Hong Kong’s academic freedom is potentially set for another blow as the governing council of Hong Kong University (HKU) confirmed the appointment of Max Shen Zuojun and Gong Peng as vice-presidents, respectively, of research and of academic development.

Both men hold positions at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University of California (UC), Berkeley. Their appointment is viewed by students and alumni groups of HKU as a “take-over” of the island’s top university by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Controversy erupted after Hong Kong media discovered pages of Tsinghua’s official websites showing that Shen was elected, in 2014 and 2017, as a member of the CCP committee of the university’s department of industrial engineering.

However, Shen’s name no longer shows in the live versions of the respective pages. According to web forensics conducted by former director of Journalism and Media Studies Center of HKU Ying Chan, the pages were altered after the news of his appointment to HKU broke at the end of last week. Google-cache has preserved previous versions of the pages, Ying said on a Medium post.

In a statement, Shen said he has worked full-time at UC Berkeley since 2004 and that he only spends “a few weeks a year in Tsinghua.” He added that he is “not a member of the Chinese Communist Party” and that the confusion was caused by “an oversight by the webmaster of the respective website.”

As for Peng, since 2010 he has faced accusations, mainly waged by overseas Chinese websites, that he helped the daughter of China’s former Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua getting accepted into a Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management in 1999. Gong denies those accusations.

HKU’s Alumni association pointed out that the HKU’s vice-chancellor Zhang Xiang, who led the recruiting for the two positions, had crossed paths with the newly-appointed vice-presidents: Zhang and Shen both have attended Nanjing University and all three of them have worked at UC Berkeley at around the same period.

The ties between the three men are been seen by Beijing’s critics in Hong Kong as “cronyism” in the appointment choices.

Since 2018, universities in mainland China have faced pressure to pledge loyalty to the CCP, with some forced to change their charters to accommodate CCP members on their administrations and boards.

When Zhang became HKU vice-chancellor in 2018, the student body, together with alumni communities, expressed concern that the mainland-born professor would interfere with the institution’s academic freedom.

Their doubts turn out to be justified. In July 2020, HKU’s tenured law professor Benny Tai was fired by the governing council for his involvement in the pro-democracy protests of 2014, despite objection from his department and the university’s senate.

Jeppe Mulich, a London-based lecturer of political history, noted on Twitter at the time of Tai’s sacking:

Earlier this month, HKU, in defiance of protests from faculty members and the academic council, didn’t renew the contract of Head of Public Health Keiji Fukuda, who is also an advisor at the World Health Organization (WHO) and has led the university’s research into COVID-19.

Sources speaking on the condition of anonymity to pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily News said Xiang was behind Fukuda’s dismissal:

Following Shen and Peng’s appointments, a sit-in protest calling for reconsideration took place at HKU on October 27:

But the action was in vain. According to a statement by Council Chair Arthur Li, all council members with exception of the student representative voted in favor of the two appointments. Frances Sit from public broadcaster RTHK tweeted:

Former HKU student and Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Party Lo Kin-hei expressed frustration over the nominations on Twitter:

Fergus Leung, a district councilor who is currently studying at HKU, said:

In the past few months, several universities in Hong Kong dismissed pro-democracy academics. Lokman Tsiu, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is among those whose contracts were terminated. He tweeted a list of other university professors who were in a similar situation, and whose terminations were regarded by the public as highly controversial:

For activist Joshua Wong, HKU’s appointments mark a new era for Hong Kong’s academia:

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