Required: A good judgement

How should the University of Gothenburg's researchers and lecturers deal with China? There are no simple answers, says Fredrik Fällman, Associate Professor of Sinology.

– We must be able to cooperate. But at the same time, it is important that we make our position very clear when it comes to freedom of expression and human rights.

RECENTLY, Dagens Nyheter published a couple of articles about how students funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) are required to be loyal to the Chinese regime. Unlike Karolinska Institutet for example, the University of Gothenburg does not have a central agreement with CSC. That doesn't prevent individual Chinese students who come here from being able to get funding from them anyway, explains Fredrik Fällman, Associate Professor of Sinology.

– It is no secret that students applying for CSC scholarships must support the “system of socialism with Chinese characteristics”. The regulations are openly presented on CSC's website, albeit only in Chinese. That kind of requirement has been around for a long time; the Communist Party's special position as a leading force in society is enshrined in the preamble to the Chinese constitution.

The CSC agreement also states that students must pay back their tuition fees if they fail in their studies.

– A lecturer who gives a failing grade to such a student thus risks impoverishing the entire family. It's terrible and nothing a university should ever agree to.

THE UNIVERSITY OR the individual employee who has some form of exchange with China must therefore be aware that Chinese researchers and students are expected to show solidarity with their country's regime, emphasizes Fredrik Fällman.

– Many Chinese researchers are members of the Communist party, it can be a prerequisite for having a career at all. This does not mean that you cannot have open and honest dialogue with Chinese colleagues, but it is important to be careful, for your own sake but also out of concern for your colleague.

Vigilance also applies in a business context, Fredrik Fällman points out.

– You have to be aware that when a group of Chinese people come to visit, there is usually a party representative with them. It is therefore important to find a balance where, on the one hand, you treat Chinese researchers and lecturers like everyone else, and on the other, you do not naively enter into various collaborations.

– FOR EXAMPLE, China is showing an increasing commitment to the Arctic and has begun to market itself as a semi-Arctic country. Chinese researchers can, of course, have a genuine interest in the area and should not be excluded from collaboration, but one must be aware that behind the involvement lies a strategic interest from the Chinese state.

The Chinese regime has also increasingly begun to use the term “community of humanity's destiny”, with the aim of strengthening global collaboration on environmental and climate issues for mutual benefit – while at the same time believing that different countries' views on democracy and human rights must be respected, says Fredrik Fällman.

– The West has a tendency to exoticize China, something the Chinese regime benefits from; it believes that the country is democratic in its own way and that universal values cannot be applied to China. But of course that is not true. It is even the case that one of the main authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 was the Chinese diplomat Peng Chun Chang.

IT WOULD BE BEST if people who want to collaborate with China first acquire the requisite knowledge, Fredrik Fällman explains.

– China has a population of 1.4 billion. However, last year, for the first time since the 1960s, the population began to shrink. This means that in China, just like here, you have an aging population. Many Chinese people are poor, especially in rural areas. But the urban middle class today consists of several hundred million people – as many as or more than the population of the United States. They probably have different expectations than their parents and they will influence the country's future. There are therefore good reasons to be interested in this vast country.

Eva Lundgren

→About the articles: Dagens Nyheter's articles about the Chinese Scholarship Council were published on 2023-01-12.