China Seminar | 14 January 2016

The Great Slide Backward: Academic Freedom in Xi's China

Richard H. Hornik

In spite of the repeated statements by Chinese officials about the need to foster innovation, since the ascent of Xi Jinping, academics in China have watched the relatively open discourse permitted in the previous 20 years gradually slip away. This is infecting both Chinese universities and the branches in China of foreign universities. And it has slowly begun to seep into Hong Kong as well. Richard Hornik, currently a lecturer in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, is a journalist with over 30 years of global experience. He was executive editor of AsiaWeek, deputy chief of correspondents and news service director of Time in New York, and he served as Time’s bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong. He co-authored Massacre in Beijing: China’s Struggle for Democracy, with Donald Morrison, and has written for Foreign Affairs, Fortune, Smithsonian, The New York Times and Wall St. Journal. He has an M.A. in Russian studies from George Washington University and a B.A. in political science from Brown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was Journalist-in-Residence at the East-West Center. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in 2012 and a Lecturer at UHM in Spring 2015.