Xu Zhangrun vs. Tsinghua University
Voices of Protest & Resistance (XXVII)

Gong Renren (龔刃韌, 1954-), the author of the following essay, is a professor (retired) in the Law School of Peking University (see here for details) and the head of the Institute for Human Rights 人權研究院.

On 21 June 2019, Professor Gong published an essay that is nothing less than an indictment of China’s academic culture, an accusation of mediocrity and a critique of a cowed and compliant intelligentsia. In his analysis of the ever-deepening crisis in the Chinese humanities and social sciences, Gong contrasts the failures of today with the achievements of the country’s universities during the turbulent and war-torn decades of the Republic of China.

The following essay is thus an elegy for the long-lost world of pre-1949 Chinese academia, a warning about the bedevilled state of the country’s universities under a reinvigorated Party ideology and a caution about the global blight of metrics- and ranking-driven, industrial-scale for-profit education. In particular, the author skewers the Chinese academy for having barely sloughed off the Maoist past only to become a laboratory for a dual experiment: one in which the culture of neo-liberal metrics in line with the concocted laws of the global educational marketplace is combined with stifling ideological controls that serve the policy shifts of a monolithic party-state.

The author also deftly encapsulates the dilemma of Global China. The People’s Republic has the economic and intellectual heft to contribute to the betterment not only of its own people but to humanity as a whole. Over recent decades, mature policy makers have developed ways for the country to engage creatively with the world, but resurgent Party dominance also demands every greater, and absurd, levels of fealty to its inward-looking dogmas. As a result, higher education is a battleground on which China’s best angels and worst spirits tussle. There may be no clear winners, yet, for many, the struggle itself is of great significance.

It is sobering to consider that the kinds of control that Party committees at Chinese universities exert over their ‘employees’ is the envy of tin-pot managers and academo-crats in many international universities for whom global rankings and budgets are the ne plus ultra of the educational enterprise.

Independent thought, academic freedom and the heart-mind unfettered by political interference are the main themes of this series — ‘Xu Zhangrun vs. Tsinghua University’ — in which Gong Renren’s essay is the latest chapter. One can only hope that China’s today — with a marketised ideology and metrics-wielding overlords — will not prove to be the future for everyone. Reports from the front line of academia, however, do not augur well.

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In recent years, the Chinese academy — like many other areas of civic, intellectual and cultural life in Xi Jinping’s People’s Republic —  has been subject to a further narrowing of intellectual vision as well as a revival of authoritarian politics. Careless commentators both in- and outside China blithely observe that these developments are a form of revived Maoism, or merely some kind of Cultural Revolution redux. As we have been at pains to point out in China Heritage, however, the roots — as well as the well-established practices — of the repressive policies in the People’s Republic today lie in the transformation of higher education in the early 1950s: to wit, the destructive thought reform movement launched ‘at the request of’ academics at Tsinghua and Peking universities in 1950, which featured in Homo Xinensis (China Heritage, 31 August 2018). It was during that ideological purge when the Yan’an Model of the early 1940s — one used to impose mind-numbing compliance within the Communist Party itself — was applied to the thinking people of China, and not just academics, en masse. (For more on this, see Drop Your Pants! The Party Wants to Patriotise You All Over Again (Part I) — Ruling The Rivers & Mountains, China Heritage, 8 August 2018)

Again, as we have repeatedly noted, although 1978-1979 was a watershed for China’s economy and society, it was also a salutary moment for the future of intellectual and political life in the country. The obdurate refusal by Party elders, in particular Deng Xiaoping, to reject entirely the 1957 Rights Movement, a mass purge used to crush all opposition to Communist domination of the society, and the constant re-affirmation of the policies of the 1950s have mean that repressive intellectual and cultural policies have remained the bedrock of national policy. To this day the dark legacy of the early 1950s continues to blight China’s intellectual and cultural life.

That over the past four decades so many academics, students, cultural creators and others have flourished to a smaller or greater extent is evidence not so much of the Communist Party’s reformist ethos or liberalism but rather of the indomitable energy of individuals and institutions that have often fed off, worked around or subverted the very power that has so often threatened to betray them.

Gong Renren’s indictment below should also be regarded as a caution to the international universities cum-businesses that have eagerly enmeshed themselves with China’s People’s Republic. His analysis of the glaring disparity between the advances being made in the sciences and the paucity of achievement in fields of the humanities and social sciences brings to mind comments that the journalist and investigative historian Dai Qing (戴晴, 1941-) made during the extended conversation about her work on independent intellectuals and the state that we had in Beijing during the month of August 1990.

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In his discussion of the reduced state of university achievement in the humanities and social sciences, Professor Gong lists a number of academic luminaries from the Republican era, in particular Wang Ch’ung-hui 王寵惠, John Ching Hsiung Wu 吳經熊, Chao Lung Yang 楊兆龍, Ken-sheng Chou 周鯁生, Wang Shih-chieh 王世傑, Tuan-Sheng Ch’ien 錢端升 and Li Hao-p’ei 李浩培. It’s a roll-call of China’s outstanding modern legal experts, as well as being a tragic reminder of the senseless despoliation of the life of the mind and of the spirit, not to mention the devastation of civic norms under the Communists. (From 2004, Xu Zhangrun edited a series of sixteen books — see《漢語法學文叢》— aimed at (re-)introducing Chinese readers to some of these thinkers, as well as to major Republican-era debates concerning ‘democracy vs. authoritarianism’ and ‘nativism vs. westernization’, which still resonate in Chinese intellectual life. For an overview of that series, see ‘The Forgotten Legal Thinkers of the Republican Era’ 被遺忘的民國法學家, an interview with Xu Zhangrun published on 25 February 2011.)

Readers should follow the links provided along with these names and be careful to note that, contrary to official propaganda, as well as all-too-often commonplace academic analyses, the Cultural Revolution and even the Anti-Rightist Movement that preceded it in 1957 were but political crescendos in an operatic drama that began with the May Fourth era (or, one could argue, even earlier with heedless revolutionary spirit from the mid-nineteenth century).

Many of the academics Gong Renren mentions chose to stay on the Mainland and serve the nascent People’s Republic. After 1949, they were almost immediately subjected to vilification and heavy-handed bureaucratic abuse. From the very birth of the new state, the official policy towards such professionally independent minded and ideologically untrustworthy men and women was summed up in a chilling ‘Sixteen-syllable Diktat’:

降級安排，控制使用，就地消化，逐步淘汰。
Demote yet allocate work, strictly supervise, absorb locally and eliminate gradually.

By the time people were encouraged to participate in the Hundred Flowers campaign of 1956 and to speak out partly as a way to allow for the release of the pent up fury over years of draconian Party misrule the war-torn society of China had become a different kind of inescapable ideological battleground. Encouraged by the authorities, many took the chance to speak out about the six long years through which they had already suffered, but their candor only led to further, harsher persecution. For those who survived, the ignominy would continue until the late 1970s. Even then Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues baulked at suggestions that the intellectual and cultural purges of 1949 to 1957 should be re-evaluated honestly and amends made. The dark legacy of that ideological obstinacy is at the heart of Gong Renren’s plaintive account. 

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As ever, I am grateful to Reader #1 for finding the time to read over the draft of this translation and alerting me to embarassing typographical errors.

Gong Renren’s essay should be read in conjunction with ‘The Uselessness of Freedom’ (China Heritage, 22 June 2019), a graduation speech made by Professor Qu Weiguo 曲衛國 of Fudan University, Shanghai, on 17 June 2019.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
28 June 2019

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Note:

• In romanising the names of Chinese scholars, where possible I have used pre-Hanyu Pinyin English spellings, attempting thereby to avoid, or at least alert readers to, PRC-imposed anachronisms.

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The Humanities and Social Sciences
Are Holding China Back

“拖後腿”的中國人文社科

Gong Renren

龔刃韌

translated by Geremie R. Barmé

Since 2015 China’s most prestigious universities have been clamorously touting themselves as being in the running to join the ranks of leading international tertiary educational institutions with the outstanding academic disciplines. It is part of the official ‘Double First-class University Plan’ [launched in 2015 and aimed at catapulting select tertiary institutions into the top rank of global bodies by 2050]. Given China’s burgeoning economic strength there is little doubt that, as long as the state is willing to devote the immense fiscal resources to achieve this goal, there is little doubt that in the short-term it is more than possible that various areas in the sciences and engineering will soon be able to make such a boast. 

The reason for this is that, when it comes to more technical academic research, if you just have enough money you can simply buy in top-of-the-range equipment and lure world-famous scientists with the promise of exorbitant salaries. Let me illustrate by noting that, in the recently announced 2019 budget for universities that are directly under the purview of the Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University led the pack with an allocation of 29.7 billion yuan. According to the commercial media THE [Times Higher Education World University Rankings], even though Tsinghua has never had a Nobel Prize Winner, it still enjoys first place among all Asian universities, far ahead of the three Japanese institutions that, between them, employ no fewer than five Nobel Laureates. 

Moreover, according to the latest QS company rankings, surprising though it may seem, Tsinghua is placed globally ahead both of Yale and Columbia Universities, schools that respectively have sixty-one and ninety-six Nobel Prize Winners, five Fields Medals [awarded to young scientists under the age of forty for outstanding contributions to mathematics] and three Turing Awards [the ‘Nobel Prize for Computing’ given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery which is named after the British mathematician Alan Turing who committed suicide in 1954 at the age of forty-two due to the persecution he suffered for being homosexual].

According to these rankings, Tsinghua is already in the very top tier of global educational enterprises. However, I would submit that if, one day, there are more Chinese nationals with Nobel Laureates than Japan — a country with only a fifth of our population — there certainly should be no need for this kind of boosterism from media and commercial organisations in the United Kingdom. For then, Tsinghua will be able to stand tall on its own and claim proudly that China has a group of top-tier educational institutions that are leaders in their fields. By that time, finally, lingering doubts as to why the People’s Republic has never produced Nobel greats like Hsue-Shen Tsien [Qian Xuesen] or Yang Chen-Ning can finally be put to rest.

自2015年以來，建設「雙一流」（世界一流大學和一流學科）成了中國知名大學最響亮的口號。現在中國經濟實力增強了，只要有國家巨額經費投入，我相信某些理工學科有可能在短期內趕上去。因為有錢就可以購買最先進的實驗設備，可以高薪從世界各國招聘知名科學家。不久前，教育部直屬大學公佈2019年預算，清華297億元居首。按英國媒體（THE）世界大學最新排名，儘管清華大學從無諾貝爾科學獎得主，仍被排在亞洲第一，遠高於各有五名以上「諾獎」得主的三所日本大學。按英國公司（QS）最新排名，清華大學竟被排在各有61和96位「諾獎」、5位菲爾茲獎和3位圖靈獎得主的耶魯大學和哥倫比亞大學前面。清華大學儼然已成為世界超一流大學了。不過，假如有一天中國籍科學家「諾獎」得主超過人口只有中國十分之一的日本，那時就不用借助媒體或公司的大學排名，而可更有底氣地宣佈：中國有了一批世界一流科學家和學科。中國大學為何培養不出傑出人才或一流科學家的「錢學森之問」和「楊振寧之問」也會迎刃而解。

However, the topic that I really want to address here is the state of the humanities and social sciences in China today. The funding model for these areas of academic pursuit is markedly different from the sciences, in particular since the research produced by scholars in these fields is born of the accumulation of knowledge and the formulation of unique insights over the long term. 

During the Japanese invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 many universities in Beiping [as Beijing was officially called from 1928 to 1949] and Shanghai relocated inland and set up campuses in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces (National Southwestern Associated University, for instance, was an amalgamation of a number of institutions from the Chinese littoral). Despite the deprivations endured by academics at the time, many scholars still managed to produce works of lasting value. One can cite, for example:

• T’ang Yung-t’ung, The History of Buddhism During the Han, Wei, Jin and North and South Dynasties; 
• Ch’ien Mu, A General History of China; 
• K.C. Hsiao, History of Chinese Political Thought, 
• Ch’en Yin-ko, A Brief Introduction to the Origins of the Institutions of Sui and Tang Dynasties; 
• Fung Yu-lan, Six Books of Zhenyuan; 
• Ho Lin, A Brief Exposition of Modern Idealism; 
• Chin Yueh-Lin, On Tao; and,
• T’ung-tsu Ch’ü, Law and Society in Traditional China. 

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After 1949, the Soviet educational system was imposed on China holos-bolus and the spirit of ‘Intellectual Freedom and Tolerance’ championed by the celebrated educational pioneer and president of Peking University Ts’ai Yüan-pei was swept away. In the wake of this, the humanities and social sciences went into long-term decline. At the end of the 1990s the majority of key Chinese universities were required to become general educational institutions. [Given that these universities engage in both teaching and research and cover all major disciplines] Now, however, the government’s grandiose ‘Double First-class University Plan’ may end up being frustrated by the fact that both the humanities and the social sciences are seriously lagging behind international best practice. Here I am by no means indulging in exaggeration.

但是，我在這裡只想談談人文社科，因為與依靠經費投入的理工科不同，人文社科的研究主要取決於學者個人長期的學術積累與獨到見解。日本侵華期間（1937-1945年），北平、上海等處許多大學避寇內遷到四川和雲南（如西南聯大）。儘管當時大學教師的研究和生活條件極端艱苦，許多人還是寫出了傳世之作，如湯用彤《漢魏兩晉南北朝佛教史》、錢穆《國史大綱》、蕭公權《中國政治思想史》、陳寅恪《隋唐制度淵源略論稿》、馮友蘭《貞元六書》、賀麟《近代唯心論簡釋》、金岳霖《論道》、瞿同祖《中國法律與中國社會》，等等。遺憾的是，1949年後中國全盤照搬蘇聯教育模式，中國現代大學教育奠基人、北大校長蔡元培提倡的「思想自由，兼容並包」辦學方針被徹底否定。從此，人文社科領域長期走下坡路。然而，由於上世紀末全國重點大學多數已擴為綜合大學，目前由黨中央和政府積極推進的建設「雙一流」的宏偉計劃，很可能因人文社科嚴重「拖後腿」而最終落空。這絕不是危言聳聽！

In the Inaugural Lecture that he made as president of Tsinghua University in 1931, Mei Yi-chi famously declared:

A real university is found not in grand buildings but in great scholars.
所謂大學者, 非謂有大樓之謂, 有大師之謂也。[See ‘Speaking Up for a Man Who Dared to Speak Out’, China Heritage, 1 April, 2019]

Readers may be familiar with the inspiring stories of the ‘Four Great Scholars of Tsinghua’ [Wang Guowei 王國維 (d.1927), Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (d.1929), Chen Yinque 陳寅恪 (d.1967) and Zhu Ziqing 朱自清 (d.1948), figures mentioned previously in our series on Xu Zhangrun]; today, however, they are little more than a distant memory. Moreover, the academic environment of lively diversity that had been encouraged under Mei Yi-chi at Tsinghua [from 1931 until the end of the Civil War on mainland China in 1949] disappeared long ago. Here I would also point out that it is revealing that the dozen or so outstanding professors and celebrated graduates chosen to exemplify that university’s achievements during its centenary year of 2011 had been all active during the Republican era [1912-1949]. If he were still alive, one can easily imagine what President Mei would conclude by look out at the veritable forest of grand buildings that has sprung up on his old campus.   

1931年清華校長梅貽琦《就職演說》中有句名言：「所謂大學者，非謂有大樓之謂也，有大師之謂也。」但眾所周知，清華國學院「四大導師」的傳奇早成絕響，梅貽琦任校長期間名師雲集的風光也已不再。2011年清華百年校慶期間，廣為宣傳的清華史上任教的學術大師和清華培養的二十幾位名人大家都是民國往事。假如梅校長還活在世上，看到現在大樓林立的清華校園，真不知會有何感想？

As for Peking University [PKU] nearby, it is an institution that was once renowned for its departments of literature, history and philosophy. During a Spring Festival New Year’s ‘tea-chat meeting’ held for PKU faculty a few years ago, I asked Professor Lou Yulie [a veteran member of the Philosophy Department], who happened to be sitting at my table, what he thought of the general standard of his department these days? Without a moment’s hesitation he said: ‘Far inferior to the past!’ Lou had graduated from the department in 1960 [not exactly the most glorious period in PKU’s history, we would observe] and he immediately counted off the names of the outstanding professors who were teaching there at the time. Their number included such luminaries as Fung Yu-lan, T’ang Yung-t’ung, Ho Lin, Chang Tai-nien, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tsung Bai-hua and Chu Kuang-ch’ien. Then there were the people who had taught in the department during the Republic — Tsai Yüan-p’ei, Hu Shih, Hsiung Shih-li and Liang Sou-ming — names that Professor Lou did not mention. Who in the Philosophy Department of PKU today has a reputation that in any way measures up to the standards of those scholastic greats?      

文、史、哲是北大傳統優勢學科。幾年前，在北大春節茶話會上，我問坐同一桌的樓宇烈教授，現在北大哲學研究水平怎樣？樓先生不假思索地說：比以前差太遠了！1960年畢業於北大哲學系的樓先生如數家珍地列出他當學生時教授們的名字，如馮友蘭、湯用彤、賀麟、張岱年、金岳霖、宗白華、朱光潛等（樓先生沒有提到的還有民國時期北大哲學系任教的蔡元培、胡適、熊十力、梁漱溟等人）。可是，現在北大哲學系究竟有幾位能與當年那些學術大師比肩的人物呢？

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A yawning gulf also exists between present and past in my own field of Legal Studies. Many noted legal experts and jurists trained during the Republican era — and here one thinks of such names as Wang Ch’ung-hui, John Ching Hsiung Wu, Chao Lung Yang, Ken-sheng Chou, Wang Shih-chieh, Tuan-Sheng Ch’ien and Li Hao-p’ei — were not only outstanding academics, they were also fluent in any number of foreign languages. Take Wang Ch’ung-hui, for instance. He was awarded his PhD in law by Yale University in 1905 and, in 1907, he published an English translation of the [1896] German Civil Code which was subsequently used by American scholars of law for many years. Only with an in-depth understanding both of Continental Law and [British] Common Law — not to mention fluency in German and English — could such a translation have been possible. In 1923, Wang was the first Chinese national to be appointed to the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Hague. 

After graduating from Soochow University in 1920, John C.H. Wu pursued his studies at the University of Michigan, earning his doctorate in just one year. He published widely in English, German and French and his work was influential in international legal circles. Chao Lung Yang graduated from Soochow University in 1927 and gained a doctorate in legal studies at Harvard University in 1935 following which he went to Germany to study continental European law. Proficient in eight foreign languages Chao was the Chinese translator of the Charter of the United Nations [which was drafted in 1941 and signed in 1945]. After 1949, when the newly established People’s Republic of China adapted the Soviet legal system and rejected Western law out of hand, rather than being allowed to teach any of the languages in which he excelled such as English, German or French, Chao was assigned to teach Russian. Only after the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party [in February 1956, at which the Party’s First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin and his personality cult] was Chao finally granted a ‘right of return’ and allowed to teach law. It is heart-rending to think now that, in 1957, he was classified as a ‘Rightist’ for [among other things] having urged the authorities to accelerate the process of establishing a proper new legal system, as well as for advocating the need for the principle of the presumption of innocence to be accepted as a legal norm in People’s China. Chao Lung Yang’s two sons, his daughter as well as a number of his students were incriminated in his ‘crimes’ and also denounced as ‘Rightists’. (These details are based on Shattered Dreams of the Rule of Law in Shanghai, a memoir by the ninety-three year-old jurist He Jixiang published in 2001.)

同樣，中國法學界也有巨大的今昔反差。民國時期許多著名法學家，如王寵惠、吳經熊、楊兆龍、周鯁生、王世傑、錢端升、李浩培等，不僅有深厚的學術功底，而且都精通多門外語。1905年獲耶魯大學法學博士學位的王寵惠，1907年將《德國民法典》翻譯成英文，曾長期被美國大學法學院廣泛使用。作為中國學者，若沒有對大陸法與普通法兩大法系的深刻理解和對英文德文的精通，是不可能做到的。1923年王寵惠當選為常設國際法院首任中國籍法官。1920年畢業於東吳大學的吳經熊赴美國密歇根大學留學，僅一年就獲得法學博士學位。吳經熊用英文、德文和法文發表過許多在國外法學界有影響的著作和論文。1927年畢業於東吳大學的楊兆龍，1935年獲哈佛法學博士學位後，到德國研究歐洲各國法律，掌握了八門外語，他是《聯合國憲章》中文譯者。1949年後由於中國接受蘇聯法學，排斥西方法學，楊兆龍被安排在復旦大學教俄語（而不是他更精通的英、德、法語），直到蘇共二十大後才「歸隊」任復旦法律系教授。令人惋惜的是，1957年楊兆龍因建議加速立法和主張無罪推定原則被打成「右派分子」，他的兩個兒子、一個女兒以及學生受株連也都被划為「右派」，慘遭迫害（何濟翔：《滬上法治夢》2001年）。

The most famous legal scholars in China today were born in the 1950s and 1960s. However, their education and subsequent research careers were derailed by the Cultural Revolution. That original deficit has been added to by the overwhelming pressure to churn out large numbers of papers, despite there being no requirement to engage with foreign-language material — in fact, some of their number don’t know any other languages. Nonetheless, quite a few of their number enjoy a formidable local reputation for their voluminous publications and glory in an array of dazzling titles. One is hardly surprised to find then that any number of ‘legal experts’ in this country can’t even explicate such a basic legal proposition such as the distinction between ‘rule of law’ and ‘rule by law’ [as Victor Mair has observed: “ ‘Rule of law’ implies fairness and predictable application. ‘Rule by law’ would include, for example, rule under Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws (Nürnberger Gesetze), which were neither fair nor predictably applied.” Quoted by Josh Chin in ‘ “Rule of Law” or “Rule by Law”? In China, a Preposition Makes All the Difference’, The Wall Street Journal, 14 October 2014.]  

Legal scholars born after the 1970s may not have been blighted by the Cultural Revolution but they too suffer from being required to publish copiously in ‘key academic journals’ and, as a result, have little time to mature intellectually or to acquire the foreign languages necessary [for them to pursue meaningfully in terms of international standards their work as researchers and teachers]. The following example reflects the present state of affairs in the world of Chinese legal scholarship:

Influenced by German legal thought, criminal law doctrine has been much touted in China. However, according to the revelations of Liu Renwen, a criminal law specialist in the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, in an article he published in Legal Daily on 27 December 2017, although such imported German concepts as ‘legal good’ [Rechtsgut] and the theory of objective imputation [Objektive Zurechnung] enjoy something approaching adulation in our legal world, in their land of origin ‘legal good’ is regarded as being a vacuous theory, while ‘legal good theory’ is seen as fostering a dangerously spurious reliance on evidence. Moreover, the theory of objective imputation has been criticised for confounding mens rea [criminal intent] with actus reus [the objective element] of a crime.    

目前，國內知名法學者多數是上世紀50、60年代出生的，由於「文革」的耽誤，再加上法學界只求發表文章數量不注重閱讀外文原始資料的風氣，有些人甚至連一門外語的閱讀能力都缺乏，儘管其中不少人已「著作等身」並擁有各種耀眼的頭銜。難怪在中國許多法學者連「法治」（rule of law）與「依法而治」（rule by law）之間常識性區別都分不清。上世紀70年代以後出生的法學者，雖未受「文革」耽誤，但受「核心刊物」發文數量壓力，沒有時間學術積累並多學幾門外語。以下這個例子反映中國法學研究的現狀：在中國大受追捧的「刑法教義學」主要受德國的影響，但據社科院法學所刑法研究員劉仁文在《法制日報》（2017年12月27日）載文透露：儘管近年從德國引進的「法益理論」和「客觀歸責理論」在中國刑法學界備受推崇，但德國刑法學者卻指出「法益」在內容上是空洞的，用「法益理論」作為限制犯罪化的依據是自欺欺人。「客觀歸責理論」在德國也被批評混淆了客觀要件和主觀要件。

It is evident from this single example that Chinese legal scholars rely far too heavily for their understanding of legal questions on second- or even third-hand material, or, for that matter, on texts translated into Chinese that can readily lead to a misinterpretation of the particular German legal theories that they regard with such reverence. Let me offer another example, one that should by all rights embarrass any scholar of the law here in China: not only have Japanese specialists long excelled in their research into the history of Chinese law — far ahead of their colleagues in China, one would point out — since WWII, Japan has actually produced a number of world-renowned specialists in the field. Their number includes Niida Noboru, Shiga Shūzō and Terada Hiroaki. There are also any number of Japanese scholars whose work on specialist areas of European and American law far surpasses that of non-Japanese researchers. Not one Chinese name has the same kind of resounding reputation. Regardless of these facts, the QS university rankings company in England has for five years running listed the PKU Law School among the top three universities in Asia. 

Here we should make the obvious point that the only reliable way to assess academic quality is by means of peer evaluation; it is patently absurd to put any store in the rankings of some commercial interest like QS. If truth be told, far from being within reach of the top tier internationally, China is a far cry from even ranking in the second tier. What I mean by ‘top tier’ is that researchers in a particular discipline are able to make the kind of original and creative contributions to the field that are universally recognised both by fellow specialists in China and internationally. As for ‘second-tier’, this means studies in a particular field or discipline that utilise primary materials and that engage with the best practice of the field internationally while offering accurate, systematic and in-depth research and conclusions.  

由此看來，中國法學者是依據二、三手資料或中譯本瞭解從而誤解德國的刑法理論。再舉一個令中國學者汗顏的例子：對中國法制史的研究，日本法學者不僅總體水平遠遠超過中國法學者，而且二戰後還先後出現了仁井田阩、滋賀秀三、寺田浩明等一些有世界影響的學者。同樣，對歐美法特定領域的研究超越國外同行的日本法學者也有不少，但達到這一學術水平的中國法學者還聞所未聞。儘管如此，北大法學院被英國一家公司（QS）連續五年排在亞洲法學院前三名。可是，學術水平只能由專業同行評價才靠譜，由商業公司為學術機構排名難免令人感到荒唐可笑。事實上，中國的法學研究不要說達到世界一流水平（在某一學科領域有原創性和系統性的研究成果並為國內外專業同行一致認可），就是距二流水平（根據原文和原始資料對某一學科領域的國際重要研究成果或相關實踐進行準確、系統和深入的分析與綜合）也有很大的差距。

History has repeatedly demonstrated that in an environment lacking free speech or one in which true academic independence is absent, even though certain fields in the sciences may advance rapidly, the humanities and social sciences will remain seriously constrained. Let me illustrate this by noting that, although China’s universities were in a state of paralysis during the Cultural Revolution, the country’s nuclear weapons industry and aeronautics, as well as various fields in the natural sciences enjoyed nonetheless international levels of success. In 1967, for instance, China successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb and in 1970 it launched its first satellite. It is also noteworthy that Tu Youyou — the country’s only Nobel Laureate (awarded in 2015) — made her research breakthrough during the Cultural Revolution. 

As for the humanities and social sciences: during those same years the scholars in these fields were reduced to chanting hosannas in support of the politics of the day. That’s why the articles produced by Liang Xiao — the ‘two universities’ big criticism writing group [梁效 = 兩校，或‘兩所學校’] made up of academics from PKU and Tsinghua — enjoyed such a level of national attention, were widely reproduced in the official media and endlessly quoted in academic work. Those ‘achievements’ are nothing less than a permanent stain on the record of Chinese scholarship. [For more on this, see the section titled ‘Two Universities 梁校’ in Homo Xinensis, China Heritage, 31 August 2018.]

歷史證明，沒有言論出版自由和學術自由，自然科學某些學科仍能快速發展，但人文社科必受嚴重束縛。例如，中國「文革」期間，儘管大學教育處於癱瘓狀態，但在核武器、航天以及自然科學個別領域也不乏世界級水平成果。如1967年中國成功地爆炸了第一顆氫彈，1970年中國第一顆人造衛星發射成功, 中國本土唯一諾貝爾科學獎得主（2015年）屠呦呦的研究成果也是「文革」時期做出來的。但由於沒有思想言論自由，人文社科工作主要是歌功頌德和政治宣傳。所以，以「梁效」為筆名的北大清華「大批判組」的系列文章獨領風騷，被官方媒體廣為轉載和學界頻繁引證，在中國學術史上留下極不光彩的一頁。

As the famous Soviet dissident academic Roy Medvedev noted [in his account of Stalinist Russia]: 

In most of the social sciences Stalin alone had the right to make discoveries and draw major conclusions; everyone else was assigned the role of a popularizer or a commentator. Dogmatism, rote learning (nachetnichestvo), stagnation, and inertia were the results. Between 1946 and 1952 no less than six hundred books and pamphlets, in a total printing of twenty million copies, were devoted to Stalin’s speeches and articles.

[— from Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge:
The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism,
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, p.499]

[And:

The deification of Stalin, the creation of stories about his infallibility and omniscience, generated a quasi-religious perception of reality in the scholarly community. The truth was not what corresponded to facts, to empirical research, but what Comrade Stalin had declared to be true. Quotations from “the classics of Marxism-Leninism,” and above all from the newly canonized classics of Stalin, became the main proof that a given proposition was true. Inconvenient facts were juggled, distorted, or simply ignored. (ibid.) — translator’s addition]

又如，蘇聯時期在航天、武器以及自然科學某些領域世界領先，但人文社科被置於黨的宣傳框架之內，只能充當政策的奴僕。蘇聯著名持不同政見者羅伊•麥德維傑夫（Roy Medvedev）指出：「在大多數人文社科領域，斯大林壟斷了’發明權’和做出結論的權利，而所有其他人只能是推廣普及和進行注釋。由此而來的是教條主義的統治、死啃書本、停滯僵化和惰性。歌功頌德和注釋性的書籍成為了蘇共黨史著作的基本類型」（《讓歷史來審判》1983年中譯本）。

The result? Although the Soviet Union was a major presence on the world stage for seventy years, apart from the scant but precious intellectual and cultural legacy of a handful of repressed dissidents that remain, it produced virtually nothing worthy of note in either the humanities or the social sciences. Indeed, one can think of no major Soviet social scientist or theoretician, let alone of a world-class university that existed in that era. What remains is the contemptible and noxious record of humiliation that has been bequeathed [to Russia] by generations of tenured academo-crats and their ilk who for years enjoyed the largesse of the state. 

Take for example the case of the authoritative Soviet jurist and academician A. Vyshinsky [Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский, 1883-1954]. As Procurator General Vyshinsky played a key role in Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936-1938. He oversaw a process in which the NKVD secret police, the state procuracy and the courts conspired to fabricate facts and extract forced confessions [from the accused] to justify three show trials [of enemies of the state]. These generated numerous cases of injustice.

I would also note that most people are unaware of the fact that Roland Freisler [1893-1945], State Secretary of the Nazi Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) — the main organ of legal repression in Hitler’s Germany — made an in-depth study of the techniques employed during Vyshinsky’s show trials [Freisler even attended some sessions of the trials as an observer], so much so that Hitler declared: ’Roland Freisler is our Vyshinsky’! 

Vyshinsky’s ‘legal theories’ [and his Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Justice, which was awarded a Stalin Prize in 1947] were not only orthodoxy in the Soviet Union for many decades they also underpinned the legal system of the People’s Republic of China. Vyshinsky’s ideas negated judicial independence and denied the importance of procedural integrity; instead they advocated the class nature of the law and the central importance of Partiinost’ партийность, that is, unswerving partisan loyalty to the Communist Party.

所以，儘管蘇聯作為一個大國存在70多年，除了少數受迫害的不同政見者留下了珍貴的精神遺產外，人文社科學術成就乏善可陳，沒有產生傑出的社會科學家和理論家，也沒有一所世界一流大學！而備受官方賞識的御用文人或文科院士留傳下來的，則多是人所不齒的劣跡和毒素。如蘇聯法學權威和院士、擔任過總檢察長的維辛斯基（A. Vyshinsky）在1936-1938年斯大林大清洗運動扮演了關鍵角色。在莫斯科三大審判中，秘密警察與檢察院、法院串通一氣，通過捏造事實、刑訊逼供、公審表演（show trials）等卑鄙手段製造了一系列冤假錯案。鮮為人知的是，納粹德國的政治鎮壓工具——人民法院（Volksgerichtshof）的院長法賴斯勒（R. Freisler），就專門研究過並效仿維辛斯基在莫斯科審判的手法，因而被希特勒稱贊說「法賴斯勒是我們的維辛斯基」！維辛斯基的「法學理論」——鼓吹法律的階級性和黨性、否定司法獨立、蔑視程序正義，不僅是蘇聯法學的正統，也支配了中國法學數十年！其毒害影響至今。

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At the moment, there are many areas of the humanities and social science in which China’s universities are increasingly falling behind global leaders. A few examples must suffice:

當今，在人文社科領域，中國大學還有很多距離世界一流大學漸行漸遠的現象，僅舉以下幾例：

In the first place, tertiary educational institutions have become the launching pad for bureaucratic fame and fortune [for an echo of this view, see Zi Zhongyun 資中筠, ‘My Tsinghua Lament’, China Heritage, 3 April 2019]. There’s something particularly noteworthy about Chinese universities: anyone who has held a position in the [party-state] bureaucracy, be it in or outside the institution in question, or, of that matter, if they have merely been the recipient of official recognition and largesse, they can stake a claim on greater amounts of academic resources than others or achieve a particular academic status [without being subject to the usual processes of evaluation]. In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences named forty-seven Academicians (people who henceforth enjoyed a status equivalent to ‘Humanities and Social Science Academicians’). Of those, forty-four had previously been the managers of academic colleges or institutions, or had been in Party leadership roles. More recently, a similar situation has seen key universities conferring special titles or working conditions on a select number of professors in the humanities and social sciences.  

第一、大學成了官本位的名利場。中國大學有一個顯著特色：任何人只要有校內外做「官」經歷或受到官方賞識，就能佔有更多學術資源並獲得特殊學術地位。2006年社科院首批推選出47位學部委員（據稱相當於「文科院士」），其中44人有擔任院、所黨政領導經歷。最近幾年，幾所重點大學對少數文科教授給予特殊頭銜和待遇也都有類似現象。

Secondly, ‘anti-intellectualism’ is on the rise. This is immediately evident merely by scanning the titles of research topics that are being official promoted and the scale of funding allocated to such projects — proof can easily be found in the indexes of ‘key journals’ [in recent years, there has been a preponderance of major funding for research topics and ‘centres of excellence’ initiatives focussed on Xi Jinping Thought]. Of course, it has long been the case that university lecturers are little better than ‘piece workers’ [that is, like factory workers they are paid according to the volume of the work they produce] (for more on this, see my 2005 study ‘University Professors, Piece Work and Academic Freedom’ [published in the Hong Kong journal Twenty-first Century, May 2005, Issue 38《二十一世紀》, 二00五年五月號, 總第 38 期].) A university environment that indulges the frivolous and the superficial has spawned the proliferation of academically light-weight articles produced by the ambitious. This is the ethos that now reigns instead of the kind of scholastic probity and seriousness evident among Republican-era scholars. Their work was the outcome of due consideration and with an eye to self-regard. Back in the day, the head of the Faculty of Arts at Peking University — the [May Fourth student leader turned noted historian] Fu Sinian — cautioned younger scholars against publishing anything for the first three years of their careers. Such wise counsel has been replaced by an assumed US-inspired academic practice summed up in the glib expression ‘publish or perish’.

第二、大學「反智主義」愈演愈烈，即以國內「核心雜誌」發表論文數量和申請官方課題經費的等級/金額作為衡量「學術」主要標準。大學教師早已淪為「計件工」（筆者文章《大學教授、計件工與學術自由》2005年）。民國那一代學者惜墨如金與厚積薄發的嚴謹學風已被「薄積厚發」的浮躁風氣所取代，當年北大文科研究所長傅斯年對新任年輕教師「三年內不許發表文章」的要求，也早已被從美國道聽途說和誤讀的「不發表就出局」（publish or perish）所取代。

Thirdly, we have moved away from being open to the world back to protecting ourselves behind closed doors. It is now standard practice for faculty [Party leaders] and the university to vet all foreign university teaching materials. [In the field of law] Anything that contains too much information about constitutional government, for example, is now banned. Some universities have even imposed restrictions on foreign academics presenting lectures. Take for instance the case of Professor Murase Shinya. During a distinguished career he was a member of the UN International Law Commission and a Special Rapporteur for the UN. Following his retirement from Sophia University in Tokyo Professor Murase chose to teach Chinese research students in English as an unpaid professor in the Faculty of Law at the China Youth University of Political Studies. He event went so far as to donate to that institution his personal library on international law, a collection that contained some thousands of volumes. Professor Murase said that he enjoyed teaching in China and he even expressed the hope that, eventually, his ashes would be interred on the campus of the China Youth University. However, after that school was placed under the aegis of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2017, non-Chinese lecturers were banned from teaching subjects in their own areas of academic specialisation. Henceforth, it was announced, they would only be allowed to teach foreign languages. Professor Murase felt that he had no alternative but to leave.   

第三、從對外開放退回閉關自守。近年來在大學使用國外大學教科書必須經過院系審核、學校審定，介紹西方憲政制度篇幅較多的國內教材也被禁用。某些大學甚至限制外國教授講授專業課。例如，聯合國國際法委員會委員和特別報告員、著名國際法學者村瀨信也教授從日本上智大學退休後來到北京，長年無報酬地在中國青年政治學院法學院為研究生用英文授課，他還把數千冊國際法學的私人藏書無償地捐給了中青政。村瀨教授非常喜歡在中國教書，甚至希望死後骨灰能埋在中青政。但是，2017年中青政被划轉至中國社會科學院大學後，外國教授只能教外語而不准講授專業課，村瀨教授不得不離開。

Fourthly, strictures on academic freedom are getting tighter. On 3 April this year [2019], I published an essay on academic freedom in Japan in the online Chinese edition of Financial Times. In it I noted the case of Professor Fukase Tadakazu [of Hokkaido University]. Although he was involved in two prominent cases involving constitutional law and acted as an expert witness in a third in which the Japanese government was indicted for anti-constitutional behaviour, he was not subjected to pressure by his university. 

Following the hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism in the USA, academic freedom in that country came to be regarded as a right. Readers might recall that, on 10 February 2017, US President Donald Trump used his Twitter account to mock a federal judge for temporarily placing a ban on one of his executive orders. On 17 February, Martha Minow and Robert C. Post —  famous legal experts in the law faculties of Harvard and Yale universities respectively — co-authored an article titled ‘Standing up for “so-called” law’ [The Boston Globe, 10 February 2017] in which they criticised Trump for holding the law in contempt law. As they wrote: ‘If Trump believes he can make an enemy of the law and of the Constitution, then he has truly become a foe of the Republic, despite the oath he swore at his inauguration.’ [In that article, Minow and Post characterised the Law thusly: ‘We are deans of respected law schools. We have dedicated our professional lives to the proposition that law overrides violence with reason. Law stands for what we have in common, not merely what divides us. Law respects disagreement; it patiently considers evidence and advocacy; it engages with the views of all. Each person — not just each citizen — is equal before the law. Created in ancient times to terminate endless cycles of vengeance and retribution, law substitutes official, publicly justified sanctions for animosity and enmity.’ — trans. addition] Needless to say, China is a very long way indeed from enjoying anything approaching that kind of academic freedom.

Following the introduction of the Economic Reform and Open Door policies [from 1979], Chinese universities began to enjoy a limited degree of academic freedom; but even those hamstrung freedoms are now imperilled. If a complete taboo is placed on voicing opinions about political issues there will be a concomitant increase in university lecturers who are penalised for the untoward things that they may say during lectures. Moreover, students will be further encouraged to act as snitches on behalf of the authorities. It is as though the painful lessons of our recent history are purposefully being forgotten: remember, countless people were persecuted as a result of the blanket use of informants during the Cultural Revolution. In East Germany, I would also note, one of the underlying causes of mass disaffection which contributed directly to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall, along with collapse of the regime itself, was that the party-state employed a vast network of informants controlled by the Staatssicherheitsdienst, the Stasi.

第四、學術自由越來越受限制。今年4月3日我為FT中文網撰文提到日本大學的學術自由，如兩次組織憲法訴訟並作為鑒定人在法庭論證政府違憲的深瀨忠一教授，從未受到官方壓力。美國上世紀50年代的反共狂潮消退之後，學術自由也得到了保障。2017年2月10日美國總統特朗普在推特上嘲諷暫停執行總統令的聯邦法官。2月17日，美國最有名的兩個法學院（哈佛、耶魯）的院長，米諾（M. Minow）與波斯特（R. Post）聯名撰文指責特朗普蔑視法治：「如果特朗普認為他能以法律和憲法為敵，那麼他將成為共和國的敵人。」可見，真正的學術自由在中國還遙不可及。改革開放後，中國大學有了一定程度的學術自由，但近年又面臨著喪失的可能。如在中國政治問題上提批評意見成為禁忌，大學教師因課堂言論受處分現象明顯增多，甚至鼓勵師生告密。並不久遠的中外歷史教訓已被刻意地遺忘：「文革」期間告密之風盛行造成無數人慘遭迫害；斯塔西（Stasi）的龐大告密體系正是1989年柏林牆倒塌及東德政權垮台的深層次原因。

And, Fifth, despite the lack of academic freedom in our universities, academic malfeasance is enjoying a heyday. The academy in China is rotten: this has been a widely-known and well-established fact for some time. But there’s also something rather unique about our tertiary institutions: while there is Zero Tolerance for ‘Political Incorrectness’ [that is, non-conformist or ‘dissident’ ideas and opinions], there is a seemingly boundless indulgence for the most egregious abuse of academic standards. That’s because for the university leadership, if the former [that is, political aberrance] isn’t dealt with in an adroit manner it may well have a direct impact on their own official positions, while academic malfeasance merely influences the reputation of their institutions negatively. So long as the mainstream media doesn’t get wind of things and expose any particular wrongdoing, all manner of things can simply be covered up. Let me share a recent example: one of my colleagues wrote a letter to the PKU leadership in which they pointed out in detail instances of grave professional misconduct on the part of certain professors. But the university decided against taking any action. Evidently, despite repeated injunctions issued by the Ministry of Education calling for ‘Zero Tolerance’ of professional misconduct, in practice they are simply reduced to ‘Zero’.       

第五、缺乏學術自由但有學術不端行為的自由。學術腐敗在中國的泛濫早已是舉世皆知的事實。中國大學有一個獨特的怪現象：大學對教師「政治上不正確」言論零容忍，但對教師嚴重學術不端行為卻經常無限容忍。這是因為對大學領導來說，對前者不處理會危及其「烏紗帽」，而教師學術不端行為涉及大學面子，只要沒有被主流媒體曝光，就盡可能地加以掩蓋。舉一個最近的例子，我的一位同事寫信給北大校方反映個別教授的嚴重學術不端行為，但最後得到的結果是學校不打算處理。可見，儘管教育部三令五申，要求對學術不端行為「零容忍」，但實際效果幾乎等於「零」。

If the situation outlined in the above continues, and if the Humanities and Social Sciences at China’s universities continue to lag behind, they will remain a drag on the ‘Double First-class University Plan’. They will also hold back our society as a whole and the very civilisation that it professes to support.

長此以往，中國人文社科不僅對「雙一流」建設「拖後腿」，而且對社會文明進步也會「拖後腿」。

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Source:

• 龔刃韌, 「拖後腿」的中國人文社科, 《金融時報》, 21 June 2019, reprinted as 龚刃韧, “拖后腿”的中国人文社科, 合傳媒, 22 June 2019