University of Tokyo probes Tiananmen Square website reference

The University of Tokyo is investigating the presence of suspected references to the Tiananmen Square massacre on its website that may have prevented Chinese users from visiting key admissions pages. 

A string of characters linked to the controversial event was found embedded in the source code of the institution’s graduate school website, according to The Mainichi. 

The characters were kanji, the Japanese version of Chinese script, and reportedly translated to mean “six four Tiananmen” – thought to refer to 4 June 1989, when hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing were killed by Chinese authorities.

Online references to Tiananmen Square generally trigger China’s so-called “great firewall”, which censors foreign content identified as damaging by the Chinese government.  

The code was found on the admissions page of the university’s department of computational biology and medical sciences and was thought to have been there since as early as November 2023. 

The presence of these hidden references would likely prevent anyone from accessing the site from China, meaning prospective Chinese students may have been unable to find essential information about applying to the university. 

The University of Tokyo has launched an internal investigation into the incident. 

“Our school holds up the policy of welcoming a diverse body of students and faculty members from both at home and abroad, and seeks to make us ‘a university where everyone in the world wants to enrol’,” a spokesperson told local reporters. “If the keyword was mixed in with the aim of inhibiting access from a specific country, it is an inappropriate act and is very regrettable.”

Students from mainland China account for around 45 per cent of international students in Japan, according to a 2024 report by Chinese consultants EIC Education. 

However, long-standing tensions between the two countries have heightened in recent months, including in academic circles, following the killing of a Japanese child in China in September and the disappearance of Chinese academics who were teaching at Japan’s universities. 

The University of Tokyo is home to 5,104 international students, 67 per cent of whom are Chinese. 

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com