Scholarship restrictions in China and Human Rights Watch Code of Conduct

Four examples of the increased intervention by Communist Party officials in higher education in China have recently been identified. The first came in the form of restrictions on academic journals. Taylor & Francis announced that 84 or their 1,466 journals will no longer be available through libraries in China. The move by China officials to restrict certain journals is the result of articles being published in some to which the government objects. The second example is the censorship of a proposed issue of Frontiers of Literary Studies in China; in this case, Wong and Edmund, both professors in New Zealand, found that their lead essay had been significantly edited and another article entirely deleted. The third example is of the dismissal of a law professor who had criticized the Chinese Communist Party leadership. The fourth example is much bigger - the Uighur Human Rights Project asserts that 386 academics, artists, and other intellectuals are now in concentration camps. Magnus Fiskeshi indicates that "China can no longer be regarded as an authoritarian country that is perhaps moving in the right direction. No, we are witnessing a monstrous mass assault on human dignity. It is an intentional, well-planned, multi-pronged genocide, targeting the dignity of whole peoples and cultures..."

Human Rights Watch has issued a 12 point Code of Conduct that it recommends to higher education institutions. The Code is designed to reduce the opportunities for Chinese government intervention that restricts academic freedom.