Academics have warned over the consequences of a renewed Cold War mentality affecting research and education ties between China and the West.

Increasingly, Western scholars are facing pressure to take a critical standpoint on China, participants in a conference hosted by Utrecht University heard.

¡°One of the debates in our network and also here today is this challenge of how to avoid being caught up in this polarised debate ¨C so how do you present your research or your findings or your questions without being [framed] as either anti- or pro-China,¡± said Nana de Graaff, associate professor in international relations at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and chair of the European Union-funded China in Europe Research Network.

Dr de Graaff said that Europe and the US hold a false ¡°sense of superiority¡± when they ignore the East, and put themselves at peril of losing touch with a growing research superpower.

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¡°The world will become increasingly unknown to us¡± if the West fails to engage with China and other parts of the world, she warned.?

Xiaoyong Zhang, China coordinator at Wageningen University & Research, said that there was already pressure to justify research ties with colleagues in China. A few years ago, she and her colleagues faced repeated questions over a collaboration with Chinese academics, including over human rights, she said.

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¡°We were asked, ¡®Why are you working together with China¡¯ ¨C we had to defend that,¡± said Dr Zhang. Now, ¡°a lot of colleagues receive these questions if not daily, then weekly¡±.

She put it down to the increasingly politicised public discourse on China relations trickling into campuses. Dr Zhang said that, try as academics do to stay above political turmoil, ¡°societal debate also has [an] impact on us¡±.

Dr Zhang said that many researchers had begun to ask themselves, ¡°Do I need to be engaged in this programme on China?¡±, and whether their engagement would cause negative consequences. She noted a chilling trend in Western academia.

¡°Self-censorship is not from China. It¡¯s from here¡­from colleagues, from friends. That really worries me,¡± she said.

Dr Zhang¡¯s story was not the only account of creeping influence of divisive rhetoric on academia. ?gota R¨¦v¨¦sz, an associate professor at the Technical University of Berlin, said that recently, when she lectured on China, her students had started to react with suspicion.

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¡°I start talking about China and I can feel this oomph, this pushback, and I have real fears that I [could] lose my credibility in the classroom,¡± she said.

Dr R¨¦v¨¦sz attributed the situation to growing political tension. ¡°I¡¯ve been working on this for 30 years and I have never experienced such an amount of fear,¡± she said of the current climate.

Simon Marginson, professor of international ÖйúAƬ at the University of Oxford, said institutions should seek to head off the situation before it resulted in a freezing of international collaborations between China and the West.

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¡°The norm should be openness rather than the other way around,¡± he said, adding that the current political stance ¡°goes back to the old¡­Cold War atmosphere¡±.

¡°The essential thing that will decide whether this US-China world is a Cold War world will be whether openness and exchange remains normal or whether it becomes exceptional and rare,¡± he said.

Scholars¡¯ only option is to forge ahead and continue to share their knowledge, said Dr R¨¦v¨¦sz.

¡°The biggest fear is our fear of the unknown¡­so you need to break it down and make it known somehow.¡±

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pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com