Academic freedom needs protection from all stripes — not just China

Academic freedom needs protection from all stripes, not just China. Chinese influence and foreign interference on Australian campuses are serious issues, but the media risks reporting one-sided narratives. In China Panic, David Brophy, Sydney University historian and expert on the Uyghurs and Xinjiang, says that critical discussion of China is mostly "Alive and well" in Australian universities. The only time the public hears about China-related events at universities is when something goes wrong, and a one-sided narrative grows. Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China. She writes about Chinese diaspora, diasporic Chinese media, and Australia-China relations.