This article misrepresents the paper recently published by @ukctransparency.bsky.social

Of course China studies needs better funding. That is something we are fighting for too. You can say 'more £ for China studies' without casting analysis of repression as mere 'suspicion'.

Anyway, for my sanity, I can't do any more 300-character posts on this. Please get in touch if you like director@ukctransparency.org - We can publish the resulting exchange.

I have read your newsletter and you're clearly thoughtful and skeptical, but I'm not convinced by what you're saying here.

I appreciate you may not be convinced by what we did, but it is very hard to transmit evidence about these issues, because so much is at stake for these people.

I really don't think our 20+ report can be accused of "'flattening' nuance". What kind of nuance is out there that you think we missed? Could you be specific?

The survey absolutely did "differentiate btw v.diff kinds of influence". We asked people about: visa issues, administrator pressures, direct interference from officials, teaching-related pressures and more.

That's the point! We wanted to probe why they hold those views, and what they have seen!

As for my strong views on this... Well, they are informed by what I have seen, but I wanted to learn more. That's why I organised this survey on a much-discussed but under-studied and under-addressed issue.

Small - you now acknowledge our group was relatively large. The field is small

Non-representative - perhaps, but we situated them in terms of their research, and there was still variety.

YES! Many of them DID already hold strong views - because of what they have seen from years in the field!

The cliche is 'chilling effect'. China studies is quite a small world in the UK. You say we drew "broad systemic concs w/o acknowledging how much is extrapolated frm relatively small/non-representative grp of resp'ts who v.likely already held strong view (much like UKCT)"

There are people who told us first-hand stories, and we repeated the stories in an anonymised form. Then there are people who told us that they know this stuff happens, and separately explained why they think these incidents are contributing towards an atmosphere of repression.

Frankly, I think you are not giving us or the academics enough credit. Are you suggesting that they could be nudged into making stuff up, or presenting hearsay as fact? Or are you suggesting we are cynical enough to elide the difference between a rumour and a first-hand experience of repression?

We actually addressed much of what you've just said in the paper itself. (Image) We set out to probe perceptions as well as to gather direct evidence of repression.

300 characters is going to get annoying here! lol

I don't disagree with everything you've said here. It is absolutely possible that the 50 people were not representative. Indeed, one of the first questions we asked probed whether they conduct sensitive research, and half said they do.

Nice to see you read the report.

50 responses makes it the biggest survey on these issues in the UK yet - but of course we would have loved to get more.

I wonder if you could elaborate on "one-sided and highly selective"? We worked with the responses we received. What do you suspect we missed?

New UKCT report on China studies + Universities regulator guidance comes into force – UK-China Transparency