61
Mr. S
MITH
. Dr. Martin, thank you
so very much for your testi-
mony. And your full statement as well, I think I mentioned this
earlier, as well as anybody else, will be made a part of the record,
and anything you want to add to it, any extraneous materials.
Ms. Cao.
STATEMENT OF MS. YAXUE CAO, FOUNDER AND EDITOR,
CHINA CHANGE
Ms. C
AO
. Dear Congressman Smith and the members of the sub-
committee, I am pleased to speak today about the Chinese Govern-
ment’s policy on joint higher education ventures,
its mechanisms of
controlling them, the Communist Party’s presence in these ven-
tures, and the regime’s suppression of academic freedom in Chinese
universities.
China first set the rules for the joint-venture higher education
programs in 2003. In 2010, China issued the National Plan for Me-
dium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development that de-
votes a chapter, Chapter 16 that is, to these ventures. The purpose
of these joint ventures is to bring the best international higher edu-
cation resources to China. This includes bringing world-class ex-
perts and scholars to China to engage in teaching,
research, and
management, conducting joint research with the best universities
in the world, all to advance the science and technology, and encour-
aging foreign universities to use their intellectual property as their
share of investment in these ventures.
When entering WTO in 2001, China promised to open its edu-
cation sector to foreign universities, allowing ‘‘foreign majority own-
ership,’’ but China has had no intention to deliver that promise. In-
stead, it set up joint ventures with the Chinese Government being
the controlling party. The rules stipulate that the board of these
joint ventures must have a Chinese
majority and the president
must be a Chinese citizen. Courses and textbooks must be filed
with the authorities. These programs must provide courses known
as political thought education to the Chinese students.
The most insidious part of the control mechanism probably lies
in the finance of these joint-venture universities. It is also the least
transparent part. Financial dependence on the Chinese Govern-
ment, even if it is partial, puts foreign universities in the vulner-
able position where they may feel the need to conform to China’s
expectations, not only on the joint-venture campuses, but also on
home campuses.
The 2,000 also joint-venture programs in China are mostly fo-
cused on advanced technology. Thirty-seven
percent of them are en-
gineering, while literature, history, and law are less than 2 percent
each.
China is also bringing its quest for knowledge to the U.S. soil.
Last year, China’s elite Tsinghua University, the University of
Washington, and Microsoft launched the Global Innovation Ex-
change Institute in Seattle that focuses on technology and design
innovation. In the Chinese press this institute was described as,
‘‘An important step in the milestone of Tsinghua University’s inter-
national strategic deployment.’’ China is seeking to invest in the re-
search triangle in North Carolina and also establish innovation
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62
platforms elsewhere in the U.S. with Chinese investment and the
research expertise from American universities.
Another component of China’s strategy is theft.
Reports on this
abound. For example, in May, Penn State University disclosed that
its engineering school had been invaded by Chinese hackers for
more than 2 years. Penn State develops sensitive technology for the
U.S. Navy.
China’s intentions are probably best illustrated in two incidents
involving UC Berkeley. In November 2014, Peking University gave
the president of UC Berkeley an honorary professorship, and they
expressed the desire in ‘‘cooperation’’ on big data processing tech-
nology, which has wide applications. Three months later,
a labor
rights center in Guangzhou jointly established by UC Berkeley and
the Sun Yat-sen University was forced to close as part of a system-
atic suppression of rights activities and civil society in recent years.
Reports in the Chinese press confirmed the CCP presence on
joint-venture campuses as well. From the Ministry of Education’s
review of joint-venture programs in 2014, I quote:
‘‘Joint-venture universities have established the party commit-
tees so that there would be a party organization wherever
there are party members, achieving the party’s no-blind-spot
coverage on the grassroots level. Some universities have also
established the overseas party cells to ensure that the party’s
work remained synchronized with its work at home when stu-
dents study abroad.’’
In China’s current political system there has never been aca-
demic freedom
as understood by Americans, though the level of re-
pression has fluctuated. Since early 2013, a CCP order known as
Document No. 9 has shut down what little academic freedom was
enjoyed before. The Christian Science Monitor reported recently
that professors were fired or pressured to quit their jobs for expos-
ing liberal ideas and teaching them in the classroom. Trips to aca-
demic conferences were cut or constrained. Student reading lists
were vetted for ideological content. On some campuses classrooms
are monitored by surveillance cameras.
Over the last 30 years the Communist regime has benefited enor-
mously from the unprecedented transfer of knowledge from West-
ern
countries, much of it through joint business ventures and
through theft of intellectual property. Many such relations have
soured in recent years and the trend is likely to worsen. Now it
seems that the Chinese Government is duplicating the successful
model in higher education while pursuing an agenda to stamp out
the Chinese people’s demand of freedom.
I have no problem with the free exchange of knowledge, but I
have a problem with freely providing knowledge to the Communist
regime and to strengthen its grip on power. I have a problem with
our institutions of higher education looking the other way as ter-
rible suppression of freedoms and civil society take place in the
country.
On
a personal level, for the 3 years I have been an activist of
human rights in China, all the peoples, I mean all the peoples have
been in jail now. Some of them left the country for political asylum,
but almost all of them are in jail.
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