Canadian teachers urge universities to close on-campus cultural schools funded by Chinese government

Tristin Hopper | January 1, 2014



 

Confucius InstituteLast February, McMaster University announced plans to shut down its Confucius Institute due to concerns, raised in an Ontario Human Rights tribunal case, that the school required instructors to swear not to be members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China.

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In this occasional feature, the National Post tells you everything you need to know about a complicated issue. Today, Tristin Hopper examines the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ challenge last month to Canadian universities to sever all ties with Confucius Institutes, on-campus cultural schools funded and organized by the Chinese government.

What’s a Confucius Institute?

Named for the 2,500-year-old Chinese philosopher Confucius, originator of such noted Chinese cultural touchstones as self-discipline and respect for elders, Confucius Institutes were founded in 2004, receive their funding from the Government of the People’s Republic of China and now number more than 300 locations worldwide. In Canada, there are at least eight, with more to come. In the words of the Confucius Institute in Edmonton, the institute is “dedicated to strengthening the educational, cultural and economic ties between China and Canada,” and does this through everything from language courses to the organization of cultural events, such as concerts or martial arts tournaments. Some campus locations offer accredited courses and in many cases, Confucius Institutes have collaborated on the development of language curricula in public schools, such as in Edmonton, Vancouver and Regina.

Overseas cultural promotion? Where did China get that idea?

Like many new institutions in the newly moneyed, increasingly powerful modern China, Confucius Institutes closely follow a Western lead. Both Germany and Spain have long maintained overseas cultural schools named after a prominent national thinker (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for Germany and Miguel de Cervantes for Spain). France maintains the Alliance française and the U.K. runs more than 200 locations of the British Council. Altogether, at least 25 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas have dabbled with some form of “international cultural promotion organization.”

What’s CAUT’s problem with Confucius Institutes?

According to CAUT, the on-campus institutions play too close a role in the development of university curricula, which the body called a “fundamental violation of academic freedom. Simply put, Confucius Institutes are owned and operated by an authoritarian government and beholden to its politics,” said CAUT executive director James Turk in a Dec. 17 statement.

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Is CAUT the only one leery about the schools? 

Two Canadian universities have dropped the Institutes due to political concerns. The University of Manitoba declined offers for an Institute because of worries about the potential whitewashing of controversial subjects such as Taiwan or the Tiananmen Square massacre. Last February, McMaster University announced plans to shut down its Confucius Institute due to concerns, raised in an Ontario Human Rights tribunal case, that the school required instructors to swear not to be members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China. Former agents with CSIS, the same agency that once warned of Chinese agents infiltrating everything from Canadian town halls to the federal cabinet, would seem to agree. “I think there’s a concern from an intelligence point of view, definitely,” Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a retired CSIS agent, told the National Post in 2010.

Is CAUT correct? Are Confucius Institutes really freedom-hating sleeper cells beholden to the Chinese Communist Party?

While there is no shortage of international criticism of the Institutes, for now, CAUT certainly seems to be in the minority. Operators of Canadian Confucius Institutes roundly maintain they have no desire to influence politics, and are solely in place to teach Mandarin and promote cultural understanding. It is on this basis that the program has repeatedly been welcomed with open arms by Canadian universities — albeit with the occasional condition that the school agrees not to contravene Canadian law. “The real purpose of the Confucius Institute is to build bridges between the host country, the host institution and China,” said British Columbia Institute of Technology vice-president Jim Reichert in 2008, soon after the Vancouver school became the first in Canada to accept a Confucius Institute.