By Nathan Tek ’09

This March, I had the opportunity to travel with a group of Yale students to work as an election monitor in Mauritania, where I witnessed the country’s first truly free and fair presidential election. Through my conversations with election workers, voters, and political leaders, it became clear to me that whether Mauritania holds more free and fair elections in the future depends, to some extent, on how much oil lies beneath the country’s swath of the Sahara. In February 2005, Mauritania become Africa’s newest oil exporter, and already China imports millions of barrels of Mauritanian oil and the state-owned Chinese National Petroleum Corporation has obtained four permits for further exploration. If the experience of other African nations is any indication, the growing Chinese involvement in Mauritania might not bode well for the health of democracy or human rights there. For years, the Chinese government blocked the UN Security Council from imposing sanctions on the government of Sudan for no reason other than to protect the ten percent of China’s oil imports that comes from Sudan. The genocide in Darfur rages on. China’s billions of dollars in aid, loans, and trade deals with Zimbabwe have propped up Robert Mugabe’s brutal dictatorship. As China imports extractive resources from countries like Nigeria and Kazakhstan, it exports in return only instability and corruption.

China’s blatant disregard for human rights in its foreign policy derives from its blatant disregard for human rights in its domestic policy. Ranging from suppressing religious minorities to harvesting the organs of prisoners, the abuses of the Communist government are well-documented and wide-ranging. Media, including the Internet, are tightly controlled, political dissidents are jailed and abused, and democratic elections are either non-existent or shams.

But Yale University and President Levin have been willing to overlook China’s domestic and international transgressions in their concerted effort to build ties with Beijing. The material manifestation of Yale’s close relationship with the Chinese government is that Yale is one of the few foreign institutions allowed to invest in “A-shares,” which are considered the most lucrative shares in the Chinese securities market. A-shares include state-owned monopolies in industries such as mining or transportation. Such access to premium shares that recently closed at record highs has undoubtedly contributed to the stellar performance of Yale’s $15 billion endowment.

Not surprisingly, Yale has reciprocated China’s favor. Yale undertakes numerous partnerships with Chinese universities. When President Hu Jintao came to speak at Yale last year, the event was so tightly scripted that, according to the Yale Daily News, a CNN reporter was thrown out of Sprague Hall for merely attempting to ask Hu a question. Those who protested Hu’s visit were to be confined to the New Haven Green, off-campus and blocks away, and only after an ensuing outcry did the university administration allow the protesters to use Old Campus. In May 2007, the university sent a delegation of 100 students, faculty, and administrators to China on a junket rife with photo-ops that included meetings with government officials and tours of cultural sites. Ultimately, Yale’s warm relations with the regime in Beijing are similar to the 2008 Olympics, in that both serve the interest of sanitizing the government’s international image and distracting from its glaring human rights abuses.

Yale’s support for the Chinese government stands in stark contradiction to the university’s mission and values. The 1975 Woodward Report, the official policy of Yale University regarding free speech, begins, “The primary function of a university is to discover and disseminate knowledge by means of research and teaching. To fulfill this function a free interchange of ideas is necessary not only within its walls but with the world beyond as well.” Yale does not convey the importance of the free interchange of ideas when it establishes a joint undergraduate program with Peking University, where administrators have stated publicly that “professors who refuse to accept the dominance of China’s Communist Party should not be allowed to teach.” President Levin does not convey the importance of the free interchange of ideas in his numerous addresses to Chinese university administrators and Ministry of Education officials when he address safe subjects such as scientific research but fails to publicly encourage the promotion of academic freedom. Yet a report by the American Association of University Professors bemoans the fact that in China dissident academics are fired or placed under surveillance and that the “Ministry of Education honors politically loyal followers by appointing them as instructors in Ph.D. programs, whether or not they are qualified.”

Last year, Yale took a principled stand for human rights when it divested from companies that have oil interests in Darfur. But the university has made no public statements or taken action regarding China’s human rights policy—abroad or domestically—other than glib statements such as Assistant Director of Public Affairs Gilda Reinstein’s comment to The Daily Princetonian that “we are aware of what’s going on in the world.” By failing to hold China to account, the Yale administration is offering its tacit approval of the Communist government’s human rights record.

One can hope that Yale will use its financial and diplomatic ties to Beijing to encourage reform. As President Levin said during his introduction to Hu Jintao’s speech last year, “we are hopeful that the development of your economy will be accompanied by continued expansion of the rule of law and strengthening the rights of individuals.” But there is no precedent for a dictatorship ceasing its oppression simply because it has been asked politely to do so. The lip service both Yale and Beijing give to democratization does not correspond to any concrete reforms; China’s Freedom House ratings for political freedom and civil liberties have remained steady at “not free” for as long as the data have been kept.
Yale certainly has numerous strategic advantages to exploit from its partnership with the Chinese government and Chinese universities. It has the chance to influence the future scientific, cultural, and political leaders of the world’s largest developing country and to establish its reputation to a nation of one billion. And Yale students have much to gain from studying Chinese history and culture. But how willing our university community is to sacrifice its missions and ideals in order to realize these benefits should be the subject of dialogue on campus. Given that the Yale administration has yet to initiate such a dialogue, one can only wonder whether, instead of Yale influencing China, China will end up influencing Yale.
 

Nathan Tek is a junior Political Science and International Studies major in Yale’s Jonathan Edwards College from Tenafly, New Jersey.

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