Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal spotlights China’s influence
There is a cultural subcontext that may be missing here:<p>The swiss are fiercely independent people that shun cultural misfits and people that don't respect tradition.<p>They certainly hold in contempt outsiders that go against established groups/ norms / traditions. This is evident in their rules for granting citizenship, which is at the discretion of each canton.<p>Some cantons are particularly fickle and will reject granting citizenship to foreigners living in Switzerland for decades...if the foreigner is "annoying" [1]. This means: a serial complainer, a bad neighbor that does not respect customs.<p>My thinking:<p>PHD student forgot they were part of the local academia community.  
This group was sensitive to china criticism. Whether this was subtle or not, we wont know.  What we know is he went ahead and criticised china, thus becoming a bad neighbor. He was therefore cast out.<p>[1]  <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/switzerland-citizenship-nancy-holten/513212/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/sw...</a>