by AFT President Sandra Feldman
August 2001

China is silencing scholars
because it fears freedom
of inquiry.


Watching while millions of Chinese celebrated their country’s successful bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, I couldn’t help but think about the individual victims of a repressive government.

Perhaps it was the stark contrast between the organized pageantry of this celebration and the equally well choreographed (but covert) campaign going on against Chinese-American scholars and teachers in China. Or maybe it was seeing the euphoric children paraded in front of cameras during the victory celebration, which contrasted so sharply with the forty children killed recently in an explosion at their school in the village of Fanglin—the result of a makeshift firecracker factory where they were being forced to work to make money for their school.

We know these horrifying things are happening—despite the government’s determined efforts to bury them—because the news trickles through via word of mouth, or faxes, or conventional media, or the Internet. One thing China’s expansion into the world marketplace has done is to reveal the wholesale crackdown on individual expression, the “re-education” and even torture of thousands of people who peacefully try to exercise freedom of association or religion or thought, or who protest horrendous working conditions.

For all Americans these practices are revolting. For teacher unionists they are horrifying examples of a society that suppresses the heart and soul of education—freedom of inquiry, intellectual curiosity, and exploration.

Imprisoning scholars

Consider the case of Dr. Gao Zhan, a research scholar on the faculty of American University in Washington, who was arrested by the Chinese government in February, along with her husband. Recently convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years in prison, she was released and expelled after pressure from the U.S. Shortly after Dr. Gao Zhan was arrested, Dr. Li Shaomin, an American citizen educated at Princeton University and a business professor at the City University of Hong Kong, was detained while traveling in China, and he too was recently convicted and expelled. Several other academics with ties to America also were arrested this year.

All of these people were accused of spying and denied access to lawyers and family members. Still other scholars, like the economist He Qinglian, have been forced to flee the country because they faced arrest. The charges against these scholars have no basis, but are tools used to silence their voices and suppress the spread of ideas and information.

That’s why there is an equally virulent crackdown on what has passed for a free press in China. The top editors of the country’s semi-independent newspaper, Southern Weekend, were recently removed after the paper continued its critical reporting on government corruption, police brutality, and official misdeeds.

Sadly, the situation is getting worse. Twelve years after Tiananmen Square, innocent people are being imprisoned for trying to organize real unions, for conducting scholarly exploration, and for trying to exercise basic democratic rights. The state controls who moves from the countryside to the cities; it covers up illness and hunger; and it frequently bars students from going to college if they are disabled, older, or married.

This is a society that needs education even as it fears it. It needs technology, but it tightly controls access to the Internet and blocks exposure to such “dangerous” publications as The New York Times. It needs universities, think tanks, and business associations, but only allows those that support the Communist Party. Any efforts to start truly independent organizations—social clubs, churches, or labor unions—are immediately shut down, and their organizers routinely imprisoned.

Disrespecting education

The denial of the freedom to write, investigate, collaborate, teach, learn, inquire, dissent, argue, or simply be skeptical is anathema to American values. American democracy is strengthened immeasurably by the freedom of inquiry fostered in the best higher education system in the world and an elementary and secondary system that brings a plethora of people and cultures together while preparing them for citizenship.

That’s why it’s particularly chilling for Americans when we hear about the imprisonment and harassment of scholars in China at the same time that our government is considering broadening trade. The expansion of China’s economy has not been accompanied by the emergence of civil society. In fact, oppression has worsened. Those of us committed to democracy and human rights have to keep the pressure on. If we fail to link trade with democratic rights, we cede our ability to influence the most populous nation in its treatment of its workers, scholars, and other citizens.

While China may not share or care about our values, they do want our marketplace. Isn’t it in the interest of our great democracy to do all we can to make the world as safe for scholars as for salesmen?

Before the Olympic Games take place in Beijing in 2008, we have the opportunity to maintain pressure on the Chinese government. We should speak loudly on behalf of those unjustly imprisoned and persecuted, so that they and their families will be able to celebrate freedom as happily as the Chinese government celebrated the acquisition of the Games.