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发帖数: 3205 | 1 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/us-usa-china-dissiden
(Reuters) - A prominent Chinese dissident who moved to the United States
after being fired by Peking University last year warned on Thursday of the
dangers of academic exchanges with China, saying Beijing sent spies as
visiting scholars.
Xia Yeliang, an economics professor, was expelled from Peking University in
October amid a broader crackdown on dissent, having drawn the ire of school
officials for blog posts calling for democratic reforms and rule of law in
China.
He took up a post at Washington's Cato Institute in February.
At his first public event at the think tank, Xia said that the fact so many
high-ranking Chinese officials sent their children to study abroad showed a
lack of trust in China's own education system and a desire to "borrow the
good fame and name" from prestigious U.S. universities such as Harvard and
Stanford.
"I just have the warning for all those top universities in the U.S.A.: you
think you've got some benefits through cooperation with China, but who will
win in the future? It's hard to tell. How can you say the Cold War has been
ended; there's no enemy for the U.S. any more?"
Xia pointed to the build-up of China's navy, including acquisition of new
aircraft carriers and asked: "I don't want to exaggerate the situation, but
... why do you want to build that - only for fun?"
He said U.S. colleges must not compromise fundamental values such as freedom
of speech in pursuit of money from the hundreds of thousands of Chinese
students who come to study in the United States every year.
"American institutions are so lacking in money?" he asked, adding: "If
Hitler is here and he tries to make some cooperation with Western
universities and give them money, then you would like to accept that
cooperation?
"Some people say you can't compare like that, but some aspects are quite
similar," he said.
Xia said he was not advocating cutting off all educational exchanges, but
urging caution - especially when it came to visiting Chinese academics.
"Every year among those top universities there are some visiting scholars,
and among them I can definitely say there are some people who are actually
spies," he said.
"They don't do any research - probably they just do some surveys for their
boss."
Thomas Cushman, a sociology professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts,
where 136 faculty members signed a letter to Peking University last year
expressing concern about Xia's treatment, said U.S. universities were
bringing in billions of dollars a year from an estimated 235,000 Chinese
students in the country.
The Wellesley letter was prompted by the fact that the college signed an
agreement on student and faculty exchanges with Peking University last June,
and Cushman said it was vital that academic freedom was not compromised by
such deals.
He expressed concern that the financial allure of such exchanges could lead
to pulling of punches and self-censorship when it came to discussing topics
deemed sensitive to China on U.S. campuses.
"There is a presence of Chinese politics in American universities now that
wasn't there when I started off in academia, and we need to look at it
carefully," he said.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) |
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