The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research institution with nearly 80,000 employees, has issued an updated code of conduct. In this code, researchers are required to “demonstrate love for the party”, “serve national security” and “align with the policies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” as reported by Fabian Kretschmer. However, German research institutions and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) intend to maintain their cooperation for now, viewing the code as a more explicit formulation of existing guidelines.
China has already installed more solar capacity in the first seven months of this year than in the record year of 2022. However, Beijing’s ambitious climate goals are far from being achieved. One significant challenge hindering the energy transition is the expansion of the power grid, which lags behind developments in renewable energy, not only in China but also in the United States. The main issue is the lack of transmission lines to transport electricity to urban areas and industrial centers along the coasts, as noted by Nico Beckert. More financial investment in expanding and adapting the grid to the latest energy technologies will be necessary. However, China’s current electricity market remains inflexible.
The transition from an authoritarian to a totalitarian regime is fluid, but comprehensive ideological loyalty is a central criterion demanded of citizens by a one-party state: Passive observation is denied and instead, proactive commitment to ideological loyalty is required.
Since early September, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has actively aligned itself with the party line. The world’s largest research organization has renewed its code of conduct, applicable to all 38,000 employees and 33,300 professors. In the future, scientists must, among other things, “demonstrate love for the party“, “serve national security” and “align with the policies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China”.
For several years, scientific cooperation with the People’s Republic of China has been under scrutiny in Germany. On the one hand, China has become a leading scientific nation in many fields, but on the other hand, independent research has become nearly impossible in the repressive climate under President Xi Jinping.
The signs of change are unmistakable: The last remaining professors who gave critical interviews to foreign media have long been fired, imprisoned or voluntarily retreated into internal exile.
And since the pandemic, the isolation of Chinese universities has become quite literal: In the capital, Beijing, all campus entrances of top universities are equipped with surveillance cameras and electronic doors. Only students and faculty, after a facial scan, are allowed to enter the premises; access without extra permission is prohibited for outsiders. Officially, this measure is justified by pandemic protection.
However, in reality, it reflects the control mania of a paranoid party leadership that always suspects universities of being a starting point for political resistance. It is no coincidence that the historic protests against the zero-Covid policy last November were initiated by Chinese students.
Now, with its political requirements, CAS further restricts academic freedom. In addition to the aforementioned ideological loyalty, scientists are also prohibited from expressing their academic views on topics outside their field.
The extent of these new formulations is astonishing. The original code of conduct introduced nine years ago did not include the words “party”, “national security” or “patriotism”. At that time, it mainly concerned scientific integrity.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences maintains extensive collaborations with Germany. The Max Planck Society (MPG) refers to CAS as its “most important partner institution”. For five years, they have been working together in “strategically selected scientific focus areas”, such as radio astronomy and behavioral sciences. According to its self-assessment, MPG receives “privileged access to some of CAS’s globally unique and excellent infrastructures”. Both sides equally benefit from the collaboration.
However, how can one cooperate with scientists who are obliged to strictly follow the party line from the outset? “Chinese universities and research institutions have never been completely autonomous and have always been integrated into the political structures and programs of the Chinese one-party state,” says Christina Beck, head of the communication department of the Max Planck Society. “But, of course, we observe with great concern that this is now being more clearly articulated publicly and Chinese research is increasingly being subordinated to political goals.”
Regarding the specific code of conduct, no final assessment can be made yet due to a lack of background information, according to MPG. However, it should be understood in the context of China’s internal anti-corruption efforts.
Indeed, some of the new regulations are aimed precisely at this: Henceforth, scientists are prohibited from participating in events where they could establish contacts to receive business favors. The provisions can be interpreted ambivalently: On the one hand, the party leadership wants to make corruption more difficult and, at the same time, control the networks of leading scientists. The parallels to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaigns are evident. Xi has always used his campaigns to eliminate political opponents.opponents.
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has also had a cooperation agreement with CAS since 2007. This includes a bilateral scholarship program for young Chinese researchers who come to Germany for up to two years during their doctoral studies. However, the program’s scope is small: In 2023, only seven scholarships were awarded.
The CAS’s tightened political requirements will not threaten the existence of the scholarship program. “The requirement of loyalty to the homeland and adherence to the party line in public statements has been a prerequisite for an academic career in China for some time,” says a DAAD spokesperson. Therefore, the code of conduct merely explicitly formulates what was already applicable. And the DAAD has been discussing potential security risks in dealing with Chinese partners for some time.
The Max Planck Society is currently reviewing “all aspects of its scientific cooperation with China” and will publish a paper with recommendations in November. It follows, among others, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, which already released guidelines for cooperation with Chinese research institutions in November of last year.
Despite increasingly difficult conditions, MPG wants to maintain its exchange with its Chinese partners, says Christina Beck: “Through scientific contacts, we can keep doors open that may be closed in other areas.” Fabian Kretschmer
In the first seven months of this year, China installed nearly 100 gigawatts of new solar capacity, surpassing the record set in 2022. However, experts are concerned that the slow pace of grid expansion could hinder the energy transition. According to the think tank Bloomberg NEF, global power grids need to be expanded to 152 million kilometers by 2050 to achieve climate goals – a doubling of the current length. This expansion would require 21 trillion dollars in global investments by 2050, with more than a third of these investments needed in China and the United States. If these two countries do not expedite their grid expansions, the energy transition could be seriously threatened, warn experts.
China has experienced grid limitations impeding its energy transition in the past. In the early and mid-2010s, many new wind and solar parks remained idle because of inadequate grid connections between Chinese provinces and artificial barriers to power trading between provinces. During that period, curtailment rates (the amount of unused energy) reached as high as 40 to 50 percent. This meant that wind and solar power plants were constructed but left unused because the grid could not handle the additional electricity. Consequently, the construction of several new solar and wind power plants was halted for years.
While the situation has improved significantly since then, the recent boom in solar and wind energy presents new challenges that could once again hinder China’s energy transition:
China is expected to invest slightly more than 80 billion euros in expanding its power grid this year. While this is a substantial sum, it falls short of what is needed. Investments should be increased to match the record-high investments in renewable power generation, says Run Zhang, China Project Manager at Agora Energiewende.
The new records in renewable energy expansion “will test the limits of China’s power system,” write Trivium experts. “A return to persistently high curtailment rates could force policymakers to once again slow the construction of new facilities.” Even if policymakers can resolve grid constraints, additional challenges remain: China’s electricity market is still highly inflexible and power trading across provincial borders is hindered by political interests and bureaucratic hurdles – further impeding the energy transition.
In the 1990s, legal studies in Germany were quite conservative. Law student Bjoern Ahl sometimes felt like an outsider in this world. He had a keen interest in China and Chinese law, a subject that few around him shared. “Back then, when I tried to discuss Chinese law with the professors at my university in Heidelberg, they didn’t take it seriously at all,” he recalls. “For them, the law was primarily German law.” Ahl had a different perspective. He believed that understanding Chinese law was a crucial element in comprehending China.
Today, he is a professor himself, teaching Chinese legal culture at the East Asian Seminar of the University of Cologne, where Chinese language, history, politics and culture are also taught. The integration of these disciplines has a specific reason: Understanding Chinese law requires considering its context.
Ahl had his first deep dive into this context after high school. He traveled to China via the Trans-Siberian Railway and serendipitously met the family of Li Lisan during his journey. Li Lisan was a co-founder of the Communist Party and, at times, a rival of Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution, he was killed, only to be posthumously rehabilitated years later. A visit to the family led Ahl to one of several houses where rehabilitated individuals from the former elite lived together. There, he encountered personalities whose stories fascinated him so much that he began learning the language alongside his law studies and spent a year abroad in China.
After passing the second state examination, Ahl worked in China for a total of ten years, including as Deputy Director of the Sino-German Institute of Legal Studies at Nanjing University, a collaboration with the University of Goettingen. He also taught at China’s largest law school, the China University of Political Science and Law. There, he taught as part of an EU project, the China-EU Law School, where Chinese students receive European legal education. During this time, he also advised the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing.
For those who know China well and can read source materials in the original language, the analysis of Chinese law allows insights into developments in society and politics, power structures and areas of freedom. “There are very contradictory dynamics – on the one hand, repression and control, and at the same time, people have been liberated or empowered in many areas to assert their rights,” says Ahl, referring to consumer protection law, for example.
In Cologne, students first learn about the historical development of China’s legal system, always in reference to the political and societal issues of the time. What surprises many is that concepts from Germany have also influenced Chinese law. “China was inspired by the German Civil Code. At the end of the imperial period and the beginning of the republican era in the 1920s, there was a strong reception of German law. They looked to Japan, which had also taken this path and had succeeded. Japan had successfully freed itself from colonial dependence.” Nowadays, the Chinese look at all legal systems, Ahl says. They adopt what interests them. “When you compare the knowledge of German law in China and the knowledge of Chinese law in Germany, it’s like comparing two completely different worlds. In Germany, we know almost nothing, and in China, they know almost everything.”
China has introduced some modern concepts that could become relevant to us in the future. Currently, Ahl is researching so-called “smart courts” at the European-Chinese Law Research Hub in Cologne, which are designed to help automate overloaded courts in China. Digital systems aim to make justice more efficient and transparent. These include chatbots that provide legal advice and online courts that handle simple consumer protection disputes. There are also systems that provide judges with guidelines based on similar cases, within which their decision must fall or at least alert them if their decision deviates from the norm. “It would be good to really understand these developments and seriously engage with them. And one should do that from the perspective of what these developments mean for traditional legal systems.”
Ahl also conducts research on the much-discussed and controversial Social Credit System, where behavior is rewarded or sanctioned with a points system, a form of alternative regulation. Negative behavior leads to restrictions in everyday life, such as access to social services or job and education searches. The principle underlying these sanctions is based on an idea of Xi Jinping: Those who commit a single transgression are penalized in all areas of life.
A law is expected to be enacted for the Social Credit System, and a draft is currently under review. How much criticism the government tolerates regarding the draft and whether this might influence the legislation offers insights into power structures and political freedoms. Ahl has analyzed the discourse on the draft law in China. There are areas where freedoms exist, depending on the situation and subject matter. Some legal scholars have even criticized the fundamental principle of the Social Credit System as misguided. Some of these criticisms have been considered in the draft law and local legislation.
However, it can also go differently. An example is the constitutional amendment in 2018 when Xi Jinping lifted term limits. “It depends on how sensitive the situation is and what subject areas are involved. It also depends on the position of those who express themselves. And there are areas that are generally taboo. Even professors who were not jurists and commented on the constitutional amendment during class lost their jobs.”
Some of Ahl’s research interests also extend into the political realm, including constitutional issues and legal reform questions. His feeling in this regard is rather negative. “There is hardly any development visible where you can say: Now I have an interesting project, I would like to present it to a broader audience there and discuss it openly as I did ten years ago. Nowadays, it all has to take place in secret, if it can take place at all.”
Despite this, Ahl’s motivation is growing. He aims to raise awareness of Chinese law in Germany by inspiring students to embrace the subject. He hopes that this will lead to a greater understanding of China in Germany. Julia Fiedler
At the Asia Games in Hangzhou, athletes are also competing in the traditional Chinese martial art of swordsmanship, known as “jiàn shù” (劍術). This is part of the Wushu competition. In the photo, you can see Sandy Oo from Myanmar.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research institution with nearly 80,000 employees, has issued an updated code of conduct. In this code, researchers are required to “demonstrate love for the party”, “serve national security” and “align with the policies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” as reported by Fabian Kretschmer. However, German research institutions and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) intend to maintain their cooperation for now, viewing the code as a more explicit formulation of existing guidelines.
China has already installed more solar capacity in the first seven months of this year than in the record year of 2022. However, Beijing’s ambitious climate goals are far from being achieved. One significant challenge hindering the energy transition is the expansion of the power grid, which lags behind developments in renewable energy, not only in China but also in the United States. The main issue is the lack of transmission lines to transport electricity to urban areas and industrial centers along the coasts, as noted by Nico Beckert. More financial investment in expanding and adapting the grid to the latest energy technologies will be necessary. However, China’s current electricity market remains inflexible.
The transition from an authoritarian to a totalitarian regime is fluid, but comprehensive ideological loyalty is a central criterion demanded of citizens by a one-party state: Passive observation is denied and instead, proactive commitment to ideological loyalty is required.
Since early September, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has actively aligned itself with the party line. The world’s largest research organization has renewed its code of conduct, applicable to all 38,000 employees and 33,300 professors. In the future, scientists must, among other things, “demonstrate love for the party“, “serve national security” and “align with the policies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China”.
For several years, scientific cooperation with the People’s Republic of China has been under scrutiny in Germany. On the one hand, China has become a leading scientific nation in many fields, but on the other hand, independent research has become nearly impossible in the repressive climate under President Xi Jinping.
The signs of change are unmistakable: The last remaining professors who gave critical interviews to foreign media have long been fired, imprisoned or voluntarily retreated into internal exile.
And since the pandemic, the isolation of Chinese universities has become quite literal: In the capital, Beijing, all campus entrances of top universities are equipped with surveillance cameras and electronic doors. Only students and faculty, after a facial scan, are allowed to enter the premises; access without extra permission is prohibited for outsiders. Officially, this measure is justified by pandemic protection.
However, in reality, it reflects the control mania of a paranoid party leadership that always suspects universities of being a starting point for political resistance. It is no coincidence that the historic protests against the zero-Covid policy last November were initiated by Chinese students.
Now, with its political requirements, CAS further restricts academic freedom. In addition to the aforementioned ideological loyalty, scientists are also prohibited from expressing their academic views on topics outside their field.
The extent of these new formulations is astonishing. The original code of conduct introduced nine years ago did not include the words “party”, “national security” or “patriotism”. At that time, it mainly concerned scientific integrity.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences maintains extensive collaborations with Germany. The Max Planck Society (MPG) refers to CAS as its “most important partner institution”. For five years, they have been working together in “strategically selected scientific focus areas”, such as radio astronomy and behavioral sciences. According to its self-assessment, MPG receives “privileged access to some of CAS’s globally unique and excellent infrastructures”. Both sides equally benefit from the collaboration.
However, how can one cooperate with scientists who are obliged to strictly follow the party line from the outset? “Chinese universities and research institutions have never been completely autonomous and have always been integrated into the political structures and programs of the Chinese one-party state,” says Christina Beck, head of the communication department of the Max Planck Society. “But, of course, we observe with great concern that this is now being more clearly articulated publicly and Chinese research is increasingly being subordinated to political goals.”
Regarding the specific code of conduct, no final assessment can be made yet due to a lack of background information, according to MPG. However, it should be understood in the context of China’s internal anti-corruption efforts.
Indeed, some of the new regulations are aimed precisely at this: Henceforth, scientists are prohibited from participating in events where they could establish contacts to receive business favors. The provisions can be interpreted ambivalently: On the one hand, the party leadership wants to make corruption more difficult and, at the same time, control the networks of leading scientists. The parallels to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaigns are evident. Xi has always used his campaigns to eliminate political opponents.opponents.
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has also had a cooperation agreement with CAS since 2007. This includes a bilateral scholarship program for young Chinese researchers who come to Germany for up to two years during their doctoral studies. However, the program’s scope is small: In 2023, only seven scholarships were awarded.
The CAS’s tightened political requirements will not threaten the existence of the scholarship program. “The requirement of loyalty to the homeland and adherence to the party line in public statements has been a prerequisite for an academic career in China for some time,” says a DAAD spokesperson. Therefore, the code of conduct merely explicitly formulates what was already applicable. And the DAAD has been discussing potential security risks in dealing with Chinese partners for some time.
The Max Planck Society is currently reviewing “all aspects of its scientific cooperation with China” and will publish a paper with recommendations in November. It follows, among others, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, which already released guidelines for cooperation with Chinese research institutions in November of last year.
Despite increasingly difficult conditions, MPG wants to maintain its exchange with its Chinese partners, says Christina Beck: “Through scientific contacts, we can keep doors open that may be closed in other areas.” Fabian Kretschmer
In the first seven months of this year, China installed nearly 100 gigawatts of new solar capacity, surpassing the record set in 2022. However, experts are concerned that the slow pace of grid expansion could hinder the energy transition. According to the think tank Bloomberg NEF, global power grids need to be expanded to 152 million kilometers by 2050 to achieve climate goals – a doubling of the current length. This expansion would require 21 trillion dollars in global investments by 2050, with more than a third of these investments needed in China and the United States. If these two countries do not expedite their grid expansions, the energy transition could be seriously threatened, warn experts.
China has experienced grid limitations impeding its energy transition in the past. In the early and mid-2010s, many new wind and solar parks remained idle because of inadequate grid connections between Chinese provinces and artificial barriers to power trading between provinces. During that period, curtailment rates (the amount of unused energy) reached as high as 40 to 50 percent. This meant that wind and solar power plants were constructed but left unused because the grid could not handle the additional electricity. Consequently, the construction of several new solar and wind power plants was halted for years.
While the situation has improved significantly since then, the recent boom in solar and wind energy presents new challenges that could once again hinder China’s energy transition:
China is expected to invest slightly more than 80 billion euros in expanding its power grid this year. While this is a substantial sum, it falls short of what is needed. Investments should be increased to match the record-high investments in renewable power generation, says Run Zhang, China Project Manager at Agora Energiewende.
The new records in renewable energy expansion “will test the limits of China’s power system,” write Trivium experts. “A return to persistently high curtailment rates could force policymakers to once again slow the construction of new facilities.” Even if policymakers can resolve grid constraints, additional challenges remain: China’s electricity market is still highly inflexible and power trading across provincial borders is hindered by political interests and bureaucratic hurdles – further impeding the energy transition.
In the 1990s, legal studies in Germany were quite conservative. Law student Bjoern Ahl sometimes felt like an outsider in this world. He had a keen interest in China and Chinese law, a subject that few around him shared. “Back then, when I tried to discuss Chinese law with the professors at my university in Heidelberg, they didn’t take it seriously at all,” he recalls. “For them, the law was primarily German law.” Ahl had a different perspective. He believed that understanding Chinese law was a crucial element in comprehending China.
Today, he is a professor himself, teaching Chinese legal culture at the East Asian Seminar of the University of Cologne, where Chinese language, history, politics and culture are also taught. The integration of these disciplines has a specific reason: Understanding Chinese law requires considering its context.
Ahl had his first deep dive into this context after high school. He traveled to China via the Trans-Siberian Railway and serendipitously met the family of Li Lisan during his journey. Li Lisan was a co-founder of the Communist Party and, at times, a rival of Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution, he was killed, only to be posthumously rehabilitated years later. A visit to the family led Ahl to one of several houses where rehabilitated individuals from the former elite lived together. There, he encountered personalities whose stories fascinated him so much that he began learning the language alongside his law studies and spent a year abroad in China.
After passing the second state examination, Ahl worked in China for a total of ten years, including as Deputy Director of the Sino-German Institute of Legal Studies at Nanjing University, a collaboration with the University of Goettingen. He also taught at China’s largest law school, the China University of Political Science and Law. There, he taught as part of an EU project, the China-EU Law School, where Chinese students receive European legal education. During this time, he also advised the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing.
For those who know China well and can read source materials in the original language, the analysis of Chinese law allows insights into developments in society and politics, power structures and areas of freedom. “There are very contradictory dynamics – on the one hand, repression and control, and at the same time, people have been liberated or empowered in many areas to assert their rights,” says Ahl, referring to consumer protection law, for example.
In Cologne, students first learn about the historical development of China’s legal system, always in reference to the political and societal issues of the time. What surprises many is that concepts from Germany have also influenced Chinese law. “China was inspired by the German Civil Code. At the end of the imperial period and the beginning of the republican era in the 1920s, there was a strong reception of German law. They looked to Japan, which had also taken this path and had succeeded. Japan had successfully freed itself from colonial dependence.” Nowadays, the Chinese look at all legal systems, Ahl says. They adopt what interests them. “When you compare the knowledge of German law in China and the knowledge of Chinese law in Germany, it’s like comparing two completely different worlds. In Germany, we know almost nothing, and in China, they know almost everything.”
China has introduced some modern concepts that could become relevant to us in the future. Currently, Ahl is researching so-called “smart courts” at the European-Chinese Law Research Hub in Cologne, which are designed to help automate overloaded courts in China. Digital systems aim to make justice more efficient and transparent. These include chatbots that provide legal advice and online courts that handle simple consumer protection disputes. There are also systems that provide judges with guidelines based on similar cases, within which their decision must fall or at least alert them if their decision deviates from the norm. “It would be good to really understand these developments and seriously engage with them. And one should do that from the perspective of what these developments mean for traditional legal systems.”
Ahl also conducts research on the much-discussed and controversial Social Credit System, where behavior is rewarded or sanctioned with a points system, a form of alternative regulation. Negative behavior leads to restrictions in everyday life, such as access to social services or job and education searches. The principle underlying these sanctions is based on an idea of Xi Jinping: Those who commit a single transgression are penalized in all areas of life.
A law is expected to be enacted for the Social Credit System, and a draft is currently under review. How much criticism the government tolerates regarding the draft and whether this might influence the legislation offers insights into power structures and political freedoms. Ahl has analyzed the discourse on the draft law in China. There are areas where freedoms exist, depending on the situation and subject matter. Some legal scholars have even criticized the fundamental principle of the Social Credit System as misguided. Some of these criticisms have been considered in the draft law and local legislation.
However, it can also go differently. An example is the constitutional amendment in 2018 when Xi Jinping lifted term limits. “It depends on how sensitive the situation is and what subject areas are involved. It also depends on the position of those who express themselves. And there are areas that are generally taboo. Even professors who were not jurists and commented on the constitutional amendment during class lost their jobs.”
Some of Ahl’s research interests also extend into the political realm, including constitutional issues and legal reform questions. His feeling in this regard is rather negative. “There is hardly any development visible where you can say: Now I have an interesting project, I would like to present it to a broader audience there and discuss it openly as I did ten years ago. Nowadays, it all has to take place in secret, if it can take place at all.”
Despite this, Ahl’s motivation is growing. He aims to raise awareness of Chinese law in Germany by inspiring students to embrace the subject. He hopes that this will lead to a greater understanding of China in Germany. Julia Fiedler
At the Asia Games in Hangzhou, athletes are also competing in the traditional Chinese martial art of swordsmanship, known as “jiàn shù” (劍術). This is part of the Wushu competition. In the photo, you can see Sandy Oo from Myanmar.
