New Zealand Professor’s Report On Chinese Influence Criticized By University

New Zealand media is report­ing on the case of a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor accused of mak­ing errors in her report on Chi­nese influ­ence with­in the coun­try’s uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem. Accord­ing to the Stuff report:

More than 100 aca­d­e­mics and sup­port­ers of Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury (UC) pro­fes­sor Anne-Marie Brady have signed a let­ter call­ing for her employ­er to apol­o­gise and crit­i­cis­ing its review of her work. Brady, a promi­nent researcher on Chi­na and its efforts to influ­ence West­ern democ­ra­cies, drew ire from her col­leagues in July when she pre­sent­ed a paper as a sup­ple­men­tary sub­mis­sion to Parliament’s jus­tice select com­mit­tee. he paper, which Brady co-authored, dis­cussed how Chi­nese com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ties may be exploit­ing rela­tion­ships with New Zealand coun­ter­parts to trans­fer tech­nol­o­gy use­ful to the Chi­nese mil­i­tary. Sev­er­al aca­d­e­mics from UC and oth­er New Zealand uni­ver­si­ties com­plained about asser­tions in the paper. UC deputy vice-chan­cel­lor Ian Wright said the com­plainants cit­ed “man­i­fest errors of fact and mis­lead­ing infer­ences”. The uni­ver­si­ty was review­ing the mat­ter. This week, a let­ter was pub­lished online in sup­port of Brady and addressed to Wright and UC vice-chan­cel­lor Cheryl de la Rey. The 131 sig­na­to­ries includ­ed aca­d­e­mics at New Zealand and for­eign uni­ver­si­ties, many of them experts in Asia or inter­na­tion­al affairs, as well as researchers, jour­nal­ists, mil­i­tary per­son­nel and Labour MPs Clare Cur­ran and Louisa Wall. The group, cit­ing Stuff’s sto­ry, said it was “dis­mayed” to learn of the com­plaints against Brady, and the UC review.

Read there edit here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed ear­li­er on the award­ing of what was described as a ”mean­ing­less” UK aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to a Hong King busi­ness­man tied to Chi­nese authorities.