Reset of UK-China research relations ‘will harm global science’

Aspects of the contribution to the discussion above are naive. In 2019 I attemded a workshop at a college in Oxford which was hosted by a (in other ways) very strong Beijing university. However, the actual workshop ( at which Marginson also spoke but did not attend in full) was led by a Dean and an organisation who is very closely associated with the Xi Jinping social management institute at BeiShi. Discussion was not permitted, and as the only non-host whos stayed for the whole event so that it was usually incumbent on me to try and push for it, I was well aware that other junior academics were not abnle to gtalk to their strengths or even their usua area of expertise. Thios was all about PR and it duly turned up in Global Times. On the day my own interactions with the Party representative were redolent of the 70s. If you do not speak Chinese and only listen to the interpreted content of your own talk you will not know how your interventions are used, however senior you are in global education. There are many great Chinese academics and scientists, but we do need to be mindful of the PR arm of the Party-State and its activities in HE, and its attention to internal and external comms. Chinese Studies academics at Oxford and I complained about this particular and lisleading use of the University name. But in a broader sense, if we are serious about wanting to support knowledge creators and thinkers and academics in China, then we also need to remain wide-eyed about the structures of power within which they labour, and know when to withdraw or to refuse.

"But banning UK universities from working with “military-linked” Chinese universities would be an unreasonable restraint given that “all strong research universities [in the UK] have ties with the military or security-related research”, said Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford." Perhaps I misunderstand the point being argued here, but I think the point is that links to our own military are not seen as a threat to our security, but links to a potentially hostile major power's military might be.