East Asian scholars for hire

You’re an academic or a think-tank researcher, and a specialist on a specific East Asian country. You receive a well written email offering decent funding for you to prepare an op-ed clearly supporting a specific political position on a regional issue. You look up the sender and find it’s a (fairly) reputable political consultancy based in London. What’s more, it’s something that you’d normally write about. The compensation is well decent; they’ll arrange publication; and they promise you’ll ‘influence the global debate.’ So, do you take the job?

This is not a hypothetical for many in area studies or international relations. It is becoming the new norm. The combination of shrinking academic budgets, an oversupply of underpaid PhDs, and a hyperactive global influence economy has created a fertile environment where paid opinion writing is less a question of “if” and more of “how much.” But this convenience carries a moral cost, a professional dilemma, and sometimes a legal risk or career-ending drama!

Let’s be honest: most of us working in the policy-adjacent world have either received or know someone who’s received such an offer. Consultancies, lobbying firms, embassies, or media-linked PR agencies increasingly act as brokers of influence, seeking out scholars with the right credentials to lend credibility to their clients’ political agendas.

The requests are rarely framed as crude propaganda. Instead, they’re cloaked in language like “thought leadership,” “strategic framing,” or “raising awareness of underrepresented perspectives.”

And they don’t always ask for distortion. They don’t need to. They simply want what you might already believe—just sharpened, simplified, and made useful to someone else’s end. If they choose the right people at the right time, it’s still a successive campaign.

What’s the problem, then?

The first ethical tension is subtle: whose interest are you serving, and is it truly your own? There is a difference between writing an op-ed based on independent analysis and writing one because someone is paying you to push a position. Even if it aligns with your views, the motivation shifts. The independence of academic or policy research is not only about avoiding falsehood—it’s about maintaining distance from those who benefit directly from your arguments.

Once you take payment for a position, especially without disclosure, your credibility becomes transactional. If your op-ed is published under your name and readers are unaware of the funding source, it’s not just a matter of omission. It’s a quiet compromise of trust. Your byline becomes a vessel for outsourced lobbying.

Of course, some argue this is naïve. “Everyone’s funded by someone,” they say. Universities, journals, and think tanks all have sponsors—governments, corporations, or foundations with clear interests. Others would argue that everyone does it. Look at the number of politicians lining up for industry jobs after a term in office. Look at the number of anti-China politicians, now working for the biggest Chinese firms after a term in office. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and you’re just taking a small bite.

This is true. Depressing but true. But it’s also a matter of degree and proximity. There’s a difference between receiving a grant to conduct research and being handed a pre-structured position to publicly endorse in a newspaper or blog. There’s a difference between politicians (who trusts them really?) and scholars.

The most concerning trend is how routine these exchanges are becoming. In East Asia-related research especially, where political narratives are highly sensitive, consultancies and advocacy groups are scrambling to shape international opinion. They know that academic titles and think-tank affiliations offer legitimacy, particularly when influencing Western publics.

In the past, such influence might have flowed through indirect channels: conferences, policy dialogues, track-two diplomacy. Today, the line is much shorter. Payment is offered directly to individual scholars. The preferred outlet? Op-eds, blog posts, and short reports—fast, digestible, and potent in the information economy.

This is not an occasional occurrence. Researchers focusing on China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Koreas, and Japan report regular queries—some from groups openly affiliated with embassies or diaspora organizations, others from more shadowy consultancies and PR firms. A scholar might receive an offer to write about Taiwan’s democratic resilience, Japan’s “normal nation” status, or to highlight Korean “solidarity with global freedom movements.” The money is good. The request is simple. And the boundary between public scholarship and private lobbying gets thinner each time.

One might suggest that disclosure solves this problem. If you note that your article was commissioned or supported by a particular group, readers can judge accordingly. But this assumes good faith on all sides. In reality, many outlets don’t require disclosure, and many writers fear that disclosing financial support will reduce the piece’s impact or harm their reputation.

There’s also the professional incentive structure to consider. For emerging scholars or junior researchers, being published in a visible outlet is career gold. PR firms can access top-line international relations magazines. If someone pays you to do it, all the better. Few gatekeepers ask questions if the work is well-written and the argument sits within the bounds of mainstream opinion.

Meanwhile, readers rarely notice the cues that signal astroturfing: uniform talking points, recycled metaphors, or a suspiciously coordinated media push across several op-eds in different outlets.

Wait a second. What about the legal risk or career-ending drama?

The legal risk depends on where you work and where you’re from. Better universities are pretty strict about external employment and research funding. In South Korean universities, faculty members are typically required to seek prior approval before undertaking external work, particularly if it involves paid consultancy, media appearances, or authorship that could be perceived as representing the university or leveraging its resources.

While occasional unpaid public commentary or academic collaboration is tolerated, paid work—especially if it involves political or policy advocacy—involves stricter scrutiny. On top of this, many countries now have legislation that limits or curtails foreign interference. The publishing of material on behalf of a foreign agent without disclosure risks falling foul of these laws. More recently, many universities in Western countries have security and government liaison advisors who advise academics on interaction with non-traditional funding entities, including foreign sources.

Career ending drama? Imagine that after the first request, the PR firm says that unfortunately, they no longer need the op-ed and you won’t “influence the global debate” but of course, they’ll still pay you. The next request is just for some simple information on a current event. “We just need your insight,” they say. Before you know it, you’re an intelligence asset.

Not knowing exactly who is funding your opinion is beset with problems. It’s all too easy to think you’re writing for one side, and end up writing for another side. Due diligence necessitates you research the consultancy, lobbying firm, or PR agency before your career ends in a less than thrilling espionage kerfuffle that only makes page seven of the local newspaper.

So do you take the job?

Ethically? Probably not. Professionally? Many do. And in the current system, who can blame them? Universities reward visibility. Think tanks reward policy relevance. Funders reward clarity of message. If a consultancy offers all three in one go, it’s hard to resist. Legally, it depends where you work and where you’re from.

But if you do take the job, with each “yes,” the intellectual autonomy of area studies weakens. Scholars become mouthpieces, not analysts. The marketplace of ideas becomes a pay-to-play operation, and eventually, readers stop believing in the neutrality of expertise at all.

You know those senior scholars who hold highly distinct positions, critical of their own government and supportive of a foreign government—the ones you always thought were staunchly different and critical because of their tenure and independent thought? Yup, ever since I learnt about the widespread norm of scholars for hire, I’ve started to wonder about them. They’re probably receiving some pretty decent coin?

In the end, the decision isn’t just about your next paycheck. It’s about whether your credibility is for rent. And more broadly, whether the field can still claim to stand apart from the very political forces it is meant to study.

The real danger isn’t one bad op-ed. It’s the normalization of a process that makes expertise indistinguishable from endorsement. Consultancy, PR agency, and lobbying firm funding normalizes practices already applied to corporate-funded think-tanks. Every funded op-ed adds more distrust to the world of misinformation, disinformation, and post-truth society where scholars are less respected and repeated talking points more effective.