A woman walks past the entrance to NYU Shanghai. Photo: VCG

NYU Shanghai clarified on Sunday that nine of its international students were detained in drug enforcement actions by Shanghai police and were released the next day after their drug tests came back negative, and said the arrests were not the result of "political reasons" amid increasingly tense China-US relations, as some foreign media had hinted.

On March 12 at 10 pm Beijing time, nine NYU Shanghai students were detained by local Shanghai police in two separate drug enforcement actions. One involved two students who were detained as part of a round-up at a bar, and the other seven students were at a birthday party at an off-campus apartment, according to a statement NYU Shanghai sent to the Global Times on Sunday. The nine students are from the US, Finland, Morocco and Malaysia, according to the statement. 

Foreign media reported that the students were "wrongfully detained and roughed up by plainclothes police." The university gave the Global Times its original story based on what their students had experienced.

The students were confronted by a person in plain clothes who showed something resembling a badge that they did not recognize just after they left the bar, the statement said, adding that these students didn't know that drug sweeps are often conducted by plainclothes officers.

"None of the students were found to have used or been in possession of drugs and none were arrested," the NYU Shanghai read. The students from both the bar and the party "were released by police on Saturday (March 13) morning, after the drug tests came back negative."

Responding to some foreign media reports that some students were injured, the university said, "They sustained some injuries as police sought to detain them. The injuries did not require medical attention," adding that the two international students were then detained and tested along with the other bar employees and customers, all of whom were Chinese citizens.

The university said it is currently seeking more information from local authorities. 

NYU Shanghai, founded in 2012 by New York University and East China Normal University, is China's first research university jointly set up by Chinese and US univeristies. The university saw a record 18,713 students applying for admission to the school in the fall 2021, up 12 percent over the previous year.