China funds research into human rights at VU

Full response from the VU:

The CCHRC conducts research into human rights and asks how these human rights can best be anchored in different cultural contexts. Attention to cultural differences also means that you receive and ask critical questions about what is taken for granted in your own country or elsewhere. In China, but also elsewhere, employees of the center and scientists with whom the center collaborates are constantly involved in this critical dialogue, especially when it comes to the position of minorities.

With its publications and website, the center is also a platform for scientific discussion about human rights in these different contexts. Very different voices can therefore be heard on that platform, which are hardly heard either in China or in the west because there are often black and white images of the other. Independent science means that there is room for this scientific debate.

As befits the VU, the research of the CCHRC is independent, interdisciplinary, dialogical and socially relevant. The center receives a subsidy from a Chinese counterpart for a number of important projects. The contracts stipulate precisely that the academic freedom of the center and its employees is fully guaranteed. The center is not dependent on the subsidy and will always continue to play its free role. Only in this way can it have an impact in science and society, both in the west and in China and elsewhere.

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