knew not to let a large influx of Soviet students freely enter American campuses. Today, however, America's greatest strength—openness—is being exploited as a weakness.

Academic freedom relies on reciprocity, transparency, and independence, yet the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rejects all three. Universities in China do not allow American scholars the same freedoms that Chinese scholars enjoy in the United States. Many Chinese researchers are even required to cooperate with national objectives, including military-civil fusion programs and various talent recruitment initiatives, the purpose of which is to acquire foreign knowledge and technology. The CCP's own policies clearly indicate that academic exchange is not merely an educational activity but a national strategic asset; this is precisely why exchange must never turn into compromise. A free society cannot defend academic freedom by refusing to face threats squarely. The purpose of exchange should be to gain a deep understanding of China, not to become a platform for CCP propaganda, nor to cultivate future American proxies, and certainly not to endorse a system that deprives its own people of freedom. Unless Chinese scholars can enjoy the same freedom in Beijing as they do in Boston, Chicago, or Berkeley, Americans should no longer view academic exchange as a reciprocal relationship, because it is fundamentally not. This is a collision between an open society and a closed one, and it is only the open side that truly bears the risk.