The new Sino-US battleground
Bin July, a New York Times article reported that a new red scare had descended upon Washington, DC, with the establishment of the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC). As this new curtain of fear is enveloping and reshaping the US capital, it is now also stretching into American university campuses.
The Committee on the Present Danger had campaigned against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, and has recently been revived by former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon to warn against the dangers of China. The New York Times described the CPDC as "an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters and followers of the Falun Gong" warning anyone who will listen that "China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown."
Working in tandem with CPDC in the US would be the Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Italy, to be housed in the 800-year-old Trisulti Monastery outside of Rome, where according to a Reuters report "Bannon was helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course aimed at right-wing Catholic activists." However, as of June the Italian government had revoked the lease for what some called a "gladiator school," and in October the academy was evicted from the monastery.
Nonetheless, in Washington, CPDC views are embraced by President Donald Trump's administration, where China's rise is viewed as an economic and national security threat, and American intelligence agencies have ratcheted up efforts to combat Chinese espionage. And the new battleground is at universities and research institutions.
Officials from
the
Federal Bureau
of
Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Council have been dispatched to Ivy League universities to warn administrators to be vigilant against Chinese students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, and University of California campuses are also feeling the effect. Research projects are being stalled because of visas issues, and while protecting intellectual property from Chinese theft is a legitimate concern, it is unclear how the chilling of research collaboration will impact the traditional open environment of academic inquiry and exchanges at universities.
FBI investigations are not limited to STEM fields. Already Americans who have studied in China are being investigated. Over the past two years the Bureau has questioned at least five US citizens who have studied in the prestigious Yenching Academy, known as the "Chinese Rhodes Scholarship." These incidents fit into a broader pattern of increasing FBI scrutiny over educational exchanges with China, and as some observe in a ChinaFile report, may dissuade young scholars from seeking opportunities to study abroad and opt for the "safer" option of learning about China from a textbook.
The Trump administration portrays the crackdown as necessary to protect the US, with FBI Director Christopher Wray warning that China poses a "whole-of-society-threat." But there are growing concerns that this is stoking a new red scare, and Scott Kennedy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is worried "that some people are going to say, because of this fear, any policy is justifiable," with Asian-Americans increasingly caught in the middle as anti-war/engagement supporters have been dismissed as apologists or even traitors. Now an increasing number of people in Washington - including many members of the CPDC - view decoupling the two economies as inevitable. But as Jonathan Hillman observed in The Washington Post in reference to Bannon's recent documentary Claws of the Red Dragon, casting foreign competition as a struggle between good (ours) and evil (everybody else's) would actually hurt US competitiveness.
Hillman added, "The paranoid style dangerously neglects the offense. Rather than considering how the United States should become more competitive, it fixates on defensive measures to undercut foreign competitors." Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) president L Rafael Reif likewise warned, "If all we do in response to China's ambition is to try to double-lock all our doors, I believe we will lock ourselves into mediocrity."
Unfortunately, it seems the double-locking is extending to educational exchanges, with a climate of fear that is ending conversation rather than helping to generate the conversation. At a time when bilateral official channels are breaking down and are imbued with skepticism and hostility, independent scholars with insights on China could be a valuable tool for future negotiations and progress, not a justification for suspicion.