China is far from alone in taking advantage of Australian universities self-inflicted wounds – The Guardian

Outside the political sphere, much of Australias China panic centres on university campuses. This is hardly surprising, given the deep connections of the Australian higher-education sector to China.

In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, higher education brought in some A$12bn in export revenue, most of it from China. With more than 150,000 Chinese international students enrolled, some institutions relied on that single revenue stream to make up a quarter of their total budget before the current drop-off. Mandarin is the second language of campus life in most universities these days; Confucius Institutes have been established at 13 universities; partnerships and MOUs with Chinese universities proliferate in many fields. Australian academics now collaborate more with colleagues in China than in any other foreign country: one report found that an incredible 16.2% of scientific papers by Australian researchers almost one in six were co-authored with researchers in China, with papers in the fields of materials science, chemical engineering and energy topping the list.

Having been among the most enthusiastic participants in the China boom, universities are now bearing the brunt of the political backlash. The public has been presented with a grim picture of the consequences of all of this China engagement. Financial dependency, it is claimed, has engendered political subservience. Critical discussion of China is falling silent, while administrations subcontract their core business to Peoples Republic of China state agencies and pursue partnerships that put Australias national security at risk. Its a picture replete with martial imagery. Andrew Hastie talks of universities as modern battlegrounds of covert influence and interference. Journalist Rowan Callick warns of a war being waged by Chinese international students against politically incorrect lecturers. A military-academic onslaught is how Alex Joske describes Chinas approach to international scientific collaboration.

How accurate is this picture? As a critic of Australian universities, Id never argue that all is healthy within the sector, including in its dealings with China. But as universities have become a microcosm for the wider China debate, its important that we characterise that debate correctly.

In many ways, we face the same choice here as we do in the political sphere: to remedy the erosion of Australian institutions, or to join in a campaign to isolate and exclude Chinese actors from them. At the same time, there are ethical and political questions specific to the university context that administrators and academics alike face. In tackling them, though, we have to remain conscious of the various ways in which university autonomy and academic freedom can be compromised, including of course by the intrusion of domestic political influences.

The language of war that now envelops campuses has, in my opinion, laid the basis for domestic government interventions that present more of a risk to universities autonomy and independence than anything China is doing.

As they do in the political sphere, openings for undue influence exist in universities. However, China is far from the only actor taking advantage of what are self-inflicted wounds. The basic crisis is the inexorable decline in public funding. At 0.7% of GDP, public investment in Australian higher education already sits well below the OECD average and will continue its downward slide thanks to recent reforms. This long-term transformation has put universities at risk from private philanthropists and foreign lobbying ventures alike, wheeling all sorts of ideological barrows into the halls of learning. As governing bodies reshape themselves along corporate lines and restrict the participation of academics in decision-making, transparency is eroded, and the attraction of get-rich-quick schemes only increases.

Universities have been put on the back foot in the current political climate. On the one hand, as public institutions they can hardly avoid the impact of the changing winds of political opinion on China. Yet at the same time, universities have in practice been all but privatised, with many vice-chancellors enriching themselves to the tune of more than $1m annually. Any effort to criticise the direction of Australian policy can easily be met with accusations that they have a pecuniary interest in the question. Its a simple fact that they do. In August 2020, when the Senate announced it would be conducting an inquiry into national security risks affecting the Australian higher-education and research sector, federal MP Bob Katter railed against universities that had their snouts ... well and truly in the trough and had gone from selling visas to selling their souls. Having long encouraged universities to find funding elsewhere, politicians now home in on their ties to China to argue that theyve lost their way, engendering a hostile public mood that blunts criticism of ongoing funding cuts.

What this highlights, I think, is the need for a perspective thats independent of both the government and the corporate university, one thats able to make the necessary criticisms of universities as institutions and international actors, without falling into uncritical subservience to the governments foreign-policy objectives. This is not the first time that universities have had to face this challenge. During the first cold war, through both enticements and pressure, western universities were encouraged to align their work with the states diplomatic and military interests. The conditions then were not conducive to free, critical inquiry, and theyre not likely to be a second time around either.

This is an edited extract from China Panic: Australias Alternative to Paranoia and Pandering by David Brophy, out now through La Trobe University Press

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China is far from alone in taking advantage of Australian universities self-inflicted wounds - The Guardian