Current developments have implications on China-related research that go far beyond the self-censorship debate that had people at their throats a couple of months ago. Then, the stakes were losing access to China. Now, the stakes are being detained, possibly for a very long time.
Of course, not many scholars have been detained so far (and not so many seem to have lost access, for that matter), but what matters are the signals and the precedents.
Maybe the CCP does not intend to systematically arrest scholars for what they say and write about China, but maybe it does, and it is this ambiguity that affects how we research China, and how our research will be interpreted by others.
Because of this situation and the increased difficulty of doing field research in China, some researchers will decide to stay out of China and Hong Kong. But the longer they stay out of China, the more open they are to attacks that their research is biased.
Others will continue to do research in China, but even if they do not self-censor, they are likely to be accused of self-censorship or of having become tools of Beijing.
In other words, it's the self-censorship debate so helpfully illuminated by @SheenaGreitens and @rorytruex, but with a vengeance.
The debate in the past has focused on the preferences of academics, but not enough on the root causes of this situation, which are the changed incentives set by the CCP leadership.
The CCP crossed a line when they took Kovrig and Spavor as hostages, and they crossed another line just now. These crossings of lines do not only constitute violations of international norms, but also affect how we create knowledge about a country that is so important to us.
To state it clearly: with these actions, the CCP, willingly or unwillingly, is setting incentives against critical research on China's politics, society and history. This is a challenge that not only affects researchers, but our societies as a whole.
Deepening political and economic ties should be based on trust, but we are prevented from creating the knowledge that would merit such trust. This is a problem that we, as researchers, cannot solve by tearing each other apart. It's a political issue that governments must address.
Governments must realise that the Hong Kong National Security Law is not China's "internal affair", but that it will affect knowledge production about China pretty much everywhere in the world. Letting this pass is against our interests.
