Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal individualist and 'Sinic' Confucian collectivist notions of academic freedom. In this article we seek to provide a reappraisal of the intellectual-state relationship both in Confucian thought and in the present day, challenging the claims made in existing work on three grounds. First, we contend that many of the formulations in current literature on academic freedom in China are based on a state-centric reading of Confucianism. We highlight that Confucian political thought is multifaceted: existing literature seeking to link current Chinese understandings of academic freedom to Confucianism presents 'State Confucianism', one facet of Confucian thought which is often evoked as a means of justifying contemporary authoritarian rule, as the entire Confucian tradition. Second, we highlight that existing accounts of academic freedom in China effectively draw on and extend the 'incompatibility thesis', and in doing so, engage in historical determinism and cultural essentialism, reading modern authoritarianism back into Chinese tradition. Third, we argue that this work also seems to 'soft-pedal' current restrictions on academic freedom in China, neglecting to mention increasingly pervasive surveillance and narrowing space for dissent, as well as the firing and imprisonment of scholars, as examples.