China ‘intimidating’ international academics travelling to Taiwan

Academics have accused China of intimidation tactics after one of the country’s embassies complained about a Canadian university professor’s attendance at a conference in Taiwan. 

Roland Paris, director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said the Chinese embassy in Canada held a meeting with his university after he spoke at a Taiwanese event in August. China also filed a formal diplomatic protest with Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he said. 

Professor Paris had been attending the Ketagalan Forum, an international conference organised by the Prospect Foundation, a Taiwanese thinktank, and hosted by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The event focused on regional security, with other speakers from countries including Japan, the US, India and Slovakia. 

Jennifer Irish, director of the Information Integrity Lab at the University of Ottawa, also received a similar warning, and Professor Paris believes others at the event did too.  

“I hadn’t heard of China protesting the travel of private individuals…to a forum like this before,” he said. 

Professor Paris, a former adviser to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, said China was attempting to send “a message” to participants, as well as asserting its sovereignty claims over Taiwan. “They are essentially putting down a marker,” he said. 

Others agreed that, while unusual, this sort of behaviour was a part of a wider pattern. 

The Chinese government “has been intimidating people and organisations for their visits to Taiwan for any purpose, which I think is inappropriate and unnecessary”, said Mu-min Chen, an associate professor at Taiwan’s National Chung Hsing University and a speaker at the conference. 

Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defence at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, attended the conference but did not receive a similar warning. However, he said, “this is just part and parcel of the way the Chinese operate in terms of intimidation, coercion and their constant attempts to delegitimise Taiwan and actually to basically try and force their interpretation of Taiwan’s status on everybody else in the globe”. 

Chun-Yi Lee, director of the Taiwan studies programme at the University of Nottingham, said China has “always been very unhappy with any source of a Taiwanese soft power in academic fields”, but there was little authorities could do about it other than issue such messages. 

She believed part of the intent of such warnings was to “appease” authorities in China. “It’s more to indicate back home to their line manager in the central government, saying that, ‘Look, we are doing our job’,” she said.

While academics felt that such behaviour was unlikely to stop them from attending future events in Taiwan, Professor Paris said this may not be the same for individuals who don’t have the backing of a university. 

Professor Dean added that, in contacting universities, China representatives infer that by “displeasing” them, university leaders are putting other relations at risk, including partnerships with Chinese universities and students. 

“They’re [too] subtle as to say that outright, but that’s what they’re implying,” he said. “The best way to respond to this type of stuff is to point out that they have no right to intimidate academics in this way, and we shouldn’t cave into it in any way, shape or form.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com