Absurdity, Allegory and China

China vs. the University of Calgary (UC), the latest chapter in the Chinese passion play, is a Chinese foreign policy trial balloon let loose (prematurely?) on the western Canadian plains. This began last week when it was reported that China had removed UC from its list of accredited universities a move school officials are concerned is connected to the Dalai Lama’s visit last fall.

The odd thing is that no one officially knows why it happened and what it might possibly mean, since the Chinese are not saying. The Vancouver Sun ran the following story on February 6, 2009: University of Calgary becomes latest to receive cold shoulder

Without fanfare, the University of Calgary was dropped in December from the Chinese Ministry of Education’s list of recommended universities for Chinese students going abroad to study.

The operator said the hotline recommends Chinese students choose their university only from among those on the list.

The inquiry was obviously not the first of the day, either. When the operator was asked about University of Calgary, she could be heard saying to someone nearby: “It’s another phone call about the University of Calgary.”

Although no one will say officially that Beijing has blocked Chinese students from going to University of Calgary because the school awarded the Dalai Lama an honourary degree last fall, it seems plausible that is the reason.

Asked why Beijing blacklisted the university, a spokeswoman at the Chinese Consulate in Calgary told the Calgary Herald simply that the university “should know.” [my emphasis]

It may seem a petty move by the world’s nascent superpower, but delisting will be costly for the university. China currently has the largest pool of foreign students looking to study abroad and universities around the world are competing to attract them. Little wonder. The 178,000 foreign students in Canada spent $6.5 billion in 2008, according to Canadian government figures. That’s an average of more than $36,000 each for the 600 Chinese students at the University of Calgary this year.

This morning the Global Times, a Chinese state-sponsored English newspaper, is reporting that China allegedly blacklists Canadian university:

China’s Ministry of Education Monday refused to immediately comment on media reports of its decision to remove Canada’s University of Calgary from a list of accredited schools because the latter bestowed an honorary degree on the Dalai Lama last year.

When contacted by reporters, an official from the ministry refused to comment immediately, saying they have to study the case and may reply in three days.

Reporters checked the ministry’s website and confirmed that the University of Calgary, where more than 600 Chinese students are enrolled, is no longer on the list of recommended schools.

The Calgary Herald quoted Danna Hou, a spokeswoman with the Chinese Consulate General in Calgary, as saying that the removal was not a sudden decision and was related to an incident last year.

“They know the reason and they (knew of) the result before it happened,” she told the newspaper Thursday.

The Dalai Lama was granted an honorary doctorate of law degree in September by the University of Calgary, the report said.

While it all still remains inimitably unclear, (has China published and distributed a manual of what universities “should know” or is it something that’s mystically present in the vapor?) it seems obvious enough that China is testing the retaliatory waters by providing a financial disincentive for allowing the Dalai Lama to speak by applying the universal strategy of using students as weapons – an action plan usually employed by individuals, ad hoc and/or longer term special interest groups to squeeze an institution into behaving in ways beneficial to the threatening party, or, conversely, by an institution to help unruly individuals and/or groups to focus on the line that needs to be, at all costs, toed. China is not unique in the use of children as weapons; this sort of behavior can be found at any and all levels of education throughout the world, from the backroom day care center, right through public school board meetings and on up to the highest levels of tertiary school board rooms. It’s a game played by adults where children are treated as pawns, and as such, almost invariably become the victims.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), relentlessly waving a fading page torn from the Book of Brute, would like the entire world to join with them in fingering the Dalai Lama as “an enemy of the[ir] state,” which frankly, is not about to happen. (It’s about as likely to happen as China delivering Tibet to the Tibetans.) There’s that problematic Peace Prize that keeps getting in the way. Also, the Tibetan government-in-exile’s public relations (PR) campaign over the last half-century has successfully set the stage in their ethical favor. While the PRC was slogging through Blooming Flowers, Great Leaps, CulRevs, Gangs of Four and runaway tanks on the Square, the Tibetan PR machine was out in the world sowing seeds of the suffering high-altitude peaceful warriors bubbling over with compassion and bliss. (One seed they didn’t sow, still don’t and never will, is the deeply misogynistic one that keeps sprouting and clogging up the works. Tibetan leaders, both monastic and secular, need to understand that their greatest untapped resource is Tibetan women, and that until the women are empowered Tibetans will continue to unsuccessfully stumble about blinded by medieval levels of testosterone. Many Tibetan males believe that women are in ‘this life’ as women due to the ravages of bad karma, which somehow justifies treating them so poorly. You won’t find that one on the bullet-pointed list of His Holiness’ PR plusses. Though great steps have been made by Tibetan women, often with the support of non-Tibetans, there will never be a solution to the Chinese-Tibetan issue until there are women sitting on both sides of the table. But that is another issue for another time.)

But this is hardly just about the Dalai Lama, though the CCP would like you to think that it is. The Dalai Lama has become the convenient scapegoat for a particular shaping of foreign policy which still pitches China as the perennial victim, though now it is morphing into China, the abused, striking back. And what better way to choke perceived abusers in this time of economic hardship than to threaten them economically. The alleged sanctions against the University of Calgary is the trial balloon that just might have gotten loose a bit ahead of the pack, as someone’s idea of how to strike back, as a pre-retaliation to the one they’ve threatened to use against the U.S. if President Obama follows through with his planned meeting with the Dalai Lama.

The bigger and longer term issue here is speech, and how China, via the threat of loss of accreditation, is crossing borders and indirectly interfering in another country’s interpretation of freedom of speech, a freedom the Chinese claim in Article 35 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China:

Article 35. Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

If they press this matter and actually do strip UC of accreditation, we can only hope that it will end up being another public relations disaster for China, since if they are successful they will attempt to use the same tactic to enforce their censure-driven foreign policy will. And the next time it won’t be because of the Dalai Lama. The focus of their future wrath and sanctions might be the appearance of a Chinese dissident, the screening of a film that casts a darker shadow on China’s self-projected image than they are comfortable with, or the simple expression of an opinion that the CCP doesn’t care for. There is much at stake in China’s current Canadian foot stomp. It would do everyone a great favor if the balloon just popped, and life with the basic freedoms set down in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which China has signed off on -  were to continue without odd authoritarian interferences. But don’t expect these sorts of head butts to stop. There is also a much bigger lesson here that is, unfortunately, one that is very rarely learned: choose your creditors wisely. A little late for that now.

And for all you students who want to come to China and unfurl the Free Whatever banners, don’t waste your time. You should be pushing for more visits by controversial speakers, more films, more exposure of censorship issues on campuses, especially campuses with large mainland Chinese enrollments. Engagement at home does much more good in the long run than heading to China chasing the adrenaline rush. Get over that. Trust me, sooner than later the Chinese won’t take it anymore, and someone’s going to get poked with a long jail sentence. It’s a new world out there. Here, too. Think smarter. Crossing borders isn’t what it used to be. Ask China. They’re doing it now in Canada, using students as weapons to hijack basic freedom of speech. It would be a different game if the rest of the world agreed with China’s assessment of the Dalai Lama. But the rest of the world doesn’t, and that’s what China needs to know.