It’s a disturbing trend that shouldn’t come as any shock to anyone in the circle of foreign-based China researchers: step over the line and risk losing your access.
Paul Mooney writes in The National (h/t CDT) about the problems certain academics face when they run afoul of the anti-intellectual hacks generally in charge of such things here in the PRC. The article cites a number of prominent scholars, including Perry Link and a personal favorite of mine, James Millward, whose Beyond the Pass is one of the great accounts of the Qing conquest of Χinjiang. It was not Professor Millward’s historical work which got him in trouble, but rather his contributions to the book Χinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland which landed him, four years later and counting, on the outside looking in:
“It’s far easier to put the kibosh on someone than to lift it,” said James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and a contributor to the book.
All of the scholars, with the exception of one, have been refused visas to China, with only a few exceptions for special circumstances.
The message – which worried China scholars around the world – was clear. There are topics China will not tolerate discussion on