Briefing: China’s CCP targets academia and research for anti-corruption probes
BLUF:
China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Communist Party of China’s
(CPC) primary anti-corruption body, will expand its focus on targeting Academia in 2026. For
U.S. technology firms with continuing ties to Chinese academia, industry associations or
corporate research, the strengthened attention will further complicate relations, from information
and personnel exchange to IP and potential risks to foreign individuals working in or visiting
China.
BRIEF:
At the end of its annual plenary session January 14, the CCDI issued a communique that listed
key sectors for investigation and action, retaining its attention on higher education from 2025
while expanding focus to include education overall (not just higher education), as well as
academic and professional associations. By some accounts, as of the third quarter or 2025,
Beijing had already disciplined at least 50 university officials, including Ren Yuzhong,
vice-president of Peking University (PKU), who also served on the standing committee of the
CPC PKU branch.
As with other recent anti-corruption campaigns, this one addresses very real problems of
corruption, in this case including influence peddling and pay-to-publish that have long plagued
China’s academic community. The surge in junk publications and patents from China has
undermined perceptions of China’s academic rigor and innovation while rewarding those who
have the financial resources or political relationships, but not necessarily the intellect or ideas
that could drive Chinese innovation and technology.
But as with many of the anti-corruption campaigns under Chinese President and CPC General
Secretary Xi Jinping, these campaigns also have an ideological component, which links to
concerns about information security and foreign interference in China’s academics, research,
and technology development. Over the past decade, anti-corruption campaigns in China have
balanced the dual mandate to weed out endemic corruption and to encourage ideological
“purity.” The former can be seen when even Xi-appointed officials are toppled, the latter in the
overt focus on Xi thought and weeding out any foreign influence.
The expansion to academia overall, and the new focus on academic and professional
associations, will undermine information exchanges between Chinese and Western researchers,
and many Chinese academics and businesspeople will simply cease contacts overseas rather
than face scrutiny or accusations of corruption or ideological impurity. A similar pattern has
already occurred across much of the social sciences and into the economic side of academia
and research organizations and think tanks, limiting Western access to more nuanced
assessments of what is happening in China while reinforcing Beijing’s attempts at information sovereignty. Limited exchanges of information through legitimate channels is often replaced by
increases in state-sponsored espionage, raising red flags about continued cross-border
exchanges.
Over the last few decades, access to China’s prestigious universities has been a key pathway
for upward mobility, and thus also a key driver of corrupt behavior, beginning with pre-schools
and primary schools, through the university admission process (including tutoring) and
ultimately in the university space itself. Ambitious parents often seek to “buy” their child’s way
into future academic success by buying or renting an apartment or house in a neighborhood that
feeds into a successful primary school, which then feeds into particular high schools. Often they
do not actually live in those locations, but only purchase the address to have access to the
school, starting the pay-to-succeed model early.
Tutoring has also been a key pathway to success, and massive industries have evolved around
offering additional training and education to students, including at cram schools, though in the
past few years Beijing has begun targeting the tutoring industry itself, particularly aspects linked
to foreign teachers or institutions. The stronger ideological bent to education is also reflected in
programs designed to prepare lawyers for a job in the CCDI, and in regular ideological
campaigns in classrooms of all levels. While not quite at the extreme seen in the past, the shift
to ideological education risks some of the extremes seen during the Cultural Revolution, when
teachers were targeted by students and caught up in factional battles.
For U.S. and Western technology companies, the strengthened attention to academia and
industry associations will have mixed implications. In the near term, it is likely to lead to further
disruptions in information and idea exchange and in any Western-affiliated research operations
inside China. That may include more extensive censorship of findings, removal of key Chinese
personnel, ideological targeting of Western personnel, or even, in extreme cases, the potential
for detention of Western individuals deemed complicit in any political or financial corruption. As
noted above, it also may signal another surge in government-backed economic and industrial
espionage, as formal communication channels come under increased stress. In the long run,
however, the continued targeting of academia may shift Chinese resources to ideological
campaigns and government priorities, placing a drag on innovation or market focus that could
widen the gap in technological development between China and the United States.