Hong Kong’s academic freedom suffers under security regime, report says

Voice of America

Hong Kong’s national security law, enacted in July 2020, has eroded academic freedom in the former United Kingdom colony, according to a report released in late September 2024.

The report, by the international group Human Rights Watch and the United States-based advocacy organization Hong Kong Democracy Council, said university authorities have imposed greater control and limitations on student activities and that students and faculty members are increasingly exercising self-censorship to avoid trouble.

“Students, academics, and administrators, especially those from Hong Kong studying contemporary socio-political issues, feel as if they are living under a microscope,” the report states.

The opaque definition of what constitutes a security law violation has created a chilling effect at Hong Kong universities, analysts said.

“When the red line isn’t clear, there will be a pervasive sense of fear, and students and faculty members will try to make adjustments to ensure they don’t get into trouble,” said Maya Wang, the associate China director at Human Rights Watch.

Hong Kong’s eight public universities have been managed by people who hold views favored by Beijing following the imposition of the law in 2020, the report found. Since then, university officials have increased crackdowns on student unions and banned symbols or events viewed as promoting pro-democracy values.

“University officials have punished students for holding peaceful protests and gatherings, and have broadly censored student publications, communications, and events,” the report said.

In 2019, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proposed an extradition bill that could potentially allow Hong Kong suspects to be sent to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for trial. Anger over the proposal led to large-scale protests that became a broader anti-CCP and pro-democracy movement.

The CCP responded by enacting the national security law by decree, ensuring the city’s pro-Beijing leaders could deal with what the CCP considered challenges to its authority.

Since many college students and academics were involved in the 2019 protests, one of Beijing’s priorities following the law’s implementation is to “impose ideological control” over universities, Wang said.

“The decline of academic freedom in Hong Kong’s universities is part of Beijing’s attempt to impose ideological control over the entire city,” she said.

Students and academics interviewed for the report said self-censorship is common, especially on sociopolitical topics related to the PRC and Hong Kong.

“They do this when expressing themselves in classrooms, when writing and researching academic articles, and when inviting speakers for academic conferences,” the report said, adding that academics teaching Hong Kong and China current affairs feel “especially vulnerable.”

In some cases, university officials have asked academics in the social sciences to stop offering courses on topics that Beijing considers sensitive. Others face censorship imposed by university administrators or academic publishers.

Some academics said the prevalence of self-censorship will reduce understanding of the dynamics in China.

“Hong Kong was always an important space that gives the international community some insight into what’s happening in Hong Kong and the broader China, but that space is now rapidly disappearing,” said Lokman Tsui, a research fellow at the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto in Canada and a former journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

With university management stacked with Beijing supporters, administrators have worked with PRC and Hong Kong authorities to harass, intimidate and remove academics voicing different opinions, according to the report.

“The government does that by defaming and intimidating those academics perceived to hold liberal or pro-democracy views in the state-owned media and denying or not issuing visas to foreign academics expressing such opinions,” the report stated.

Human Rights Watch and the Hong Kong Democracy Council said Beijing’s efforts to “cleanse” universities have led to a “harmonization” of opinion in academia in Hong Kong.

Some Hong Kong universities have joint research projects and exchange programs with universities abroad, and foreign universities should be aware of the repression taking place, Wang said.

“Foreign universities should avoid elevating the repressive actors and provide scholarships or fellowships to endangered Hong Kong students and academics to ensure they could continue to do their research outside of Hong Kong without fear,” she said.