A space to explore, share and shape the issues facing social and behavioral scientists
Reflecting concerns that foreign governments have illicitly obtained research developed by the United States, posing threats to research security and hindering international collaboration, the National Science Foundation released “NSF Guidelines for Research Security Analytics.”
The authors believe that the unique style of the CCP’s rhetoric in the first two decades of the reform era played a critical role in facilitating what they label as a “loosely coupled change”—changes wherein meanings and practices are weakly connected.
UK-China academic collaboration directly involves the CCP and its representatives at the university level. Against the backdrop of the Party’s human rights abuses, argues our anonymous scholar, such collaboration seems increasingly hard to justify.
The development of scientific capacity in many parts of the world and the building of academic ties is critical when it comes to responding to a new virus or tracking changes in climate. And yet …
The question how to approach international academic cooperation with totalitarian China therefore leads to no easy answers. It nonetheless merits much greater attention than it has received so far.
Totalitarian rule and the governance strategies it entails have direct implications for academic internationalization at Chinese universities and for their collaboration with universities abroad.
Within Communist academia, scholarship is managed top-down to a significant degree, for the benefit of part, state and society, and independent research operates in the nooks and crannies that remain. In this institutional environment, independent public speech carries a considerable risk, as does, to an extent, independent thought.
Where ideological issues such as Hong Kong and Taiwan are concerned, Australian lecturers tell of how a vocal minority of international Chinese students are attempting to police teaching materials and class discussions.
In terms of the organization of academic labor, higher education is ever more sharply divided between, on the one hand, an advantaged minority in full-time, long-term employment and, on the other hand, academia’s reserve army of labor.
To what extent do the realities of social research in China live up to the favorable image created by job ads on academic recruitment sites?
What is WeChat, and what does it do? Apart from ethnically suspect attacks on the platform itself, its ability to socially engineer discussion in China is a genuine concern.
At their heart, Chinese public universities are deeply parochial bureaucratic structures geared towards the party-state’s priorities for socio-economic development. In response to national and international pressures, some universities have recently begun to internationalize, with notably different degrees of enthusiasm. Others have not. You would do well to determine, the author writes, into what category a prospective employer falls.
