Have You Heard About the Confucius Institutes?
I hadn’t heard about them until I read the post excerpted below by Jane S. Shaw of National Review.
There are concerns about socialist propaganda possibly being taught here.
So, What about Those Confucius Institutes?
The government of China is promoting Chinese language and culture at “Confucius Institutes” at 97 schools in the United States. Should we care?
Some people, including university officials, are worried that the institutes are propaganda arms of a socialist state. Well, actually, there is no doubt about that, but are they curbing on-campus freedom to explore Chinese topics that the government doesn’t want explored?
The University of Chicago and Penn State have dropped their connections with the institutes, and a congressional committee held hearings earlier this month on Chinese government influence on academia.
Here’s a quotation from Harry Painter’s article on the Pope Center site discussing the institutes:
NC State illustrates the danger Confucius Institutes pose to academic freedom. In 2009, the university had invited the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, to speak on campus. NC State’s Confucius Institute director Bailian Li reportedly interfered. According to a 2011 Bloomberg article, Li warned Provost Warwick Arden that the speech would dampen “some of the strong relationships we were developing with China.” The speech was canceled.
Comments
I’m all for promoting the study of Chinese language and culture–and I’m suspicious of the Confucius Institute, simply because of the sort of government sitting in Beijing. It isn’t quite the same as the Goethe Institute’s promotion of German language and cultural studies.
Intending students of Chinese should also consider what Taiwan has to offer. Besides, they never forced schoolteachers to parade around in dunce caps and get beaten up by young hooligans doing the will of the “great leader” who was essentially an all-powerful Vandal. Hence, even if most Taiwanese speak Minnan dialect at home, their standard of pronunciation and reading in Mandarin is quite high.