In this episode, Ed talks to Benjamin Mulvey of Glasgow University about an article Ben has recently written with Bok-Nga Lee on ‘the intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China’. Many observers have noted growing constraints affecting scholarly research and higher education in China over recent years. At the same time, some of the work on Chinese higher education published in prominent Western journals over recent years has sought to argue that cultural difference precludes meaningful comparison between ‘academic freedom’ in China and ‘the West’. In their article, Mulvey and Lee offer a forceful critique of this culturally relativist line of argument.
One problem they highlight is the tendency of the cultural relativists to rely on monolithic stereotypes of both ‘China’ and ‘the West’. As Mulvey observes in his paper with Lee, and as he and Ed discuss in this interview, these homogenous monoliths quickly crumble under scrutiny. While differences between cultural traditions are undeniable and significant, cultures are enormously diverse and constantly changing. Many of the authors Mulvey and Lee critique appear to take at face value the claims of the Communist authorities of the 21st-century People’s Republic of China to represent the culmination of centuries of ‘Chinese tradition’. But seldom considered are the cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan - societies whose cultural roots are undeniably Chinese, but where freedom of speech (and scholarship) and civil liberties are taken very seriously indeed. Chinese cultural purists may object that these societies have been sullied in their cultural purity by ‘imperialist’ influences from Britain, the USA or Japan. But by the same token, the influence on the PRC of Soviet ideology and institutions has been profound. Such arguments tend merely to underline the futility of attempts to isolate the pure ‘essence’ of any culture or tradition.
A prevalent representation of ‘Chinese’ culture in the literature (in English) on higher education portrays it as ‘Confucian’. But with respect to Confucianism in particular, as well as Chinese culture in general, such representations tend to be unduly monolithic and stereotyping. Typically, scholars arguing for a uniquely ‘Chinese’ interpretation of academic ethics tend to argue that Confucianism mandates subordination of scholars to the state, emphasising the duty of scholars to serve the state. They thus see the concept of scholarly autonomy, or the compulsion to ‘speak truth to power’, that underpins a liberal vision of academic freedom as somehow alien to ‘Chinese culture’. But while it may be accurate to see forms of ‘state Confucianism’, today as in the past, as emphasising the subordination of scholarship to state interests, Mulvey and Lee emphasise that there is far more to Confucianism than this. Confucian tradition itself has been subject to a highly diverse range of interpretations, and there is an important strand of Confucian scholarship that emphasises the scholar’s duty to pursue ‘the Way’ with integrity, and fearlessly criticise rulers who depart from it.
But perhaps the problem with arguments over ‘Chinese’ versus ‘Western’ conceptions of academic freedom (or anything else) is fundamentally to do with a faulty conception of ‘culture’ itself, as something fundamentally unchanging and ahistorical. Cultural traditions are, in fact, permeable and constantly changing. Ben and Ed discuss the prevalent tendency to judge ideas on the basis of their pedigree or ‘authenticity’. Even if an idea can be traced to origins in ‘China’ and ‘the West’ (a problematic task given the complex entanglement of cultural traditions), why should ‘authenticity’ matter in the first place?
The Mulvey and Lee paper concludes with the authors distancing themselves from any suggestion that Chinese higher education should adhere to ‘Western values and norms’ when it comes to academic freedom. They portray such norms as having ‘their foundations in European rationalism’, while stressing that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom could take many forms’. But this implies that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom’ might, in fact, embrace forms of
‘rationalism’ that some might associate with ‘the West’ - which is what we have witnessed in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan and in the writings of liberal Chinese scholars elsewhere.
Recommended readings:
Mulvey, B., & Lee, B. N. (2024). The intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China: a reappraisal. Studies in Higher Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2332407
Callahan WA. (2012). Sino-speak: Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History. The Journal of Asian Studies. 2012;71(1):33-55. doi:10.1017/S0021911811002919
