“The truth can no longer be written by us.”

Following months of massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Chinese government on June 30, 2020, imposed the National Security Law on Hong Kong. The draconian law contains overly broad and vague provisions that severely punish peaceful speech and activities, create secret security agencies, give sweeping new powers to the police, impose restraints on civil society and the media, deny fair trial rights, and weaken judicial oversight.

The Chinese and Hong Kong governments moved swiftly to transform Hong Kong from a free society into an authoritarian one. Hong Kong authorities arrested many of the city’s pro-democracy leaders, activists, and protesters, and forced independent media, labor unions, and civil society organizations to close. They reshaped multiple sectors and institutions so they become compliant to the Chinese government.

This report details the severe decline in academic freedom and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly on Hong Kong’s eight publicly funded universities since June 2020.

Hong Kong’s universities used to be places where free speech and expression were protected as part of liberal education traditions during British colonial rule. Now, students, academics, and administrators, especially those from Hong Kong studying contemporary socio-political issues, feel as if they are living under a microscope. They believe they must tread carefully, as any misstep as to what they say, research, write, teach, or publish, or with whom they partner, can potentially land them or those they associate with in serious trouble, resulting in a ripple of repercussions that could even land them in prison for years.

University officials have harassed the once influential student unions at all eight universities in Hong Kong. They have cut off administrative support to these unions, refused to collect membership dues for them, denied them gathering spaces and offices, and pushed them off campuses to become entities legally separate from the universities. The result is that none of the student unions can continue to effectively function as elected representatives of the student bodies.

University administrators have scrubbed clean notice boards known as the “Democracy Walls,” removed “Goddess of Democracy” statues and other memorials reminding people of the Tiananmen Massacre of pro-democracy protesters in 1989, and replaced them with large barriers and planters, objects that literally and physically obstruct the free exchange of ideas.

University officials have punished students for holding peaceful protests and gatherings, and have broadly censored student publications, communications, and events. University security guards—some former police officers—have been empowered to tear down student posters, and film and monitor those who hold unsanctioned public events.

While there is widespread agreement among the students and faculty whom Human Rights Watch interviewed that the campus environment has become significantly more repressive, interpretations differ as to the impact of the National Security Law on “the actual act of scholarship,” as one academic put it.

Most students and faculty interviewed said they self-censor regularly on any Hong Kong and Chinese socio-political topics to avoid trouble. They do this, for example, when expressing themselves in the classrooms, when writing and researching academic articles, when applying for grants, and when inviting speakers for academic conferences.

The National Security Law’s impact on students and faculty depends in significant measure on who they are, what subject they study, their career status, and the perceived power dynamics vis-à-vis the Chinese government. One Hong Kong student lamented that in universities, “you feel that you are on the side without power” and that everyone “has more power than you do.” Academics from Hong Kong, especially those who teach or are otherwise involved in current Hong Kong and China affairs, feel especially vulnerable. One Hong Kong academic half-joked that he was “risking his life” by being interviewed for this report, while another withdrew her interview days afterwards. A small number of academics—those who teach physical sciences, those who are well established in their fields, those who are not ethnically Chinese, and those holding passports from major democracies—told us they felt little or no pressure to self-censor.

A few academics reported direct censorship. One said that their department administrators repeatedly stopped them from offering courses on topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive, including threatening them that they would not get tenure if they continued to do so. Four academics said the university administrators and academic publishers censored their academic articles; one said his university reported him to the police for an article he wrote.

Academics interviewed diverged in their interpretation of the National Security Law’s impact on academic freedom. Some said it affected everything they do; others said it has very little impact. One made the distinction between academic work versus the wider environment: “It’s not that teaching and research is being impacted, but [faculty and students’] activities in other times are impacted.” But other academics contended that academia is not an ivory tower separated from its social environment, and that the Chinese government’s tactics in Hong Kong were aimed at changing this environment, including the structure of rewards and punishments, and the social cues.

The Chinese government has already reengineered the governance of universities in Hong Kong. Its handpicked chief executive of Hong Kong is also the chancellor of all eight universities with the power of appointing key members of the universities’ governing councils, which can then appoint university leadership and staff. Analysis of changes in university leadership since 2020, when broadly examined, suggests that those who have disagreed with Beijing have lost their positions of authority, while those who support Beijing’s line have been rewarded.

University administrations appear to have put up little discernible resistance to government pressure. In some cases, administrators have collaborated with the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to remove academics with pro-democracy sympathies. While it is not always clear whether academics are penalized for political reasons, there is a clear trend towards “harmonization” of opinion in academia so that it is increasingly consistent with those of the Communist Party. The government does that by defaming and intimidating in the state-owned media those academics perceived to hold liberal or pro-democracy views—that is, what the Party considers to be anti-China views—and denying or not issuing visas to foreign academics expressing such opinions. Universities then fire, let go, or deny tenure to these academics. Professor Carsten Holz, who has taught in Hong Kong for nearly three decades, wrote in a 2022 article that “clearing out any remaining disobedient academics” was taking place “elegantly through discriminatory measures by university administrators who, under an exceedingly executive, managerial system control every aspects of an academic’s career from promotion to annual performance reviews, salary advancement, teaching duties, and sabbatical leave.”

Other academics, feeling unsafe, stop teaching “sensitive” courses; some quietly leave Hong Kong altogether. Those who remain feel further isolated and marginalized. This in turn helps fulfill the government’s manufactured narrative that pro-democracy voices are in the minority, troublemakers, or “people’s enemies” who must be “eradicated.”

The Chinese government’s overall intention, as it has stated in its official statements, has been to “cleanse” the universities. The result is a sanitized version of higher education compliant with the Party’s views, which so far continues to deliver a high caliber education.

Hong Kong universities are microcosms of Hong Kong society: As people who used to live in a free society are suddenly thrust into authoritarianism, they grapple with how to respond, and how to justify their actions.

One academic criticized a colleague for talking to a prominent foreign news outlet, following which the Hong Kong immigration department denied that colleague a visa extension and so they had to leave Hong Kong. The academic implied that the colleague should have kept silent.

Rowena He, a historian, observed how administrators did an about-face as Beijing rapidly transformed Hong Kong:

[During the 2019 protests] even someone in position of power at the time would brag about, “Oh, I [am] participating in protest too, I’m yellow [pro-democracy] too.” It was easy for them, when the whole mainstream was participating in demonstrations, to be perceived as heroic and there were no consequences…. But once … the National Security Law passed, once … the political climate changed, they started to come after you [for] one thing … after another.

In this “really rapidly evolving discursive space,” as another academic put it, people conform, resist, act to protect others, or facilitate oppression. Some choose to preserve space. One encouraged students to express themselves in written assignments and made clear that they were for his eyes only. Another, in management, encouraged a colleague to take on a student writing critically about a Chinese leader, even as the colleague expressed reservations. As he put it:

I’m in the position to protect academic freedom, then I should do it because … there’s no big monster up there.… [F]or me, there’s a set of very complex negotiations between so many people, no one is entirely passive, everyone should do what they can in their position to protect academic freedom.

The transformation of Hong Kong’s universities has implications far beyond the city. Hong Kong universities had long played a unique role in the generation of knowledge about China. It has been a place for students and scholars who study China—those from China and those internationally—to exchange views and publish in a Chinese speaking environment that had few barriers to access, and yet was outside of the Chinese government’s control. That space had been important, especially as the world is eager for knowledge about China as it takes on an increasingly global role, and as the Chinese government is increasingly manipulating and controlling such knowledge.

The Hong Kong government should immediately repeal the National Security Law and the second national security law it passed in March 2024, the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. It should free all those arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their fundamental human rights, including academics and students arrested and imprisoned.

Concerned governments and foreign universities with partnerships with Hong Kong universities should actively track instances of censorship and threats to academic freedom on Hong Kong university campuses, speak up for affiliated academics and students who suffer intimidation, and regularly review these partnerships to avoid becoming complicit in human rights violations.

This report starts with a discussion of methodology, followed by two background chapters: one on relevant Hong Kong and international laws and the other on the state of academic freedom between 2010 and 2020. It then details the decline in academic freedom since the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020 in chapters III, IV, and V. The report ends with a set of recommendations for Hong Kong and foreign governments and universities.