There are currently 13 China-backed Confucius Institutes operating at Australian universities, including many of the prestigious Group of Eight institutions such as the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, NSW, and Queensland. These Confucius Institutes are a fully funded subsidiary of China’s Ministry of Education. They provide participating Australian universities with native language instructors, partial funding, teaching resources, student exchange opportunities, and Chinese language and culture consultative services from the Chinese Government.
Their formal mission is to promote Chinese language and culture, and thus provide an uncritical view of Chinese society as well as provide direct influence inside our universities.
China expert, Clive Hamilton, recently explained the significance of these Confucius Institutes, which are used by China to leverage favour from our universities:
…universities are vital to the [CCP] party’s campaign to change the global conversation about China and its role in the world. It has many tools at its disposal. Chinese diplomats do not hesitate to phone vice chancellors to express their displeasure and make veiled threats about the revenue they derive from Chinese students and joint programs with Chinese universities.
They pressure universities to “persuade” China scholars who criticise Beijing to pipe down and if that doesn’t work the scholars know their visas to do research in China might be denied.
Some Chinese students dob in their lecturers if they deviate from China’s position, such as where to draw boundaries in disputed regions, and even start social media campaigns denouncing the lecturer’s “anti-China” stance.
One of the biggest levers that Beijing can pull is the one provided by Confucius Institutes. It’s partly the money the Chinese Government provides to teach Chinese language and culture. But perhaps more important are the personal “friendships” that university bosses develop with their counterparts in China. They don’t want to upset their friends.
The institutes are ostensibly devoted to teaching Chinese language and promoting Chinese culture. In fact, they are a part of the CCP’s global program of “discourse management”.
Today, The SMH reports that RMIT University has agreed to give a Chinese government agency overriding authority over teaching at its Confucius Institute, which is reportedly similar to the agreements signed by other Australian universities:
“The institute must accept the assessment of the [Confucius Institute] Headquarters on the teaching quality”, the agreement
between Hanban and RMIT states…In agreeing to comply with Beijing-based Hanban’s decisionmaking authority, RMIT’s previously undisclosed contract is similar to a handful of other Australian Confucius Institute agreements uncovered earlier this year…
The teaching quality clause is identical to those agreed to by the University of Queensland, Griffith University, La Trobe University and Charles Darwin University…
John Fitzgerald, an emeritus professor at Swinburne University of Technology and leading expert on Chinese politics, said the clauses on teaching quality assessments could place universities in breach of higher education standards…
“Even if they are not in breach of [Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency] standards, accepting foreign government assessments of Australian university teaching programs is hardly a good look”.
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 universities into the useful idiots of the world’s most evil autocratic regime.
