China | A for effort, Xi for control

Can academic joint ventures between China and the West survive?

Xi Jinping wants to ensure that they don’t teach liberal thinking

Besuited arm with hammer-and-sickle cufflink holds large magnifying glass that looms over small graduate — Image: Alberto Miranda

Jul 20th 2023

Filing into a graduation ceremony to the strains of Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” is quintessentially American. As they did so in May, clad in violet-coloured gowns, students at the campus in Shanghai of New York University (NYU) may have reflected on the oddity of this cultural transplant: not just the music, but their whole experience as undergraduates. Relations between China and the West—especially America—are becoming increasingly tense. China is trying to purge its universities of liberal thinking. Yet here were nearly 400 students, about half of them Chinese, getting their bachelor’s certificates from a Chinese outpost of American academe.

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “A for effort, Xi for control”