PRESS RELEASE Confucius Institutes: Academic Malware Marshall Sahlins Prickly Paradigm Press. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press Paper $12.95 ISBN: 9780984201082 Published November 2014 Confucius Institutes Insinuate Chinese Political interests into the Classrooms of Universities and Schools Worldwide Since the Chinese government launched the Confucius Institutes ten years ago, some 450 of these academic enterprises have been embedded in universities around the world, including nearly 100 in the US, and Confucius Classrooms have been established in 650 secondary and primary schools. In a powerful monograph titled /Confucius Institutes, Academic Malware/, Marshall Sahlins reveals the covert political nature, methods, and ambitions of of this global project. Although advertised as affiliated with the Ministry of Education, Confucius Institutes are controlled by a Council of high government officials headed by a member of the Politburo. These officials are members of the Small Leading Groups of the Chinese Communist Party’s External Propaganda system through which the policies of Confucius Institutes are transmitted. Soft power is an instrument of hard power. The Confucius Institutes Headquarters selects, trains, and dispatches teachers of Chinese language and culture to universities and lower schools in the US and elsewhere, paying their air fares and salaries, and supplying textbooks for their courses. In another, growing program, the Confucius Institutes subsidizes research on China by faculty members and graduate students of affiliated universities, subject to the approval of their research by the Beijing Headquarters. American universities and others have subcontracted teaching and research to a foreign government--that is not known for its respect of the values of free thought, speech, and inquiry upon which universities are founded. The effect is the introduction of numerous incidents of academic malpractice into the classrooms and lecture halls of America and other countries. These incidents range from self-censorship of topics politically taboo in China--such as Tibetan independence, universal human rights, or democratic reforms--to prohibiting the Dalai Lama from speaking on campus, or the scandal caused by the Director-General of the Confucius Institutes at a recent meeting of the European Association for Chinese Studies, when she had certain pages not to her liking torn from the conference program and abstracts. Also disturbing is the clandestine way Confucius Institutes are often established. Most agreements with Beijing have a secrecy clause which excludes the greater part of the faculty from any knowledge of, let alone participation in, the establishment of a Confucius Institute in their university. While critical of the cultural politics of the Chinese government, Sahlins notes that he is not motivated by some sort of McCarthyite, anti-communist animus. Rather, the essential issue is the intellectual integrity of our academic institutions.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 18:22:58 +0000