China's Trojan Horses

U.S. Universities Shut Down Confucius Institutes

https://chinadigitaltimes.net

Amid rising concerns of curtailed academic freedoms, U.S. universities are increasingly closing down Confucius Institutes, which are Chinese government-funded centers offering Mandarin-language and "cultural" courses that at one point numbered over 100 in North America alone.
Samuel Brazys and Alexander Dukalskis, authors of a new AidData working paper on the topic, write in the Washington Post that the institutes have had limited success in improving China’s image abroad as part of a broader soft power campaign.
A year ago, a group of UMass Boston students, alumni, and professors asked to meet with the chancellor to discuss concerns that the campus’ Confucius Institute was promoting censorship and curtailing academic freedom.
Today, interim chancellor Katherine Newman cited nationwide concerns when announcing the university would be ending its 12 year relationship with the Institute. 
Instead, the university will pursue a partnership with Renmin University.
This closely follows closures at North Carolina State University and the University of Michigan.
At Commonwealth Magazine, Colman M. Herman reports:
The Chinese government says it promotes the Confucius Institutes throughout the US as tools for "cultural" exchange. 
The institute at UMass offered non-credit classes in Chinese language and culture, programs for UMass students to study in China, professional development programs for Chinese language teachers, and Chinese proficiency testing. 
UMass Boston paid the director’s $100,000 salary and provided office space, while China provided $250,000 and paid the salaries of four or five teachers.
[…] Others have expressed concern that the Confucius institutes are used by the Chinese government as outposts for espionage. 
The FBI has said that it monitors the activities of the institutes.
US Rep. Seth Moulton has also raised concerns publicly about the institutes and in a private discussion with Newman. 
On his Facebook page, Moulton said the intent of the Confucius Institutes is to “distort academic discourse on China, threaten and silence defenders of human rights, and create a climate intolerant of dissent or open discussion.”
Twelve other academic institutions, including the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Rhode Island, and Texas A&M, have severed ties with Confucius Institutes. 
Tufts University in Medford has said it will soon decide on whether to renew the school’s agreement with its Confucius Institute. [Source]
Cornell suspended exchange and research programs with Renmin University after it blacklisted and monitored over a dozen Renmin student labor activists.
The University of South Florida closed its 10-year old Confucius Institute on New Year’s Eve, citing declining enrollment in Chinese studies rather than national security concerns.
At The Tampa Bay Times, Howard Altman and Megan Reeves report:
USF said only 65 students total were enrolled in its four Chinese courses this fall, compared to 191 in spring 2014.
[…] However, university officials did concede that the national security concerns of U.S. government officials played a role in the decision — specifically when it comes to federal funding. 
In August, President Donald Trump signed the $717 billion 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. 
Inside is a provision that limits federal funding to colleges and universities with Chinese ties, and the provost said USF was unwilling to pass on those funds.
[…] USF World vice president Roger Brindley, whose division manages the university’s global partnerships, led the inquiry. 
It was started soon after U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote letters to USF and four other Florida schools with Confucius Institutes in February, urging leaders to end their relationships with the Chinese government.
[…] The institutes are “cogs in a larger wheel” of effort by China to increase its global influence through the acquisition of science and technology, Giordano said. 
Having such a physical presence on campuses provides the Chinese government with the potential to gather data and intelligence “that can be leveraged for other agendas, whether economic and market or … national security.”
[…] “But there is no direct history of that,” Giordano said, adding that calls to close the institutes is more of a preventative measure than a response to any specific threat. [Source]
At Inside Higher Ed, Elizabeth Redden details the changing reasons as to why American universities are increasingly closing down the institutes:
[University of Chicago professor] Marshall Sahlins said he thinks the main reason for the closures is “pressure from the American right, including the National Association of Scholars [which issued a critical report of CIs in 2017], as well as lawmakers, and from security agencies of the U.S., notably the FBI: a coalition of political forces responding distantly to the developing Cold War with China — raising even older terrors such as Communism and the Yellow Peril — and proximately to drumbeat rumors that CIs are centers of espionage. 
Those that give other, face-saving reasons are probably protecting their academic cum financial relations to China, such their intake of tuition-paying mainland students.”
“Apparently the tide is beginning to turn, though for the wrong reasons,” Sahlins said. 
“As I said in my Inside Higher Ed op-ed last year, we are now in a pick-your-poison, lose-lose situation: either keep the CIs or allow the U.S. government to interfere in the curriculum — mimicking the Chinese [Communist] Party-State.”
[…] Other institutions that have announced closures of Confucius Institutes within the last 12 months include the Universities of Iowa, Michigan at Ann Arbor and Minnesota at Twin Cities and North Carolina State University. 
In addition to these institutions, Tufts University has charged a committee with reviewing its CI, and a decision on whether to renew the CI agreement when it expires in June has not been made yet pending receipt of the committee’s recommendations.
The recently announced closures follow on closures of the CIs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 2017; Pennsylvania State University, in 2014; and the University of Chicago, where more than 100 faculty members had signed a petition calling for the closure in 2014. 
North of the border, in Ontario, McMaster University closed its CI in 2013 after a visiting instructor from China claimed the university was “giving legitimization to discrimination” because her contract with Hanban — the Chinese government entity that sponsors the institutes — prohibited her participation in the religious organization Falun Gong. [Source]
Concerns over China’s curtailing of academic freedoms have also been prevalent within China. 
In December, British academic publisher Taylor and Francis acquiesced to Chinese government requests and dropped over 80 journals from its China offerings due to “inappropriate” content. 
This followed the August 2017 saga of Cambridge University Press reversing its decision to hide from Chinese users 315 journal articles and 1,000 e-books covering the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, policies toward Tibetans and Uyghurs, Taiwan, and the Cultural Revolution.
This also coincided with the Association of Asian Studies receiving—and refusing to honor—similar censorship requests for articles also largely focused on Tibet and the Cultural Revolution.
Meanwhile in Africa, whose Confucius Institutes have been questioned for their ability to adequately train China-bound African scholars, Kenya will start teaching Mandarin to elementary school students in 2020, with the primary goal of increasing job competitiveness and deepening trade ties with China.
Additionally, the Chinese government is providing Uganda with textbooks and tutors for its new compulsory Mandarin courses, which are currently mandatory for the first two years of secondary school at 35 schools.
This follows South Africa’s decision to offer Mandarin in early 2016—despite strong resistance from teachers’ unions.

How China Managed to Play Censor at a Conference on U.S. Soil

The Confucius Institute offers much-needed money to American universities — but with strings attached.
BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

A Tibetan demonstrator flashes a V-Sign as he denounces the Olympic Games in Beijing on August 06, 2008 during a demonstration held in front of the Chinese embassy in Brussels. 

Taiwan was scrubbed from my biography.
I’d been invited to give a keynote speech and accept an award at Savannah State University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communications.
In a description of my background, I’d listed the self-governing island as one of the places where I’d reported. 
But in the printed materials for the event, the reference to Taiwan had been removed.
The department had given the award annually since 1975.
But in the past few years, finances had dwindled and organizers struggled to find the resources to cover the expenses of bringing in a speaker from out of town.
Enter the Confucius Institute, a Chinese government-affiliated organization that teaches Chinese language and culture and sponsors educational exchanges, with more than 500 branches around the globe.
The branch at Savannah State, founded four years ago, agreed to sponsor the speech.
On campuses across the United States, funding gaps are leaving departments with little choice but to turn to those groups with the deepest pockets — and China is keen to offer money, especially through its global network of Confucius Institutes.
But when academic work touches on issues the Chinese Communist Party dislikes, things can get dicey.
The invitation came in part as a result of my work as the co-founder of an association for journalists who report on China.
I knew about the Confucius Institute’s underwriting.
Still, I didn’t want to prejudge, so I decided to attend, to focus my speech on China’s terrible human rights record, and to donate the honorarium to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In a banquet hall full of journalism students, I spoke on issues I’d been writing about for years: the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Chinese government repression of Uighurs and Tibetans, and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s crackdown on news outlets and the internet.
I could tell I was making at least one person uncomfortable — the Chinese co-director of the university’s Confucius Institute, Luo Qijuan.
When the event ended, Luo came over to scold me.
Speaking in Chinese, she asked why I had criticized China.
I should have given students a good impression of China, she said.
Didn’t I know that Xi had done so much for the country, that his anti-corruption campaign was working?
“You don’t know the situation now,” she told me.
“Things have gotten better.”
The opposite is true, of course.
Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown across Chinese society. 
During his tenure, the Communist Party has jailed human rights lawyers, constructed a high-tech surveillance regime in the far west, implemented strict internet censorship, tightened media controls, denied Hong Kong the elections it had once promised, and crushed dissent.
As I later learned, it was Luo who insisted that the word “Taiwan” be deleted from my bio before the programs were printed. 
Luo told university administrators that its inclusion challenged Chinese sovereignty.
She threatened to boycott the event if it was not removed.
It wasn’t the first time Luo had tried to bring educational programs more in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s core interests. 
One administrator told me on the day of the event that Luo had tried, unsuccessfully, to block a teacher of Taiwanese heritage from participating in a Confucius Institute-affiliated program for local public school teachers.
Luo did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2009, North Carolina State University canceled a planned appearance by the Dalai Lama after its Confucius Institute director warned that the event might harm “strong relationships we were developing with China.”
At a China studies academic conference in Portugal in 2014, a Confucius Institute administrator objected to conference materials relating to Taiwan; the materials were confiscated, and Taiwan-related pages were ripped out of the conference programs.
At the University of Albany, the Chinese co-director took down posters related to Taiwan in advance of a visit by officials from Hanban, the office affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education that runs the Confucius Institute.
“Usually there aren’t explicit regulations about things that can’t be said. But there is a very strong understanding that certain topics are off limits,” says Rachelle Peterson, the author of a 2017 report about Confucius Institutes published by the National Association of Scholars, a conservative advocacy group.
“To speak about China in a Confucius Institute is to speak about the good things. The other things don’t exist as far as the Confucius Institute is concerned.”
Some universities are fighting back.
In 2013, McMaster University in Canada closed its Confucius Institute after one institute employee, who practiced Falun Gong, claimed she had faced pressure to hide her spiritual practice.
The University of Chicago closed its Confucius Institute in 2014, after a clash with a Hanban official.
Pennsylvania State University followed suit the same year.
Two Texas A&M branch campuses announced in April that they would close their institutes as well.
But it’s not always so simple.
Well-funded schools with established China studies programs have much more leverage over Confucius Institutes; the loss of a few hundred thousand dollars in programming can be replaced.
But for lower-profile schools with fewer resources, Hanban funding may be the only opportunity students and community members get to study Chinese or travel to China.
Those schools have a more difficult time pushing back against institute censorship.
Savannah State University does not have a well-funded Asian studies department, and as university administrators told me when I was there, its students and members of the surrounding community have few opportunities to travel abroad.
The young man working at the front desk of my hotel in Savannah told me he was going to China this summer with a dance troupe, on a trip sponsored by the Confucius Institute.
Without institute funding, the dancers would probably never see China.
And so, schools like Savannah State must walk a fine line.
“Often the American co-director is interested in supporting academic freedom and trying to manage the Confucius Institute in a way that is constructive,” says Peterson.
Each Confucius Institute has two co-directors, one American and one Chinese.
But that’s “really hard to do. And in some cases, well near impossible.”
Some U.S. lawmakers are now trying to make that balancing act easier.
The Foreign Influence Transparency Act, introduced this year by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, would require Confucius Institutes to register as foreign agents, which would force the institutes to disclose their funding and activities to the Justice Department. 
The bill would also require universities to disclose foreign funding in any amount over $50,000.
If passed, the bill would help university administrators compare their own agreements with Confucius Institutes to those at other universities, allowing them to make more informed decisions about the conditions, benefits, and risks of partnering with an institute on campus.
But some analysts argue that scrutiny and transparency aren’t enough; if Americans want students who are educated and knowledgeable on China, then the U.S. government has to start matching Chinese efforts with money of its own.
That’s because, as universities face budget cuts, language programs are often the first to go.
Between 2013 and 2016, the number of students at U.S. colleges and universities enrolled in Chinese language classes fell from about 61,000 to just over 53,000, a drop of 13.1 percent, according to studies by the Modern Language Association.
By contrast, enrollment at the University of Mississippi’s Chinese-language program remains steady. The university is home to a U.S. government-funded Chinese Language Flagship Program.
It’s natural for universities like Savannah State to want to maximize opportunities for their students. But as long as money is tight and the Chinese government is ready to fill the funding void, Confucius Institutes will continue to have leverage over U.S. campuses.