Since 2004, China has established hundreds of “Confucius Institutes” at many colleges and universities around the world. The purpose of their establishment is to promote Chinese language and Chinese culture. The total budget for the project is about US$10 billion and the cost for establishing an institute is about US$150,000 to US$200,000, with the addition of follow-up financial aid.
Today, the Chinese government has established more than 300 Confucius Institutes and more than 300 Confucius Classrooms in more than 90 countries. Each institute also offers scholarships to several students to study in China.
On the surface, China is using these institutes to demonstrate its “soft power,” but things are not as simple as they seem. Colleges and universities where a Confucius Institute is established all have to sign a contract in which they declare their support for Beijing’s “one China” policy. As a result, both Taiwan and Tibet have become taboos at these institutes. Other sensitive issues such as the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the Falun Gong movement, the neglect of human rights, China’s exchange rate manipulation, environmental hazards, its military expansion and the imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) are all issues that have become untouchables.
After a Canadian television station reported live from riots in Tibet last year, a Confucius Institute immediately intervened, in the end forcing the station to apologize for its reporting. Independent institute of higher learning should be able to study and comment on anything they want. How can they implement restrictions saying that specific policies cannot be opposed? That is a serious violation of academic independence, objectivity and freedom.
At some universities, this issue has caused so much dispute it has become a question of whether or not a Confucius Institute should be allowed at the school. One public university in Sweden even kicked up such a fuss that changes were made both to staff and system, which only goes to show the magic of money.
When I moved from Sweden to the US to take up a teaching position in 1970, Sino-US relations were beginning to defrost. Then-US president Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. At the time, the two governments had not had diplomatic relations for more than 20 years.
The “China experts” in the US who were unable to visit China in person were like big chefs banned from their kitchens. Naturally, they were resentful. However, the opportunity finally came and whoever obtained a Chinese visa first would be the big winner. China experts fell over each other in their eagerness to get to China, many of them sacrificing their professionalism to curry favor with Beijing, hoping to win the Chinese authorities’ attention. Even some academics who originally cared about human rights in Taiwan joined the stampede. The Chinese authorities must have been laughing secretly when they saw the US academics walk straight into their trap.
Seeing China fever across the US, active, passive, real and fake, I publicly proposed the right of the Taiwanese people to self-determination. Those who wanted to be nice called the proposal unusually brilliant, while others said it was “a skunk at the garden party.” Although not all US academics attacked my proposal, most of them kept their distance.
In the US today, the same story is beginning to repeat itself. Academics should be ashamed of themselves for allowing such heavy political manipulation.
Peng Ming-min is a former senior political adviser to the president.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Local media reported earlier this month that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) criticized President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for referring to China as a “neighboring country,” saying that this is no different from a “two-state” model and that it amounts to changing the cross-strait “status quo.” I find it quite impossible to understand why civilized Taiwan continues to tolerate the existence of such a deceitful group that believes its own lies. The relationship between Taiwan and China is the relationship between two countries, and neither has any jurisdiction over the other — this is the undeniable “status quo.” Those who believe in the
With the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, China has remarketed its East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) concerns. Beijing urged the Taliban to make a clean break with the movement and asked the US to blacklist it again. While some are still debating whether the movement exists, it is not the core of the matter because its existence neither justifies China’s Uighur policy nor sheds light on its concerns after the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan. Is China really worried, and if so, is it because of the movement? This question needs to be answered. When Chinese officials first acknowledged
On Thursday, China applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) — a regional economic organization whose 11 member countries have a combined GDP of US$11 trillion. That is less than China’s 2019 GDP of US$14.34 trillion, so why is China so eager to join? China says there are two main reasons: To consolidate its foreign trade and foreign investment base, and to fast-track economic and trade relations between China and member countries of the CPTPP free-trade area. China’s bilateral trade with these countries grew from US$78 billion in 2003 to US$685.1 billion last year, mostly because of China’s 2005
US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) talked on the telephone on Thursday last week, the first time the two leaders have done so since Biden assumed the presidency. While each side sought to put their own gloss on the content of the conversation, some common ground did emerge. Biden reportedly said that both sides have a joint responsibility to ensure that competition between the US and China does not spiral into conflict and that there is no reason that the two nations are destined to fall into this trap. The day after the phone call, the Financial Times reported
RSS