Articles by Chris Hastings,Editor

Technology

University calls Charles Dickens a racist for damning 1851 essay criticising China

A leading university with close ties to China is claiming Charles Dickens held 'racist views' because he wrote a damning critique of Chinese society. The University of Manchester is warning students that an 1851 essay co–authored by Dickens, widely regarded as Britain's greatest novelist, 'expresses racist views, particularly against Chinese people.' Any undergraduates 'concerned' about reading the article are invited to discuss it with the course tutor at the university, which has around 9,000 students from mainland China. Critics last night branded the warning 'historically illiterate' and accused the university of prioritising its commercial links with the communist state. The controversy comes days after it emerged Sheffield Hallam University had stopped one of its academics from investigating human rights abuses in China under pressure from the Chinese authorities. Staff from China's National Security Agency are reported to have threatened the university's employees in China in an effort to get Professor Laura Murphy's research stopped. They also blocked access to the university's websites from China meaning it could no longer recruit students, who pay several times what UK based undergraduates do. The University of Manchester's warning, details of which have been obtained by this newspaper under Freedom of Information laws, has been issued to students studying an English Literature module called Victorian Rights: Victorian Wrongs. It applies to an 1851 magazine article entitled The Great Exhibition and the Little One which Dickens co–authored with poet and critic Richard Horne. The article, which experts believe was largely Dickens' work, contrasted the presumed economic, political and moral superiority of Western civilisation with a stagnant and backward China. It praised England for 'maintaining commercial intercourse with the whole world' and criticised China for 'coming to a dead stop'. To illustrate their point, the authors compared the scientific and technological wonders on display in the Great Exhibition of 1851 with an exhibition of traditional Chinese arts and crafts running concurrently at Hyde Park Place in London. Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent said: 'Highlighting the economic and political superiority of the West in the middle of the 19th century was a self–evident fact – as factually correct as the observation that today China's economy is superior to that of the UK.' He added: 'What we should worry about is not so much Dickens' racist views but the historical illiteracy of the University of Manchester's sensitivity police.' The university is home to the Confucius Institute, which it operates in partnership with Beijing Normal University, and runs the University of Manchester China Centre in Shanghai. In 2022, the UK Government prevented the university from licensing new technology to a Chinese company on national security grounds. Lord Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: 'This episode is precisely why Bridget Phillipson should commence the clause in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act requiring universities to disclose their dependence on foreign funding.' A university spokesman said: 'Our approach to teaching and research is guided by academic integrity and intellectual curiosity – not by any external relationships or partnerships.