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ties are, among other things, to guide ideological and political work 
and moral education on campuses and to make key personnel deci-
sions. 
Article 51 of the law stipulates that ‘‘the basis for the appoint-
ment, [or] dismissal’’ of faculty and administrative personnel 
should be ideology and political performance first, followed by pro-
fessional ethics, professional skill, and actual achievements. 
Similarly, Article 58 of the law stipulates that students should 
be permitted to graduate if they, first, ‘‘are qualified in their ide-
ology and moral character,’’ and, secondarily, if they have ‘‘com-
pleted the study of the courses required and have passed the ex-
aminations or got all the credits required.’’
Finally, Article 53 requires that students of institutions of higher 
learning should ‘‘build up their physiques and the concepts of patri-
otism, collectivism, and socialism; diligently study Marxism, Len-
inism, Mao Zedong thought, and Deng Xiaoping theory; have sound 
ideology and moral character; and grasp a comparatively high level 
of scientific and cultural knowledge and specialized skills.’’
In 2003, China’s State Council promulgated regulations specifi-
cally addressing collaborations with foreign partners in education. 
The regulations bar foreign partners from involvement in military 
academies, police academies, and political education. They also bar 
foreign religious organizations, religious institutions, religious col-
leges and universities, and so-called religious workers from involve-
ment in cooperative education efforts in China, and they bar joint 
campuses from offering religious education or conducting religious 
activities. 
The regulations require that Chinese foreign educational collabo-
rations ‘‘not jeopardize China’s sovereignty, security, and public in-
terests’’—a broad requirement that Chinese authorities could use 
to rule out academic discussion related to Taiwan, Tibet, Uyghurs, 
electoral reform in Hong Kong, the Falun Gong spiritual group, 
and other topics. 
It appears that, in practice, the Chinese Government has been 
willing to relax some of these requirements, particularly in the case 
of jointly operated institutions with independent legal person sta-
tus and significant numbers of non-Chinese students, such as NYU 
Shanghai and Duke Kunshan University, a partnership among 
Duke University, China’s Wuhan University, and the Government 
of Kunshan Municipality in China’s Jiangsu Province. 
On the role of party committees, a 2013 article in the Global 
Times, a tabloid affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s 
paper of record, the People’s Daily, cited unnamed educators as 
saying that ‘‘unlike Chinese universities, where administrative in-
terference is considered one of the biggest problems with the edu-
cation system, the Party committees in these branch campuses usu-
ally don’t have a say in academic affairs.’’
NYU Shanghai’s chancellor, Yu Lizhong, told a Hong Kong news-
paper in 2012 that the NYU Shanghai campus would be run by a 
board of directors rather than by a Communist Party committee. 
And the NYU Shanghai Web site contains no reference to a party 
committee. 
Public reports of the Communist Party activities of NYU Shang-
hai staff relate to their participation in party bodies and activities 
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not at NYU Shanghai but at NYU Shanghai’s academic partner in 
the NYU Shanghai campus, East China Normal University. NYU 
Shanghai’s head of human resources, for example, is identified on 
East China Normal University’s Web site as serving concurrently 
as the head of the party branch of East China Normal University’s 
Chinese-Foreign Cooperation Office. 
In contrast, one of the three campuses run jointly by Fort Hays 
State University, Henan Province-based Sias International Univer-
sity, openly lists information about its Communist Party Com-
mittee on its Chinese language Web site. The Web site lists the 
school’s Party Secretary and Deputy Party Secretary as among the 
nine members of the school’s leadership group and includes an or-
ganization chart showing party structures across the university, in-
cluding party groups in the university’s business school, law school, 
school of international education, and nine other schools. 
On the scope of permitted expression, U.S. media reports indicate 
that academic discussions on campuses in China jointly operated 
by U.S. partners do sometimes stray onto topics that would be 
taboo on other campuses in China, especially when the joint cam-
puses include significant numbers of non-Chinese students. 
Such campuses may also have arrangements allowing their stu-
dents unfettered access to the Internet, including to sites that are 
usually blocked in China, such as Google, Gmail, Facebook, Twit-
ter, and YouTube. Such allowances may contribute to greater levels 
of overall academic freedom on such campuses than China nor-
mally tolerates. 
The legal guarantees underpinning such zones of free speech, 
however, remain ambiguous, raising questions about the long-term 
sustainability of such zones. Some observers have also noted that, 
because joint campuses in China tend to be heavily subsidized by 
the Chinese Government, the government may have significant le-
verage if serious disputes over academic freedom issues should 
arise. 
My fellow panelists are the experts on how their institutions op-
erate within the broad legal and regulatory framework for institu-
tions of higher learning in China and within the context of their 
individual partnership agreements and their legal person status. I 
look forward to learning from them. 
Thank you again, Chairman Smith, for the opportunity to testify 
about these issues. As an employee of the Congressional Research 
Service, I am confined to speaking about the technical and profes-
sional aspects of the issues under discussion in this hearing and to 
answering questions within my field of expertise. With that under-
standing, I look forward to your questions. 
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lawrence follows:]
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