Australian students are being taught Chinese language and culture by teaching assistants vetted by the Chinese Government for “good political quality” and a love of “the motherland”.
The assistants teach Mandarin alongside Australian teachers in classrooms and universities across the country under the Confucius Institute program overseen by Chinese Government agency Hanban.
The application criteria was first issued by the Beijing-based Confucius Institute Headquarters in late 2016 and has been repeated in all recruitment notices since then.
Successful applicants that met this political loyalty condition have been sent to teach in the Confucius institutes and Confucius classrooms across the world since the beginning of 2017.
Confucius institutes are education entities formed through partnerships between a Chinese and a foreign university in the host country, which can then establish subsidiary programs in schools known as Confucius classrooms.
The chair of the Confucius Institute Headquarters Council in Beijing, Sun Chunlan, is a vice-premier and was formerly responsible for the United Front Work Department, which leads the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence efforts abroad.
Translation:
“Have good political and professional qualities, love the motherland, voluntarily work for the cause of Chinese language internationalisation, have the spirit of devotion, strong sense of organisational discipline and team spirit, good character, and no criminal record.”
China expert Professor John Fitzgerald from Swinburne University of Technology told the ABC that being of “good political quality” means “to accept the Chinese Communist Party politics as your own politics and to express no political views of your own”.
“Politics is the exclusive preserve of the party,” he said.
“It’s what the party does. This means, of course, that everything the party touches is political, including education and culture.”
Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who sensationally defected to Australia in 2005, said “good political quality” means to “always be loyal to the Chinese Communist Party and nothing else”.
Australia has the third-highest number of Confucius institutes and classrooms in the world — behind the USA and the UK — with 14 institutes and 67 classrooms across the country.
The First Lady visits
When China’s President Xi Jinping shared a Sydney stage with then-prime minister Tony Abbott on his last visit to Australia in 2014, his wife was greeted by a red and gold dancing dragon at a private school on the upper north shore.
First lady Madame Peng Liyuan’s visit to Ravenswood School for Girls was made significant by it being the first private school in NSW to host a Confucius classroom.
But the first lady could have visited one of the public schools across the state that have joined the program.
Uniquely, NSW was the first government body in the world to host an institute within its own Department of Education in 2011 — deviating from the usual process where institutes are set up in universities.
Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, expressed concern about the influence of the Confucius Institute program.
“Schools wanting to provide language instruction is good, right and important. Letting the Chinese Government provide this is a problem,” she said.
“Many fail to see that Confucius institutes are a part of a much bigger Chinese Communist Party agenda.”
Ms Richardson described it as “extraordinary” that a Confucius institute was welcomed into the NSW Department of Education.
“Would the state police force welcome the Ministry of Public Security into its ranks? Would the NSW Department of Environment welcome in China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment?”
Education focuses on ‘positive image’
As well as native language instructors, participating universities and schools receive partial funding, teaching resources, student exchange opportunities and Chinese language and culture consultative services from the Chinese Government.
Academic Jeffrey Gil from Flinders University has closely researched these issues and says the institute has a more nuanced “selective” teaching approach, rather than disseminating propaganda.
“[The programs] focus on positive aspects of China and try to portray a positive image,” he said.
“This happens by focusing their activities and programs primarily around traditional Chinese culture while ignoring sensitive topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan and Tibet.”
“In this sense they portray a selective, rather than propagandistic, view.”
‘The very top of education has been affected’
The ABC has spoken with parents concerned that Confucius institutes and Confucius classrooms are bringing inappropriate influences into Australian education.
Sonam Paljor, a Tibetan parent living in the inner west of Sydney, has young children who have been targeted for their ethnic background.
“My daughter would come home confused,” he said.
“Kids on the playground would tell her that Tibet is part of China and mock her Tibetan name.”
When searching for high schools, he and his wife closely inspected the origins of any Mandarin language instruction.
“Knowing that Confucius institutes are growing only increases my anxiety that things are not getting any better,” Mr Paljor said.
“The system is not robust enough to challenge or question these things.
“When you have a Confucius institute at the Department of Education itself then the very top of education has been affected.
“Not only does it affect your trust and confidence in [the department], but it makes you suspicious and distrustful of the institutions that we are meant to trust.”
NSW awaits 14-month review
In May last year, then-minister for education Rob Stokes ordered a review of the “risks associated” with language programs underpinned by relationships with foreign governments or organisations.
The terms of reference of the review, seen by the ABC, refer broadly to all language education in schools supported by a foreign government or organisation.
However, the minister “also requested specific advice on the operation of the Confucius institute established in the department”.
No other foreign language programs were named in the terms of reference.
The “desktop review” specified evidence from students, teachers, parents or principals would not be collected unless their views were already public.
New Education Minister Sarah Mitchell advised that it did seek advice from unnamed “relevant Commonwealth Government departments”.
On Thursday, after questions from the ABC, the NSW Department of Education confirmed the review was completed at the end of 2018, with the department “considering the recommendations” and findings to be released next month.
“The additional capacity in our schools, to support NSW teachers with a native speaker in their classroom continues to be of value to our schools and communities,” a department spokesperson said.
NSW Greens education spokesman David Shoebridge said the “desktop review” was inadequate.
“At the very least, the review should have sought the opinions of students who had been in Confucius classrooms and their parents. Instead we got a secret internal desktop review that they haven’t even released,” he said.
The ABC contacted Hanban for comment.
Let’s not forget Aussie unis pathetic response, previously at the AFR:
The Group of Eight major universities say concerns raised over Confucius Institutes in other countries have not been raised with them.
The Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and the National Association of Scholars in New York have warned that the Confucius Institutes – which are branded as cultural and language organisations – are agents of Beijing’s soft power and compromise academic freedom.
In February, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, raised concern about Chinese cultural organisations on US campuses, saying there was a “naivete” among academics about the risks posed.
Chief executive of the G8, Vicki Thomson, said Australia wanted to know more about its major trading partner and the institutes were an important component.
In an exclusive interview, Australia’s first ambassador to China has raised the alarm about China’s influence in the higher education sector.
Stephen Fitzgerald singled out Bob Carr’s Australia China Relations Institute for particular criticism, saying universities need clear firewalls between donations and research.
ACRI, part of the University of Technology Sydney, was established with a large donation from the Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo.
Mr Huang was the donor at the centre of the controversy surrounding Labor senator Sam Dastyari.
“I wouldn’t have taken the funding,” Mr Fitzgerald told Background Briefing.
“This is one of the really difficult issues about what is happening at the moment, because you don’t want to say no to all Chinese money.
“That would be ridiculous, self defeating, but you have to put firewalls between the donation and the way it is spent, and you have to be certain about the origins of that money.”
The director of ACRI, former foreign minister Bob Carr, said he disagreed.
“[This criticism] is coming from people on the cold warrior fringe of the Australian politics, people who are resentful of any hint of Australia running a pragmatic national interest-based China policy,” he said.
“There are two standards being applied here.”
As well as ACRI, hundreds of other language and culture centres have been established on campuses worldwide through confidential agreements between universities and the Chinese education ministry.
Mr Fitzgerald said he believed these centres, known as Confucius institutes, had no place in Australian higher education institutions.
“I just don’t think they should be in universities,” he said.
“Have them in Australia by all means; have them all over the country. I’d welcome them, but I don’t think they should be in universities.”
“There will be people who have been involved with these institutes who will say there has never been one instance of any attempt to influence what we teach and what we say.
“There will be others who might admit that there has been such an attempt.”
Background Briefing has revealed that at the University of Sydney, a confidential 2007 plan included a clause that would have seen the university’s existing Chinese language program incorporated into a Confucius institute.
This draft agreement ended up in the hands of Professor Jocelyn Chey, the former Australian consul-general in Hong Kong and a visiting professor at the university’s Department of Chinese Studies.
“I wasn’t sure that the university authorities knew what they were letting themselves in for,” she said.
“There’s the question of academic freedom and the right of academics not just to teach but to research and publish in areas where they are not under the guidance or direction of anybody.”
Professor Chey wrote a strongly worded letter to the vice chancellor outlining her concerns and saying the Confucius institute should be rejected, or the arrangement should be significantly modified to protect the integrity of the university.
“People who accept donations should be aware of the expectations and obligations that they’re taking on with the finance,” she said.
The university senate voted in favour of the Confucius Institute, but adopted some of the changes to the arrangement that were recommended by Professor Chey.
A University of Sydney spokesperson confirmed a proposal to establish a Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney was circulated to the senate in 2007.
Feedback from staff was considered, and it was confirmed that the university did not intend for existing university programs to be delivered by the Confucius Institute.
The spokesperson said these programs continue to be delivered by the Department of Chinese Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures.
To clarify, Stephen Fitzgerald is the former Director of the UNSW’s Asia-Australia Institute, former Ambassador to China and an eminent Sinologist. It’s a fact that the G8 has been warned.
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Other cultural institutes of this nature are not on university campuses. The institutes should be moved off-campus. Or, better yet, shut down.
The international student trade has turned Aussie unis into the useful idiots of the world’s most evil autocratic regime.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
