Cambridge University is kowtowing to China

Last month, writing elsewhere, I quoted the website of the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge: ‘Under the leadership of the Communist party of China since 1978, [China] has experienced an extraordinary transformation… China’s national rejuvenation is returning the country to the position within the global political economy that it occupied before the 19th century.’ The tone sounded propagandist not academic. This month, all mention of the Chinese Communist party disappeared from the China Centre home page. Now the Centre says it concentrates on ‘mutual understanding between China and the West’, contributing to ‘harmonious global governance’, which should be ‘non-ideological and pragmatic’. We must meet ‘global challenges’ together, says Jesus (the college, not the religious leader), such as ‘health pandemics, species extinction, global warming, inequality of income and wealth’ etc. A particular health pandemic has made the former propaganda too blatant.

Further investigation of Jesus’s China Centre site suggests all is not well. Its section called ‘External engagement’ records nothing since October, when Professor Peter Nolan, the centre’s director, met Mr Ren Hongbin, the vice-chairman of China’s State-owned Assets and Administration Commission. Professor Nolan is a seasoned China apologist. His latest book ‘explores China’s rich history of regulating the market in the interests of the mass of the population’, says its blurb. ‘For over 2,000 years the Chinese bureaucracy has sought pragmatically to find a way in which to integrate the “invisible hand” of market forces with the “visible hand” of ethically guided government regulation.’ In March last year, Professor Nolan spoke in Beijing on China’s Peaceful Development and Modernisation of National Defence.

I find no mention on the China Centre website about how, this February, Jesus College was accused of ‘reputation laundering’. Its China/UK Global Issues Dialogue Centre (which works in partnership with Tsingua University, Beijing) produced a study on global governance reforms in communications and technology.