I’m one of the Americans who spent years living and studying in China. I majored in Chinese literature in college. Sadly, I cannot recommend young Americans do the same thing today. Why? —First, the obvious. China has grown more repressive and less welcoming to foreigners in the two decades since I was a student there. There is much less space for dissent, and for freedom of speech. —Somewhat surprisingly, this is worse for American students who are gay, or who are non-white. Chinese Americans often get expected to “know better,” while Black Americans are sometimes treated as second class citizens. —American universities pretend that the programs they have in China ensure the same standards and the same academic freedom they have in the U.S. They don’t, and they can’t. I’d feel better about Americans studying there if universities were more honest and transparent about the sacrifices they make to stay in China, and the benefits of those sacrifices. —if tensions worsen between the United States and China, those students could effectively function as hostages.

Breaking: Michigan State University helped China conduct “psychological warfare.” We are releasing a series of reports on American state universities and their ties to China’s defense establishment. It’s rarely as simple as direct ties with the People’s Liberation Army. MSU partners with the Communication University of China (CUC) through a dual-degree master’s program in International Digital Advertising. CUC describes itself as an important “base” for Party propaganda and ideological work and has links to laboratories focused on public-opinion analysis and cognitive-domain research. MSU faculty and programs have also engaged with Chinese domestic and external propaganda officials and universities working in areas such as digital media, artificial intelligence, and information warfare. The report finds that these relationships create research-security and dual-use risks because communications, audience-analysis, data, and AI expertise developed for civilian or academic purposes can also support censorship, propaganda, influence operations, and military applications.  strategyrisks.com/press/repo…