By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
China has been exerting “soft power”
through its relationships with various universities in Canada
and the United States.
More than 100 universities in North America
are now in direct partnership with the Chinese government
through Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government-sponsored
outposts of culture and language training.
Since the first institute was founded in
2004, more than 300 Confucius Institutes have been established
around the globe, including at such elite American
institutions as Columbia and Stanford Universities.
Among them, a
dozen have been established on Canadian college and
university campuses, trumpeting, and to teach Mandarin.
The institutes are typically funded with an
operating budget from Hanban, a
branch of China’s education ministry, and the
government entity that manages them. They are staffed in part
with language teachers hired by it.
The centres are aimed at teaching the
Chinese language, spearheading Chinese cultural events, and improving “understanding” of China.
They are designed to project China’s influence as the
nation’s economy has grown into the second largest in the
world.
The institutes have provided a welcome and
generous injection of funding for colleges and universities
looking to expand their Chinese language teaching, and many
schools see them as an inexpensive way to expand their
academic offerings.
They have been likened to other
government-sponsored programs that promote language learning
and cultural programming -- entities like the British
Institute, the Alliance Françaises and Germany’s Goethe
Institutes.
But critics point out that those others
aren’t embedded in universities that have their own academic
independence to maintain.
Some also point to the potential threat
that the institutes pose to the ability of the next generation
of North American leaders to learn, think and speak about
realities in China and the true nature of the Communist Party
regime.
So some schools are having second thoughts.
The University of Chicago did not renew its agreement in 2014,
following a petition signed by more than 100 faculty members
calling for the closure of the institute.
The petition raised concerns that in
hosting the Chinese government-funded centre for research and
language teaching, Chicago was ceding control over faculty
hiring, course content, and programming, to Institute
headquarters in Beijing.
More recently, the University of West
Florida also decided not to renew its contract. It joined a
growing list of universities, including Pennsylvania State and
McMaster, which are rejecting the Chinese government funding
and management that comes with the programs.
The action signals increasing discontent on
university campuses over the institutes’ hiring practices and
refusal to acknowledge unflattering chapters of Chinese
history.
McMaster severed its ties in 2013, sealed
by concerns over hiring practices that appeared to prohibit
teachers that Hanban hired from having certain beliefs.
Several institutes have run into criticism
for discriminating against the Falun Gong, a spiritual
movement the Chinese government considers a threat, and for
refusing to acknowledge the protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen
Square in 1989, among other things.
They also try
to limit student discussion of Tibet and the status of
ethnic and religious minorities in China.
Confucius Institutes can be directly linked
to the Chinese Communist Party’s “united front” efforts to
mobilize support for China.
As such, they are an instrument of the
party’s power, not a support for independent scholarship, and
some critics fear they may try to have a voice in university
decision-making.
We do not have a Confucius Institute at the
University of Prince Edward Island. This term I have been
teaching Chinese politics as part of a team in Asian Studies.
I have dealt with all of the above issues,
as well as the Cultural Revolution that almost ruined the
country for a decade after 1966.
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