AUSTRALIA: Another Confucius Institute established

China continues its 'soft power' diplomatic efforts to expand its influence around the globe with the establishment of ever-more Confucius institutes at universities around the world and, recently, the spread of an offshoot aimed at schools called the Confucius Classroom scheme.

La Trobe University in Melbourne last week became the 12th university in Australia to establish a Confucius Institute, in an arrangement with Chongqing University, a national comprehensive institution on the upper reaches of Yangtze River.

As is the case with each of the growing number of Confucius institutes, the La Trobe version has been set up as a non-profit institution with the support of the Chinese government. Likewise with the other 322 Confucius institutes scattered across some 100 countries, La Trobe's will have a strong focus on Chinese language and culture.

Announcing the move, the university said creation of the institute would "strengthen its China links across the higher education sector, business, government and the community".

A Deputy Vice-chancellor, Professor John Rosenberg, said it would build on La Trobe's existing strengths in Chinese language and culture programmes. He said the institute's first programme would start next month with a "tailor-made course in beginners' Chinese", offered after-hours to students and the public, "and the award of a special introductory set of scholarships".

Since the first Confucius Institute was established in 2004, their numbers have increased at an astonishing rate of more than 50 a year. More recently, the Chinese government has extended its billion dollar programme to include the Confucius Classroom in schools and there are now more of these 'classrooms' operating around the world than institutes.

The government has been promoting the classroom concept through its National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, which is also responsible for establishing the institutes. Known as Hanban, the office is linked to the Chinese Ministry of Education and is governed by representatives of that ministry and several other government departments.

On its website, Hanban is described as "the executive body of the Chinese Language Council International, a non-government and non-profit organisation affiliated to China's Ministry of Education". But it is hardly non-government because, apart from its board, it is chaired by a state councillor, which observers say is an indication of the importance attached to China's soft power activities.

As with the US$100,000 to $400,000 grant that Hanban provides to each foreign university to help establish Confucius institutes, with ongoing yearly subsidies of about the same amounts, China is also generous in its offer to schools interested in creating a Confucius Classroom.

According to the Confucius Institute Online website, any agreement between China and a school will mean that 'headquarters' - presumably Hanban - will:

* Authorise the use of the title Confucius Classroom and provide logos and classroom emblems.
* Provide the necessary start-up fund and a set amount of annual funding according to needs.
* Provide 1,000 volumes of books, audio-visual, multimedia materials and courseware, and authorise the use of online courses.
* Send Chinese instructors or volunteers according to needs and pay for their airfares and salaries.

Three Australian states - New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria - have established Confucius institutes within their state education departments to organise Confucius Classrooms and 12 primary and secondary schools are now involved.

But, as has been the case with some universities setting up Confucius institutes, the classroom scheme has come under attack. A petition with 4,000 signatures was presented to the New South Wales state parliament in July calling for it to be scrapped. Another, signed by more than 10,000 people and calling for such classrooms to be abolished, was tabled on 12 October.

The petition said foreign governments should not determine what is taught in New South Wales schools and that the curriculum should be free of propaganda. A report in the Sydney Morning Herald said the government had confirmed that controversial topics, including the Tiananmen Square massacre and China's human rights record, would not be discussed, raising questions about China's influence over content.

According to the Herald report, China pays schools more than $200,000 to promote its language and culture through the department's own Confucius Institute. John Kaye, a member of the Greens party in the state parliament, said "impressionable students were being exposed to a biased view of Chinese history, human rights and world affairs because the New South Wales government is too cheap to pay for properly qualified teachers".

Debate continues to rage in and outside universities as to whether the Confucius institutes and the classrooms are simply propaganda arms of the Chinese government.

In a discussion paper "Confusion about Confucius institutes: Soft power push or conspiracy?" Falk Hartig, an academic intern at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, writes about the role of the institutes in Germany and concludes:

"Cultural diplomacy is the instrument through which soft power is wielded and Confucius institutes in turn should be understood as one instrument of China's cultural diplomacy to wield and bolster Chinese soft power globally.

"But the engagement with foreign publics is hampered by one crucial aspect. Due to the connection and links to the Chinese government, and the authoritarian characteristics of the Chinese government, Confucius institutes lack one feature which is essential for institutions like Germany's Goethe-Institute or the British Council: the principle of non-intervention by the government.

"Despite this lack of detachment from the state, it also seems not appropriate to label Confucius institutes as propaganda tools when propaganda is understood in the negative common sense. The crucial point is that Confucius institutes in Germany don't actively tell lies and half-truths. But when it comes to certain sensitive topics, Confucius institutes turn quiet or even silent.

"Therefore these institutions don't do active propaganda, but also they don't practise comprehensive and pure cultural diplomacy, but much more a cultural diplomacy with Chinese characteristics," wrote Hartig.


Comment:

I don't think it is accurate or fair on the Chinese people for Falk Hartig to say that the Confucius Institutes practice cultural diplomacy "with Chinese characteristics". This demonstrates a gap in the author's understanding of the difference between traditional Chinese culture and Chinese Communist Party culture. The former is steeped in spiritual cultivation practice and veneration of the divine, while the latter is atheist and against any concepts of heaven, Buddhas, Daos or Gods. It would be more accurate to say the institutes practice cultural diplomacy with Communist Party characteristics.

It is time to stop thinking of the Chinese Communist Party as China - it is not a legitimate government. It was not elected. It stole power and destroyed over 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture, killed over 80 million Chinese nationals and has cracked down on groups it fears will undermine it's authoritarian control of society.
Policies like "shoot first and paint the target later" are examples of the characteristics of the Chinese Communist Party.

To understand how these institutes are propaganda tools, it is necessary to know the full, uncensored history of the CCP. It is worth reading the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party, published by the Epoch Times.

Caden