US politicians must realize institutes aren’t political tools

There seem be two types of Confucius Institutes in the United States: those that are hailed on more than 100 campuses as a bridge to learning the Chinese language and culture, and those that are labeled by some newspapers and websites as a “political tool” of China.

The US media’s “flawed assumption” has contributed to such confusion, according to a senior China expert in Washington. There have been many such reports in recent weeks following two US lawmakers’ letters urging a handful of schools to sever ties with the Confucius Institute. The lawmakers and media outlets have accused the programs of being a tool to expand the “political influence of China” and distort academic discourse in the US.

“There’s a lot of assumptions and innuendo I find in the reporting,” said David Shambaugh, director of China Policy Program at George Washington University. “One assumption is that a Confucius Institute somehow affects the curriculum of Chinese studies the way China is taught on campus. Absolutely wrong,” the professor of political science said.

Shambaugh made the remarks at a discussion at the Brookings Institution early this month. He said he has followed the Confucius Institute closely since one was set up on George Washington University in 2013. “There’s a complete firewall between Confucius Institutes that teach language and ... — the rest of the faculty and the curriculum on every university campus, not just at GW, across the country,” he said. “So they have no impact on how Chinese studies are taught, so that’s a flawed assumption that a lot of journalists leap to. They tend to take a couple of anecdotal cases and string it together and say here’s a case.”