Transnational Repression: Collaboration with Chinese Characteristics
An investigation into Chinese state influence in UK Universities and its impact on student safety.
On the eve of Lunar New Year 2025, huge fireworks exploded onto the Cambridge skyline. After a long and impressive display, drones began to hover, forming complex pictures of a giant panda, a dancing dragon, the Chinese flag, and, finally, a glowing red outline of the borders of China. The outline included Taiwan as the territory of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). One mainland Chinese student - who for anonymity will be referred to as ‘Edward’* - told TCS that the fireworks ‘disturbed him’. ‘While I want to celebrate New Year with other Chinese students, I feel deeply uncomfortable with the politicisation of this cultural event.’ Despite the relative safety he feels in Cambridge, for Edward this drone show was a fluorescent sign of the ever-presence of the Chinese state.
Taken from Camfess
In 2024, Freedom House placed China top of a list of countries engaging in transnational repression due to its efforts to silence exiled dissidents. In the UK, there are 150,000 students from China with Chinese nationality, and another 10,000 students with British citizenship with Chinese origins - many of whom have family members in China.Transnational repression is defined by Amnesty as ‘government actions to silence, control or deter dissent and criticism by human rights defenders, journalists, academics, opposition activists, and others, especially from that country, who live in another country, in violation of their human rights’.
Transnational Repression
Transnational repression is at the same time a twofold phenomenon. Transnational repression is also ‘systemic’; isolated incidents of violence are used to make an example of individuals or dissident communities to cause a large number of people to pre-emptively alter their behaviour and self-censor.
As one student, named Olivier by Amnesty, stated: “transnational repression is a feeling, an atmosphere created by the Chinese government. They can’t monitor everyone and everyone, so their process is to create this stressful environment to prevent people from joining movements, and from participating in events”. Transnational repression is about creating a climate of fear to ensure obedience to the PRC, even when residing abroad.
“their process is to create this stressful environment to prevent people from joining movements, and from participating in events”
Chinese students in the UK have an important function for both the UK and China. In the UK, they are a key financial asset for a struggling university sector. For China, these students’ education in STEM, politics, economics, and finance among others represents the next generation of CCP bureaucrats, scientists, and researchers placed to lead China into a century it plans to dominate. Yet, being educated in universities like Cambridge means these students are exposed to ideas and a degree of freedom contrary to the ideology of the CCP, where students are brought up well-versed in ‘Xi Jinping Thought’: socialist values, national unity, and the importance of obedience to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese state fears defection and the increasing number of mainland and Hong Kong students claiming political asylum outside of China.
Signs of disloyalty are understood to be an interest in ‘sensitive’ areas, such as the independence of Tibet, East Turkestan, Taiwan, democracy movements in Hong Kong, concerns over human rights, or engagement with politics in a way that is different from the party narrative. Or, as Edward added, posting a picture of Winnie the Pooh, sharing the case of Luo Daiqing, a Chinese student in America, who was sentenced for six months for a “provocative tweet” about the bear.
Protesters brave heavy rain as they march against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill on Sunday, August 18, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons
The Long Arms of the State
In 2024, Amnesty International warned that many Chinese and Hong Kong students in the UK ‘live in fear from the long-arm of the Chinese government’. Furthermore,students face significant pressure on their families at home. Students also told Amnesty that their families had been approached to urge them to control their sons and daughters while abroad. This pressure can translate into financial coercion as students face threats that their parents would be forced to cut funding if they are found to have participated in ‘sensitive’ protests. Many Uyghur students studying in the USA have lost all funding after their parents were disappeared into the ‘re-education’ camp network.
Luna, a Chinese student in Europe, said that the ‘police call my parents quite often to harass them… and [officials] indirectly pressure family members to encourage me to be silent and stop my involvement in political activities’. Another student’s mother was told to “keep reminding your daughter that she is Chinese, she must love the government, and that she must always remember to spread the message of President Xi overseas”.
Ten out of the thirty-two students interviewed state that their families have experienced harassment relating to the student’s activities abroad. Several students said that they had forced themselves to cut all contact with their loved ones back home to protect them from being targeted by the Chinese authorities. Amnesty describes this method of control as ‘coercion-by-proxy’.
On the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and during the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the 2022 Sitong Bridge, and the White Paper movement, many students felt the pressure increase. A third of students interviewed by Amnesty said that the climate of fear this created made them change the focus of their studies, being cautious to avoid sensitive political topics and human rights.
Students expressed their fear of being reported on by other Chinese students abroad. Half of the students interviewed by Amnesty said that they feared reporting, confrontation, or alienation from “pro-government” students.
Many students have faced surveillance in their host countries. WeChat is understood to be one of several means through which these students are monitored digitally. As many Chinese students use numbers registered with the mainland, they have agreed to the terms and conditions of ‘Tencent Weixin’: users must not “publish, transmit, disseminate, or store content” that violates Chinese laws and regulations. One student from Cambridge noted that he has been advised by concerned friends to wipe his phone before crossing the border into China. He spoke of having his belongings searched when at the border, and that for him, ‘walking through customs is like torture. I wish I could feel joy on my return home but all I feel is anxiety. It is a huge mental strain’.
Chinese apps WeChat and AliPay on phone screens
“walking through customs is like torture. I wish I could feel joy on my return home but all I feel is anxiety. It is a huge mental strain”
This student, Edward, told TCS that he has deliberately distanced himself from other Chinese students in Cambridge for fear he would be reported for his dissenting views and that his family at home would be targeted. He said that he ‘wished he could be more involved in student activism’ but that he, like many other Chinese students, fears being photographed at potentially sensitive protests, such as those on Ukraine and Gaza. ‘This is why there is hardly any Chinese student engagement at these protests’, he told TCS.
There is also the physical threat of harassment and violence. Several students noted that at these ‘sensitive’ protests there are frequently masked, middle-aged Chinese men recording and taking pictures of the event. Apple, a chinese student at SOAS, , documented that after the White Paper movement protest outside the Chinese embassy, she and a friend were followed by two men for twenty minutes until they hid in a hospital. Furthermore, October 2022 saw one of the more blatant uses of physical intimidation.In Manchester, diplomats at China’s consulate, including consul-general Zheng Xiyuan were filmed dragging a protester inside the consulate grounds and assaulting him.
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations
While many Chinese student societies claim to be ‘apolitical’, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) has faced criticism for direct links to the PRC, potentially jeopardising the safety and freedom of expression for its members. The Cambridge branch of the CSSA is registered with the SU; it describes itself as a ‘non-profit and non-political society’, the main mission of which is to ‘provide opportunities and benefits for [Chinese students and scholars] by facilitating the exchange of information between China and the students studying abroad’. In the constitution of the CSSA, the society aims to widen ‘access to Cambridge University, Chinese embassy, and other China-related resources in the UK’.
The Cambridge CSSA is linked to the CSSA UK which claims to federate more than 90 branches. According to the SOAS China Institute, the CSSA UK presents itself as the “official” organisation for Chinese students in the UK and is “supported” by the Education Office of the Chinese embassy. In 2020, the Cambridge CSSA held an online event inviting students to meet officials in charge of educational affairs from the Chinese embassy and consulates. One student said that an incentive to engage with the CSSA is the direct connection it provides “back to the Chinese bureaucracy”.
In a case from Harvard last year, a student from the CSSA was accused of assault against a student protesting the visit of the Chinese ambassador, Xie Feng, at the Harvard Kennedy School’s China Conference. Xie has a reputation for involvement in the incarceration of pro-democracy Hong Kong students.
Harvard University Yard, via Wikimedia Commons
The ties between the CSSA and the embassy serve as a two-way relationship; students get support from the embassy, however, there are cases of the embassy using these students as a means to achieve political objectives. One student described the CSSA as the “primary platform” for operations on overseas students by the United Front Work department of the CCP.
Recently, in Durham University, the chairwomen of the CCSA spoke of how she was pressured by the Chinese embassy and consulate which instructed her to “solve the problem” of the Durham Union Society inviting a speaker who was perceived as critical of the Chinese regime. Similarly, in a London University, a CSSA leader spoke of how the embassy asked them to name students who had taken part in the White Paper movement in London. These Associations have frequently taken overtly political stances; one student in the UK documented how the association advocated for the “one-China policy” (the Chinese government’s policy regarding the status of Taiwan) during orientation.
Uyghur students
A focus of the Chinese government's efforts abroad has been control over diaspora Uyghur communities. The Uyghurs are deemed to be one of the most sensitive areas for China’s reputation abroad. Uyghur ‘separatists’ are one of China’s listed ‘five poisons’, grouped with those who advocate independence from Taiwan. The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim people, who held independence from China briefly from 1933-1934 and from 1944-1946, under the East Turkestan Republic.
Uyghur protest outside White House, via Wikimedia Commons
Since 2017, several million Uyghurs have been detained in ‘re-education’ camps. Signs of Islamic faith and expressions of Uyghur cultural or political identity have been deemed ‘extremists’. The mass detention, compulsory boarding schools, and the forced sterilisation and birth control measures on Uyghur women has amounted to human rights violations that an independent tribunal in London in 2021 deemed to be ‘crimes against humanity and genocide’.
Since 2017, China has given significant resources to monitoring and exerting control over Uyghurs aboard, to prevent testimonies of human rights violations that would damage China’s myth of harmonious relations with its periphery minorities, whether Uyghur or Tibetan.
The 2024 Freedom House report noted that regardless of political affiliation, Uyghurs in the diaspora have been subjected to ‘sustained monitoring, threats, and policing by the Chinese authorities’. China’s transnational repression of the Uyghur diaspora was documented by Dr David Tobin and Nyrola Elimä. This report found that threats and hostage taking of families has been a widespread experience for Uyghurs abroad.
In the small UK Uyghur community, around 2/3 of all Uyghurs surveyed have been directly threatened and experienced threats to their families. One Uyghur woman showed a picture of her family, whom she has been unable to contact independently, sent via WhatsApp by the Xinjiang police. One Uyghur man was explicitly told by the Chinese police while in the UK that “if you appear in journalists’ reports, it will cause problems for your mother and child back home”. All the interviewees for this report said that they did not know who to contact to report this harassment.
‘All the interviewees for this report said that they did not know who to contact to report this harassment.’
The CCP thus threatens that any criticism or statements on human rights abuses could lead to their relatives being indefinitely detained in the camp network. For Uyghurs abroad, contact with loved ones is conditional on their silence. The report states that families are used as ‘hostages to alter the behaviour and restrict the rights of Uyghurs abroad’ and that is part of China’s intent to ‘prevent the intergenerational transmission of Uyghur culture by breaking family contact’. Uyghurs in London have also faced physical harassment such as in the 2023 Ghulja massacre protest.
This sense of insecurity has been heightened by the deportation last Thursday of dozens of Uyghurs back to China by the Thai government, despite international concerns over fears of torture, incarceration, and detention.
A recent graduate from Cambridge, who is herself Uyghur and wished to remain anonymous, has faced similar threats and blackmail. She told TCS ‘it feels wrong that despite being a British Citizen born in the UK, I still feel the reach of China’s transnational repression. I have to think twice about what I say and who to, where I am seen and what I take part in. This is true for all Uyghurs in the community, British citizens or not’.
University response
Across the UK, there has largely been silence from the university sector, believed to be a result of the financial dependence on Chinese student fees and direct funding from Chinese companies linked to the PRC. Amnesty International points out that the host states of these students are under an obligation to take steps to protect those whose ‘rights are threatened or violated by the transnational acts of other states, and to ensure that universities protect and promote the rights of their communities’. Amnesty recommends that universities need to do more to ensure that students can confidentially report threats, can attend societies and events without undue risk of their private information being accessed, and that IT support should be available for students who believe that they may be at risk of digital surveillance.
Hans van de Ven, a Professor of Modern Chinese History at Cambridge, a visiting chair professor at Peking University, and Deputy Vice Chancellor, stated that he was not aware of any incidents of transnational repression within the university. He cited that the China Strategy Working Group (CSWG), as part of the University’s Strategic Partnerships Office, follows the principles of equality for students, safety, and transparency for engagement with China.
Before travelling to China, Professor van de Ven said ‘students should complete a risk assessment and act according to the guidance provided. If they have concerns, students should in the first instance raise them with undergraduate or graduate directors and their colleges’. Professor van de Van said that no centralised mechanism for reporting threats currently exists. Professor van de Ven emphasised the importance of continued academic relations with China.
Growing concerns over transnational repression comes at a time where there has been increased pressure on Cambridge University over the extent of Chinese state presence and influence in the university. Recent revelations of postgraduate courses teaching counter-terrorist tactics to the Hong Kong Police College, the closure of the Jesus College China Forum, and concerns over donations and funding suggests that Chinese influence is a problem that the university is struggling to grapple with.
‘there has been increased pressure on Cambridge University over the extent of Chinese state presence and influence’
Jesus college, Cambridge
Dr David Tobin and Nyrola Elimä state that ‘China claims to be approaching international relations through the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference, but its governance practices consider all citizens, former citizens, and their family members, regardless of location, to be under its legal and moral jurisdiction’.
They conclude that China’s transnational repression is a global ‘export [of] its domestic model of governance’ internationally. Transnational repression represents an unprecedented threat to the communities targeted, but increasingly a challenge that universities and governments have to address to ensure the preservation of their sovereignty and the safety of their citizens and guests.
*Names have been changed, at the request of those interviewed, for their own safety.
