Academic Freedom in China: An Empirical Enquiry through the Lens of the System of Student Informants (xuesheng xinxiyuan)

This paper looks into the system of student informants (xuesheng xinxiyuan), which is, to systematically recruit and more generally, to mobilise or encourage the students to watch and inform on their professors on university campuses in China. After Xi Jinping assumed power in late 2012, along with the Chinese Communist Party’s intensifying control of university space, mounting reports show that professors are imposed on various punishments ranging from internal discipline to dismissal by their universities after being reported by the students. This paper begins with an introduction of this system via overviewing the rules relating to the establishment and operation of this system at the national, local and university levels as well as its tension with the international standards and the laws in China enshrining freedom of expression and academic freedom. Drawing upon case studies and in-depth interviews with ten professors based in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, this paper further discusses the mechanism of this system in practice, including how it is operated, the possible motivation of the informants, and the impacts it produces on professors’ teaching and research as well as the more broader atmosphere on university campuses. By critically examining the conceptual framework of “obedient autonomy” in understanding Chinese intellectuals’ engagement with the Party-state, this paper argues that the system of student informants embodies the Party’s dual mode of pan-moralism and pan-politicization which impairs autonomy and academic freedom and consolidates the Party’s authoritarian rule.