Why Swiss China scholars can’t build the China expertise they need

A series of new laws in China allowed the authorities to investigate foreign researchers for possessing “sensitive” information related to national security. EPA/HOW HWEE YOUNG

Increasingly stringent controls on overseas research into China have made it difficult for many academics, including those in Switzerland, to carry on their work. These scholars say Switzerland should do more to support them.

In 2016,Simona GranoExternal link, a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich, shifted her focus of research from environmental governance in China and Taiwan to relations between the two countries.

After setting up a Taiwan Studies project at the same institution, the following year, she gradually reduced her engagement with China.

“Conducting fieldwork in China has become increasingly difficult, as researchers like me can no longer ask questions openly or meet informants and partners without strict monitoring, as was the case in the 2000s,” she tells Swissinfo.

“People in China – including academic peers and professors – have also become more reticent and less willing to speak with foreigners, unless the projects are backed by major university initiatives or are on topics not deemed as sensitive.”

Swissinfo spoke with several Swiss scholars engaged in China‑related research from universities across the country.

All said doing research on China has become a minefield. This is changing the way academia is approaching research and interactions with their Chinese peers. While this has been observed in other countries such as the United States, Australia or the United Kingdom, it’s particularly alarming in Switzerland. People interviewed say Switzerland is not doing enough to support them, at a time when research on China – now the world’s second-largest economy – is all the more relevant.

The turning point

“The turning point was 2014-2015,” says Ariane Knüsel, a senior researcher specialising in Sino-Swiss relations during the Cold War at the University of Fribourg.

The academic, who has been studying China since 2005, says that prior to that date, academia in China was relatively “open and welcoming”.

Although certain topics were officially off-limits, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights abuses in Tibet, foreign social science researchers were, in practice, generally able to conduct fieldwork and academic exchanges in China.

Scholars say a shift occurred when Xi Jinping became head of the Communist Party and the country’s president in 2012. After that date China imposed a series of laws aimed at intensifying surveillance of foreign organisations and individuals under the banner of “safeguarding national security”. These rules covered foreign scholars engaged in China studies.

Chinese law and research

In 2014, China passed a revised Counter-Espionage Law, which was followed by the enactment of a National Security Law a year later.

Next came a comprehensive set of laws on access to data, most notably the Data Security Law (DSL) and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) in 2021, as well as the Network Data Security Regulations, which came into force in 2025. These laws imposed significant restrictions on transferring data outside of China, including research data: they also often require security assessments or other compliance measures, especially for “important” or “core” data.

The laws stated that foreign researchers may be investigated or detained by Chinese authorities for collecting research materials on the grounds that they possess “’sensitive information”’ that could endanger national security. A well‑known example that sparked significant uproar in academic circles was the 2019 detention of Nobuo Iwatani, a Hokkaido University professor of Chinese history, by China’s Ministry of State Security.

In 2023, China’s largest database of academic papers, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), announced that it would temporarily terminate overseas access to some of its datasets, including all PhD and master’s theses, the National Population Census, and China’s statistical yearbooks, without clarifying how long this ban would last.

This has had a direct impact on research, making access to data even harder. As a result, many academic papers and dissertations, as well as China census data, are pre-censored by the authorities prior to release, in order to remove “sensitive” information and statistics, such as that pertaining to ethnic minorities in China.

The ongoing clampdown has had serious implications for academia both in China and overseas: access to data in China is increasingly difficult, on-the-ground fieldwork is biased and foreign scholars are forced to reorientate their research to avoid raising red flags in China, thereby often forcing academics to self-censor.

Difficult access to sources

“Since 2014, there have been some archives in China, such as the Foreign Ministry Archive, that have stopped allowing historians to access certain or most files,” said Knüsel from the University of Fribourg.

As a historian, she says she needs to explore all facets of Chinese history, including those that have been censored by the government.

Her research covers subjects such as the history of Chinese espionage in Switzerland, the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the Great Leap Forward (a massive industrialisation campaign from1958-1962).

“For Chinese scholars and their families, discussing specific topics with me that are taboo in China could cause problems for them – and I am covering several of these topics in my research,” says Knüsel.“I must be extremely cautious not to expose them.”  

She also often finds herself facing a dilemma when dealing with second-hand information passed on by Chinese scholars.

As a researcher she has to fact check any information conveyed to her. Yet this has become increasingly difficult, as it is now hard to find people willing to communicate openly. As a result, she explained, “when publishing my findings, I must state that this information was relayed to me by others, but I am unable to independently verify its accuracy.”

Self-censorship not limited to China

Some researchers Swissinfo spoke to say this environment has created a “chilling effect” that now extends beyond its borders.

“There are seemingly random and unexplained instances where researchers are denied access to the country,” says Filip Jirouš, a China researcher at the University of Basel, who cites examples of some of his colleagues being interrogated by state security at Chinese airports or invited for “tea” – a euphemism commonly used to describe informal questioning by the authorities – during their stay in China. In 2021, a former Swiss doctoral student at the University of St Gallen posted critical tweets about the Chinese government’s initial cover-up of the Covid-19 epidemic, its repression of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province, and Xi Jinping.

He received an email from his former doctoral supervisor stating thatExternal link she had received “angry emails from China”. The supervisor told him this could even impact her visa. She ended their supervisory relationship and warned him to “tone down his political expression immediately”, the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported at the time.

In response to the incident and suspicions that the supervisor was pressured by Chinese authoritiesExternal link, the university established two working groups to investigate possible Chinese interference in its research and teaching. Both investigative reports found that there was no sign of outside interference in research.

To avoid bringing their academic careers to a standstill and to continue their work, some researchers have changed their research topics or region of focus, shifting away from topics in mainland China.

Jirouš, from the University of Basel, says some researchers are instead focusing on subjects and communities outside China’s geopolitical borders, such as Taiwan and Chinese diaspora communities.

Others have adapted their research methodology, shifting from in-person interviews and on-site investigations to textual analysis of China’s official media coverage and other publicly accessible documents. In her latest paper on cross-Strait relations, Grano says that she opted to analyse official speeches from the Chinese side rather than conduct interviews.

Less collaboration

One of the first consequences, interviewees say, is the marked reduction in academic exchanges between social science scholars in Switzerland and China.

Precise data is difficult to obtain because neither Switzerland nor China publishes a bilateral statistical series on academic exchanges. Moreover, exchange programmes are highly decentralised and spread across individual universities. Grants are delivered by mobility schemes, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and various institutional partnerships between the two countries. 

Swiss universities contacted by Swissinfo did not provide data on collaborations and exchanges when asked.

In an interviewExternal link published last year on the website of the Swiss Biotech Association, Laure Ognois, head of the International Cooperation Department at the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), said that in 2022 the foundation decided to suspend all bilateral collaborative projects with China, some of which were initiated in 2003 between the Swiss and Chinese governments.

“China has new legislation on data protection that is challenging for Swiss-based researchers. They need to be aware that Chinese authorities could access, use and modify data without the applicants’ consent and for any purpose,” Ognois told the biotech association.

“We cannot and do not want to stop cooperation with China forever. We are trying to develop solutions hand-in-hand with our partners, with the Chinese and Swiss governments”, she added.

More can be done

While access to China research has been an issue for academics worldwide, what makes Switzerland stand out is the lack of state support, scholars Swissinfo interviewed say. China is the world’s second-largest economy and has growing clout, especially in Asia and Africa. China is also one of Switzerland’s main trading partners. In 2013 the two countries signed a bilateral free trade agreement, the first between China and a European country. The two countries are now negotiating an upgrade to strengthen trade ties.

However, the Swiss academic ecosystem rarely engages with Asian political and economic strategies, including those of China, which “serve as critical knowledge hubs for public and private sector decision-makers”, Grano wrote in a co-signed opinion piece published by Swissinfo in 2025.

>>Grano believes Switzerland urgently needs to build far stronger academic expertise on Asia’s international relations to protect its economic competitiveness and foreign‑policy effectiveness:

Data published by the SNSF shows that scientific collaboration with China has reverted to levels last seen 15 years ago. The SNSF funded an average of 70 collaborative research projects with Chinese teams yearly between 2015 and 2018, compared with 30 in 2025.

Grano says that Switzerland lags behind countries across Europe and North America in terms of academic focus on Asian economies.  It has no coordinated centralised research centre focused on China.  

Germany, for example, hosts several institutions that integrate Asian studies with political science and international relations. The Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICSExternal link) has become Europe’s largest independent research institute focusing on contemporary ChinaExternal link. It was founded in 2013 by the German foundation Stiftung Mercator, which committed €33 million (CHF30.4 million) in funding for its first decade.

No single figure exists on Swiss investment on research on China.

Data from the SNSF shows that Swiss-funded research peaked between 2010 and 2020. Out of nearly 280 grants delivered between 1980 and 2025, more than half were awarded during that decade.

Italy is home to the Torino World Affairs Institute (T.wai), which maintains strong Asia-focused research programmes. France is home to think tanks such as the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) and the Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques (IRIS), both of which have well-established expertise on Asia.

In 2019, Human Rights Watch published a 12-point Code of ConductExternal link for universities worldwide and their staff to adopt in response to threats from the Chinese government to the academic freedom of students and universities abroad.

However, the organisation statedExternal link that “few have moved to protect academic freedom against long-standing problems”, citing examples such as visa bans for scholars researching China and surveillance and self-censorship on campuses.

Only a few countries have introduced supportive policies and mechanisms to assist scholars, academic freedom and funding.

Starting in 2024, the German government decided to provide annual institutional funding of €500,000External link to MERICS. The governments of France and Japan support the research work of MERICS as part of a strategic partnership. MERICS itself statesExternal link it has some 20 academic researchers from seven European countries, China, Singapore, Australia and the United States. This makes it the largest European institute devoted solely to China studies.

Grano says the Swiss government should do more. This includes funding special research programmes focusing on China-related social sciences and humanities, with a particular focus on foreign and security policy, digital transformation, and technology. It could also allocate federal funding to strengthen Switzerland-based surveys, archives, and datasets of alternative data sources that are collected outside China and archived independently. “Failing to support those who are genuinely studying China means helping to silence those who truly understand it,” says Jirouš. “Ultimately, you will end up making decisions based either on information from people with a limited understanding of China or who are being bribed by Beijing, or on distorted information due to interference and harassment by the Chinese Communist Party.”

“In Switzerland, public research funding is based on the bottom-up principle and is open to all academic disciplines equally,” the Federal State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) told Swissinfo. “The federal government does not prioritise or earmark funding for specific thematic areas or fields of research.”

SERI said that the Swiss government currently has no plans to increase investment in academic research in or on China, but rather to prioritise strengthening China-related expertise within the federal administration.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/gw

The identity of the author has been withheld from this story for security reasons.

This article was amended on June 19, 2026, to clarify that the doctoral student at the University of St Gallen had already been exmatriculated before his supervisor reacted to his critical tweets.