DHARAMSHALA, JUNE 19: The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has called for the agreements between Chinese Government funded Confucius Institutes and nearly 100 American universities to be either scrapped or renegotiated, reported The Telegraph.
The leading association of American university professors accused China’s network of Confucius Institutes of flouting basic rules of academic freedom and integrity.
“Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom,” the AAUP said in a statement, urging US universities to “cease their involvement” with the institutes unless major reforms are instituted.
“Most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China,” the AAUP statement added.
According to the AAUP statement, the academic activities “are under the supervision of Hanban, a Chinese state agency which is chaired by a member of the Politburo and the vice-premier of the People’s Republic of China”.
The AAUP is a 47,000-member association which was founded in 1915 to guard academic freedom. Its call to cancel Confucius Institute agreements is a huge setback for China’s premiere soft-power project which Beijing says is equivalent to the UK’s British Council or Frances’s Alliance Français.
Critics of the Confucius Institutes argue that they are designed to project a favourable image of China’s ruling Communist Party around the world through language and cultural programmes, but are allowed to restrict discussions of topics such as the occupation of Tibet.
Similar opposition to the Confucius Institutes was expressed by The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) in December last year. “Confucius Institutes are essentially political arms of the Chinese government,” said James Turk, Executive of CAUT. “Simply put, Confucius Institutes are owned and operated by an authoritarian government and beholden to its politics.”
Though the Chinese government claimed the institutes simply promoted Chinese language and culture the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said they’re part of China’s efforts to extend its “soft power” abroad.
