“Hosting a Dragon“, the campaign recently launched by the British Tibet campaigning organisation Free Tibet, targets the Confucius Classrooms programme. Confucius Classrooms is part of the Confucius Institute (CI), an organisation which has brought Chinese language teaching to more than 600 universities and secondary schools in over a hundred countries worldwide.
However, many in the international community, including academic organisations and pro-Tibet groups, have expressed concern over the CI’s motives and practices. Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) report that in 2009, a senior Chinese official described the CI as “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up”, lending weight to fears that the CI could have a negative impact on academic freedom with an exclusively pro-China image being presented to students.
Of further concern is that the CI is governed by a council whose top-level members are drawn from Chinese Communist Party leadership and various state ministries, and overseen by the Chinese government agency Hanban. Critics see this as evidence that the CI is really an attempt by China to extend their “soft power” on the world stage. Following these concerns, the Toronto District School Board notably decided in October last year to terminate all Chinese government-run language programmes under its jurisdiction.
Students for Free Tibet campaigning against Confucius Institutes
Photo: SFT
Since 2004, Hanban (officially known as the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) has been providing finance, resources and Chinese teachers to foreign partner schools who use the resources to open a Confucius Classroom. Critics, including Free Tibet and SFT, say that these classrooms are essentially for a for pro-China propaganda and exclude any free and fair examination of Chinese policy on Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Falun Gong amongst others. According to SFT, there are now around 100 Hanban teachers in the UK alone, with each teacher being recruited, politically vetted and paid by the Chinese authorities. Both Xu Lin and Liu Yandong, Head and Director of Hanban respectively, are highly-ranked members of the Communist Party and SFT report that Ms Xu has explicitly stated that teachers should meet student queries with CCP-approved answers.
A poster of SFT’s campaign
Photo: SFT Facebook
Following the Toronto District School Board’s decision to sever ties with the CI, Canada Director of Students for a Free Tibet Urgyen Badheytsang expressed his gratitude, calling the CI a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Tenzin Dolkar, Executive Director of Students for A Free Tibet, said that Toronto was “on the right side of history” and urged the other CI partners worldwide to follow their lead.
During their campaign, Free Tibet is contacting all of the 95 UK schools hosting Confucius Classrooms, seeking guarantees that pupils are not receiving a biased education and offering schools the resources to ensure that students are exposed to a balanced message concerning Sino-Tibetan relations. Free Tibet also plans to contact local councils and politicians with demands that the Confucius Classroom programme be properly monitored and remain under UK government supervision.
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