Chinese Surveilance of its International Students

• Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology reports that Chinese students studying in the US are being monitored and punished by Chinese authorities for expressing dissenting views or criticizing the Chinese government on social media. 

• The Chinese government has been known to pressure Chinese students studying abroad to conform to its political views and to report on the activities of other Chinese students. In some cases, Chinese students have been punished or had their families threatened for speaking out while abroad. 

• The article suggests that this crackdown on dissent among Chinese students studying in the US could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and free speech on American campuses.

• How it happens:

• Students who express dissenting views often times have their families back in China threatened by the CHinese government.

• Fellow CCP students threaten to report him

• Another case where Xi Jinping reaches across borders to control its citizens wherever they are

• Students who don’t conform to the “views and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Mike Orlando, who leads the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, “risk being targeted for harassment.” China’s efforts to “suppress free speech and debate on U.S. campuses are concerning,” he said.

• At the University of Georgia, a graduate student became the prey of an intelligence officer in China who pressured him over the phone to become a spy and inform on fellow dissidents in America. 

• When the student made the conversations public, Chinese security forces harassed his family back home

• Incentives: University administrators are not always eager to intercede because it means risking a lucrative financial stream. 

• U.S. universities have received more than $1 billion in donations from mainland China — from individuals, companies, government organizations — since 2013, according to the Department of Education. 

• That doesn’t include tuition paid by Chinese students, whose numbers in the U.S. reached 370,000 in 2019. 

• Moreover, the complexities of free speech and identity politics make administrators even more reluctant to confront Chinese state influence.

• Pro-China forces on campuses have assaulted, stalked, threatened and doxxed dissidents and scholars.

Pushback: Some educators, even China experts, warn against exaggerating the scope of the threat. “Students and their parents are more concerned about anti-Asian hate, being attacked on the street.”