March 6, 2018//-As Americans and their policy-makers focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election and broader efforts to stoke discord in American society, China’s relationship with the nation’s colleges and universities is drawing renewed attention as well.
Teaching centres on the language and history of China, funded by Beijing and known as Confucius Institutes, last received heightened scrutiny in 2014. At the time, a number of American universities chose to end their arrangements with the Chinese government out of concern about academic freedom and censorship on their campuses.
According to university world news, the relationships between more than 100 American colleges and China also drew a rebuke from the American Association of University Professors.
From 2010 to 2016, Hanban, the Chinese-government office that oversees the institutes, provided 15 American universities with more than $17 million in gifts and contracts, according to disclosures to the US Department of Education. The total is likely to be understated, given that colleges must report only transactions of $250,000 or greater.
Indeed, a $4.1 million donation to Stanford University in 2010 to finance a Confucius Institute and an endowed professorship, the largest transaction ever reported by a college with Hanban in those seven years, raised concerns at the time because of the terms that were stipulated by the Chinese government.
The growing economic and geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, a rising global power, is likely to be another source of the renewed scrutiny of Confucius Institutes in recent years. That alone distinguishes the institutes from France’s Alliance Française and Germany’s Goethe-Institut.
The resurgent attention to Confucius Institutes and Chinese influence operations can also be traced to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
In early February the Republican senator sent letters urging five Florida colleges to cut their ties with the China-sponsored centres.
“There is mounting concern about the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive attempts to use ‘Confucius Institutes’ and other means to influence foreign academic institutions and critical analysis of China’s past history and present policies,” Rubio wrote.
Independent.ng
