When Vincent first arrived in Toronto as an undergraduate, it felt like he could finally express his political beliefs.

Growing up in China during the 2000s, he had always been a free thinker, skeptical of the national narrative that he’d been taught in school. He first travelled to Canada as a teenager to visit his uncle, who lived here. Free from China’s internet firewall, he confirmed some unsettling facts about his home country, like the violent government crackdown on civilians at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Soon after returning home, he began writing articles about modern human rights issues in China, only to face online censorship.

When he came to study at the University of Toronto (U of T), his flirtation with rebellion turned into a full-blown affair. “I was much younger and braver back then,” Vincent, now 28 years old, told me. (He is using a pseudonym for his protection.)

Vincent jumped into the political scene. He founded a club at U of T dedicated to discussing issues in China, and later connected with a well-established local network of Chinese dissidents. But as the years passed—in the wake of China’s suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2019, and then its stringent COVID-19 lockdown response—Vincent found it increasingly difficult to discuss homeland politics among his compatriots here in Toronto. Still, that didn’t deter him from organizing solidarity rallies across the city from 2020 onward.

He understood he was being transgressive, but he didn’t fully grasp the risks that came with speaking his mind. Then he learned about the death threats against him.

In 2022, after Vincent had graduated, a mutual friend shared screenshots of messages from a student group chat that he came across on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app. Vincent recognized the users as two former U of T acquaintances.

“How should we deal with rebels?” one user wrote, in Chinese text messages shared with The Local and translated by a Chinese policy researcher. Another responded, “k him.” The first person replied to that message, “I agree,” and “Does anyone know where [Vincent] lives?” The interlocutor then posted a photo of a hand holding what looked like a gun barrel, adding, “Open up a hole in his head.”

Vincent had been the target of direct online harassment before, with agitators looking to smear his image. When he’d reported these earlier incidents to the police, he says they merely suggested he reach out to the content moderators on those platforms. But these WeChat threats were more startling than anything he’d ever received.

He left his home to stay with a friend for a few months. The school’s Chinese community was close-knit, and Vincent knew who the perpetrators were; he recognized one of the accounts as belonging to the son of a major Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. He could have reported the death threats to campus authorities, but didn’t feel the consequences would be proportional. “At best, they might have been expelled from the school,” he told me. “But in return, they would have just reported my family [back home] to the government and had them arrested, or worse.”

This led him to retreat from the public view. For the past few years, Vincent has kept his head down, worked his day job, and continued his grassroots organizing with local dissident groups, but strictly under a pseudonym. “No one outside those communities knows who I am,” he told me. He’s since gained his Canadian citizenship and plans to bide his time until he can bring his parents over here.

For free-thinking Chinese youth living abroad, this is far from an anomaly. Students from China comprise one of Canada’s largest international student populations—nearly 15 percent of the University of Toronto’s total student population in 2024. The majority aren’t leading anti-government marches in the street, or hatching plans to harm their classmates in group chats. But as a result of overseas surveillance and intimidation by the Chinese government, an atmosphere of fear and repression looms over the community at large, chilling free and open discourse. It’s led to a conflict within this community, left largely unaddressed by school authorities, that threatens one of the core values of a university in a free society.

“I think the CCP has created an environment where students are too scared or uncomfortable to talk about politics at all,” Vincent told me.

For decades, members of the Chinese diaspora worldwide have been subjected to the phenomenon of “transnational repression.” This term broadly describes “efforts by states to use coercion to silence critics in their diasporas,” according to Emile Dirks, a senior research associate at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, who specializes in Chinese politics and state repression.

Dirks notes “an escalation of the extent and severity” of transnational repression ever since the current CCP leader, Xi Jinping, came to power in 2012. Xi’s consolidation of domestic power during the past decade—removing his presidential term limits, heightening his totalitarian control over Chinese society, and stoking jingoistic nationalism—has gone hand-in-hand with attempts to quell dissent among the Chinese diaspora populations.

In recent years, it’s led China to commit brazen acts of statecraft within Canadian borders, targeting would-be opposition to the government—from CCP-operated “police stations” in Markham accused of spying on local community members, to arrest warrants issued for two Canadian citizens who participated in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.

Increasingly, those targeted include Chinese students at Canadian universities. China’s decades-long economic rise and growing upper-middle class have resulted in a reliable inflow of international students into Canada. Even as the Canadian government, guided by new political headwinds, has begun to cap such enrolments, China remains one of the country’s main sources of students from abroad. In 2024, more than half of U of T’s international students were from China. (The Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, in a statement written to The Local, has called accusations that the government threatens and monitors international students “completely baseless and nothing more than a politically motivated narrative driven by ideological bias.”)

As with any large community, the political views of all its members are hardly homogeneous. The innately pluralistic environment of a university campus in a liberal democratic country should, in theory, encourage a vigorous exchange of ideas.

After the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, local Chinese pro-democracy groups have gathered on the school’s Hart House Circle every June 4 for an annual candlelight vigil. The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) president has traditionally attended this gathering. On the surface, this would seem to be a glowing endorsement for a free and open campus environment, one in which “expression is encouraged, but not at the cost of others’ right to exist with dignity,” Melani Vevecka, the current UTSU president, told me.

Since 1992, the University of Toronto has stood by the statement on freedom of speech from its governing council, which promises community members the “right to examine, question, investigate, speculate, and comment on any issue,” while also prohibiting the use of free speech as a “direct attack” on anyone for personal reasons, or preventing others from exercising their freedom of speech. In a written statement to The Local, the university has said it is “aware of reports of actions by foreign governments to curb dissent in diaspora communities in Canada.” They urge members of the U of T community who feel threatened to contact its community safety office.

But regardless of official university policy, when it comes to issues about China, students say free speech on campus feels far from secure. In 2019, newly elected U of T Scarborough student president and Tibetan activist, Chemi Lhamo, received a groundswell of online harassment from Chinese students, including death threats, and a petition asking for her resignation. Later, in 2022, when the UTSU posted a statement of solidarity for the human rights of Uyghurs and demonstrations from student groups, their Instagram account was hacked by an unidentified source, and their post was deleted.

For students in the broader Chinese community, the ever-present threat of harassment, surveillance, or intimidation by their government and its proxies from overseas weakens their ability to practice free speech. It can lead to self-censorship, a hesitance to branch out to different social groups, or voice dissenting opinions in the classroom.

As Dirks told me, this condition hanging over the heads of a broad segment of students “throws into question the ability of campuses to be spaces of free and open discussion.” It’s a feeling that more politically vocal Chinese students understand all too well.

Chinese students arriving here as adolescents, like any young people in an unfamiliar country, search for a sense of belonging. But in doing so, they often find themselves caught between two different worlds.

William, a student at U of T who is using a pseudonym, described the Chinese education system in which he came of age as a “nationalist echo chamber.” He was subjected to a sanitized curriculum that whitewashed the country’s fraught history and human rights abuses.

“It’s not that you didn’t want to challenge anything you were taught, but more that you want to behave yourself,” he told me. William brought that tacit loyalty when he came to Canada as a high school student in 2016, less out of a wholehearted agreement with the CCP than an instilled sense of not wanting to step out of line. Growing up in an environment that frowned upon dissenting views, and knowing about the threat of state reprisals for expressing those views, many students avoid discussing politics altogether.

That changed with the “White Paper” movement, a global uprising among Chinese diaspora groups sparked by the repressive COVID-19 lockdown policies imposed upon their friends and relatives back in China. It was a “political awakening” for many Chinese youth, said Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at U of T, who studies the history of social movements in the country.

“That was the tipping point for me,” said William. Although he never participated in any local protests, and still doesn’t harbour any revolutionary sentiments toward the CCP, witnessing this visible dissent inspired him to discuss Chinese politics more openly and critically with his friends here, whom he can trust.

For many Chinese students, this grassroots movement allowed for an unprecedented freedom of expression, briefly puncturing through the well-identified “atmosphere of repression” on campuses.

For Litong, a former university student, the movement helped break him out of the “kind of solitude” he’d experienced in a diaspora community in which political discussion felt constrained. Litong had first connected with local dissidents in 2019, after attending one of the annual June 4 rallies in the city. Many of the leaders of these events had lived in Canada for years, and were bold enough not to fear the “long arm” policing of the Chinese government.

But for newcomers to the country, the risks are greater. Outside of dedicated Telegram group chats, or closed-door meetings with only the most trusted peers, connecting with other students is difficult. “You can never tell which one of your classmates or friends is a dissident,” Litong told me. “The only way you can is by discussing your opinions on political issues.”

Large public events like the White Paper protests offered another space for free dissent and expression.

Seeing many of his peers marching on the streets of Toronto against the CCP, holding the blank white sheets of paper that lent the movement its name, gave Litong a glimpse of hope. By December 2022, he was organizing local rallies across the city, from Mel Lastman Square to Grange Park. This included a gathering outside the city’s Chinese Consulate, where he delivered a fiery speech to thousands of attendees. He didn’t wear a face mask to conceal his identity. “As an organizer, we have to show we’re not afraid,” Litong told me.

Having the support of his community felt emboldening—but this feeling was also short-lived. By early 2023, the momentum of the White Paper movement had petered out, as participants who’d initially joined gradually peeled off. The activists who were the most committed remained on, but found themselves vulnerable. Many, including Litong, had relatives back home contacted by Chinese authorities in response to their activism abroad. It led many of these young people to cut off contact with their families out of fear of endangering them.

This June, alongside its fellow G7 nations, Canada issued a broad statement condemning transnational repression and committing to support those most at risk. As a national security threat, it remains an ongoing challenge. The statement follows Bill C-70, passed last year, which expands the measures to combat foreign interference from states like China.

In a statement to The Local, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada specified that Bill C-70 outlines new offences, including to “engage in threats, intimidation or violence on behalf, for the benefit of, or in association with a foreign entity.” The statement added that directly engaging with communities vulnerable to transnational repression has become “a core focus of our effort,” and they have “started to engage university administrations on the issue of [transnational repression] on campus, to raise awareness on the threat and response mechanisms.”

“Generally, in jurisdictions where we see governments take this issue more seriously, we also see universities take their role [in preventing this] more seriously,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director. But even within the narrower confines of a campus, existing school policies that aren’t specifically designed to address transnational repression can only do so much.

In May 2024, her organization published a report about Chinese students facing transnational repression at university campuses worldwide. They found that an area of consensus was a lack of understanding about the campus safety resources they could approach when facing such a threat. Broadly labelled departments for dealing with student issues like sexual harassment, for instance, were little help for a student facing politically motivated harassment from another peer.

For Brooks, without a broader institutional understanding of the problem, or resources to address students’ specific safety concerns, targeted students are left without any practical recourse.

Conversely, schools that choose to develop more tailored resources are more likely to be viewed as safer and supportive spaces by their students. This may include anonymous channels to report harassment and harm, without fear of reprisals or being monitored.

Currently, U of T’s St. George Campus Safety page offers little in the way of addressing such specific threats, stating “in most cases, we are unable to act on anonymous reports.” In a statement to The Local, the University of Toronto highlighted resources for Complaints & Concerns about Discrimination and Harassment, including the option of submitting anonymous disclosures, which explains that these types of disclosures typically cannot result in discipline because of due process requirements in investigating complaints. (Amnesty International said the university did not respond to a letter that included an executive summary of the report and policy recommendations, which was also sent to many other schools.)

Dirks, the researcher from U of T’s Citizen Lab, believes that instructors have a role to play in ensuring classrooms remain safe spaces for open dialogue, but that universities should take a more systemic approach to addressing this issue. “There are a lot of students who might be self-censoring, or worried about being targeted because of their activities in or outside of the classroom,” he told me. “So the onus should not solely be on individual instructors.”

To this end, he feels university administrations should be dedicating resources and support structures to help instructors and students better navigate these issues.

In May, U of T published a report by a working group on civil discourse, formed in the wake of the Israel-Palestine conflict in Gaza, and the deepening divides it revealed among groups on campus. Among the list of suggested action items, which the university committed to implementing by December, is the creation of a common curriculum for all first-year undergraduates, to help impart a set of skills and establish a baseline for healthy classroom communication. (In a statement to The Local, U of T acknowledged these working group implementations as part of its broader plans “to strengthen the capacity of all members of our community, including students, to engage in difficult discussions.”)

Vincent welcomes such a proposal, and the idea of teaching students “basic common sense” around how to engage in discussions about different political ideas, including what’s considered an acceptable form of speech, and just as importantly, what isn’t. “We all know [here in Canada] that ‘freedom of expression’ doesn’t mean that you can lie about someone, or violate their privacy, or engage in hate speech,” he told me. But not all students new to this country may grasp this.

He acknowledges that there are far larger national security challenges to address, with China’s totalitarianism and surveillance spanning borders. But smaller institutional reforms, in his view, could help alleviate some of that anxiety, and make students from his home country view Canada as a place that’s safe for political expression.