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
US President Donald Trump on Thursday issued executive orders barring Americans from conducting business with WeChat owner Tencent Holdings and ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of popular video-sharing app TikTok. The orders are to take effect 45 days after they were signed, which is Sept. 20. The orders accuse WeChat of helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) review and remove content that it considers to be politically sensitive, and of using fabricated news to benefit itself. The White House has accused TikTok of collecting users’ information, location data and browsing histories, which could be used by the Chinese government, and pose
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at a ceremony on July 30 officially commissioned China’s BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system. The constellation of satellites, which is now fully operational, was completed six months ahead of schedule. Its deployment means that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now in possession of an autonomous, global satellite navigation system to rival the US’ GPS, Russia’s Glonass and the EU’s Galileo. Although Chinese officials have repeatedly sought to reassure the world that BeiDou-3 is primarily a civilian and commercial platform, US and European military experts beg to differ. Teresa Hitchens, a senior research associate at the University of
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) this week came under fire over his speech at a Rotary Club meeting in Taipei on Monday, when he said that Beijing’s military strategy toward Taiwan was “to let the first battle be the last.” If China started a cross-strait war, it would end quickly, without time for other nations to react, he said in his “Cross-Strait Relations and Taiwan Security” address, criticizing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for saying that she hoped other nations would come to Taiwan’s aid in Beijing’s first wave of attacks. A president should prevent war from happening, not talk about how
There are few areas where Beijing, Taipei, and Washington find themselves in agreement these days, but one of them is that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is growing more dangerous. Such a shared assessment quickly breaks down, though, when the question turns to identifying sources of rising tensions. Several Chinese experts and officials I have consulted with recently have argued that Beijing’s increasingly belligerent behavior in the Taiwan Strait is driven mostly by fear. According to this narrative, Beijing is worried that unless it puts a brake on Taiwan’s move away from the mainland, Taiwan could be “lost” forever. They
RSS