Quote:On Aug. 20, Beijing University informed its professors and students that uncontrolled participation in online conferences organized by foreign hosts will no longer be tolerated. The document titled “Notice on Regulating the Declaration and Approval of Participation in Online International Conferences Organized by Foreign Parties” requires a Chinese participant to submit the details of the meeting to a Communist Party office or other administrative office 15 days in advance of the online event. The application must provide the agenda of the meeting, list all organizers and participants, and spell out the role of the applicant.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online conferences have replaced international meetings that required foreign travel. This has become the subject of growing concern for the Chinese Community Party, worried that it could lose its grip on Chinese academics. Before the pandemic, the denial of foreign travel was common, often taking place at the very last moment by preventing a scholar from boarding a plane. In 2017, Chinese security agents stopped a prominent Uighur academic, Tashpolat Tiyip, president of Xinjiang University, from boarding a plane to a science meeting in Germany. Three years later, his fate remains unknown despite numerous protests by world science and human rights organizations.

The new regulation says that “the declaration and approval procedure is the same as the current declaration and approval procedure for going abroad for business (temporary).” Besides asking for a full disclosure of the details of the online meeting, it states that “teachers and students should strictly abide by relevant provisions on keeping secrets when participating in international conferences organized by foreign parties.” The regulation does not spell out what information qualifies as a secret, but its extension to humanities alongside with natural sciences and engineering indicates that the disclosure of military and industrial secrets is not the only concern of the Chinese Communist Party. Secrecy surrounding the origin of COVID-19, the confinement of over a million Uighurs in concentration camps, and mass arrests of protesters in Hong Kong are clearly among the targets of the new regulation.

China’s failure to disclose the onset of COVID-19 in Wuhan (following two years of international condemnation of the genocide of the Uighur minority) has made Chinese leaders fear that they could follow the fate of the Soviet Communist Party, brought down five years after the Chernobyl disaster. China is becoming increasingly bold in its attempts to suppress criticism. In May and June, it demanded that Zoom terminate online meetings organized by American and Hong Konger hosts to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Following this request, Zoom suspended host accounts and terminated two of the meetings while they were in progress.

Responding to condemnation from human rights organizations, Zoom, in an open statement, swore that it would not comply with future Chinese requests to terminate meetings organized by the non-Chinese hosts or suspend accounts of users outside China.

This statement, put out by Zoom, allows full cooperation with China on censoring Chinese participants in Zoom video conferences. China’s new regulation regarding online meetings raises concerns for U.S. organizers and participants too. The requirement that an invited Chinese speaker submits to the government in advance with the details of the meeting puts by-invitation-only online international conferences under the microscope of the Chinese Communist Party.

Founded in 2011, Zoom is officially a U.S. company with headquarters in San Jose, California, but it is largely operated by its workforce of 700 in China. Since the implementation of lockdowns due to COVID-19, it has acquired enormous power in the United States. China’s effort to exert control over online meetings must be of great concern to the U.S. government.

As China has threatened the U.S. with an interruption of the medical supply chain of critical drugs (many of which are produced in China), there is no guarantee that it would not try to sabotage video conference platforms that millions of people are using for business and education.