UNSW under fire for deleting social media posts critical of China over Hong Kong

The University of New South Wales is facing criticism over the deletion of social media posts seen to be critical of Beijing, after an online backlash and coverage by Chinese state media.

The official UNSW account on Friday tweeted an article that quoted Human Rights Watch's Australia director and adjunct law lecturer Elaine Pearson as saying: "Now is a pivotal moment to bring attention to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Hong Kong".

Several hours later, a further tweet was posted by UNSW reading: "The opinions expressed by our academics do not always represent the views of UNSW."

"We have a long & valued relationship with Greater China going back 60 years.

"UNSW provides a welcome & inclusive environment & is proud to welcome students from over 100 countries."

Both tweets were later deleted.

The article posted to the UNSW Law website, entitled China needs international pressure to end Hong Kong wrongs, extensively quoted Ms Pearson.

Ms Pearson told the ABC the article was removed from the UNSW website on Saturday, but is now able to be accessed.

Chinese students reportedly wrote to the Chinese embassy calling for it to pressure the university into deleting the article and associated posts.

Ms Pearson said she was seeking clarification from UNSW about what happened.

'Should be a mini-PR disaster'

"I did not write the article … I have my views on recent developments in Hong Kong and what the international community should do," Ms Pearson said.

"Clearly that hit a nerve for some pro-Chinese Communist Party supporters who aggressively and collectively pressured the university to remove the story."

The state-run Global Times tabloid reported that the tweet's deletion "failed to buy Chinese students" and that "they are still negotiating with the university, and demanding an apology for its twitter post".

"This is a genuinely harmful bit of imposed censorship — an entirely factual article about the dire situation in Hong Kong, removed for no good reason by @UNSW out of cowardice," tweeted deputy editor at Foreign Policy magazine, James Palmer.

"Should be a mini-PR disaster for them," he said.

In the article, Ms Pearson called the recent introduction of a controversial national security law in Hong Kong the "death-knell of the 'one country two systems' arrangement", referring to a system intended to give greater autonomy to the city after its governance was transferred from Britain to China in 1997.

Several teenagers were arrested in Hong Kong under the new laws last week.

"Safeguarding the human rights of Hong Kong citizens should not be something that should be controversial," she told the ABC.

Ms Pearson is a frequent critic of the Chinese Government's human rights record, including crackdowns on pro-democracy protests and the mass incarceration of Muslims in Xinjiang.

She told the ABC's Q+A program in May that China was a "bully" and the Australian Government should stand up to it.

Ms Pearson said Human Rights Watch had documented threats to academic freedom in Australia resulting from Chinese Government pressure and "called on universities to ensure robust protection of academic freedom to deal with those threats".

Neither the Chinese embassy nor UNSW responded to the ABC's requests for comment.

The controversy comes amid deteriorating ties between Canberra and Beijing and reflects growing concern about the impact on academic freedom from Australian universities' heavy reliance on revenues from Chinese international student fees.

UNSW has strong ties to China

Students from mainland China account for almost a quarter of the UNSW cohort, numbering some 16,000 and representing a whopping 68.8 per cent of all international students, while the university has strong business and research ties to China.

University of Sydney sociologist Salvatore Babones has estimated that UNSW derives 22 per cent of revenue from Chinese international students' course fees.

It is home to the so-called Torch Innovation Precinct, the first outside China, which was launched by then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in 2016.

"Since 1988, China's Torch program has been successfully collocating Chinese businesses, universities and research organisations in science and technology precincts to drive innovation," a UNSW press release said at the time.

"This partnership is a global first and has the potential to reset the Australia-China bilateral relationship and boost the nation's innovation system," President and Vice Chancellor Ian Jacobs said.

UNSW's annual report last year said the university had signed more than $60 million worth of contracts with 42 Chinese partners under the Torch scheme since 2016.

In June 2018, it opened the UNSW China Centre in Shanghai — partly tasked with student recruitment — "to bolster its presence in China and further build Sino-Australian relations".

The university is also home to a Chinese Government-funded Confucius Institute, which its website describes as "the embodiment of cross-cultural harmony".

UNSW recently announced it was axing 500 fulltime jobs due to a $370 million funding shortfall, attributing the situation to reduced international student revenue due to the pandemic.