US ban hits 5 Confucius institutes

Impact of defense act ‘very limited,’ says Chinese analyst

The US defense act that bans Pentagon-funded projects related to China’s Confucius Institute will likely have “very limited impact” on the operation of the programs in the US, Chinese experts said on Wednesday.

Signed into law on Monday, the 2019 US National Defense Authorization Act, prohibits Pentagon funding for Chinese language programs hosted at or by any Confucius Institute in the US.

The act only affects universities with a Confucius Institute and Chinese-language programs funded by the US Department of Defense, Wang Yige, a staffer at the Confucius Institute at the University of New Hampshire, told the Global Times via email on Wednesday.

“There are only about five such universities in the US,” Wang said.

The Confucius Institute Headquarters did not reply to an interview request from the Global Times as of press time.

Most US department’s Chinese language programs are held in China or via other approaches, Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

“The actual impact of the act will be very limited,” Liu said.

The act nonetheless sent “an official signal that the US government now positions the institution as a threat to national security, which may lead to more limitations on a Chinese project that aims to spread Chinese culture and boost peopleto-people exchanges,” Liu said.

By the end of 2017, there were 525 Confucius institutes and 1,113 Confucius classrooms established in 146 countries and regions, according to the 2017 Confucius Institute Annual Development Report.

The number of Confucius institutes and classrooms in the US reached 629, or nearly 40 percent of Confucius institutes and courses in the world.

“After years of development, the Confucius Institute programs also face increasing controversy abroad, especially in Western countries that hold an ideological bias toward China,” Guo Dingping, a professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University and the former dean of the Nottingham Confucius Institute in the UK, told the Global Times.

Noting some accusations are “false and preposterous,” Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming wrote that the operations of the institutes were “transparent” in a June article for the UK-based Daily Telegraph newspaper.

“Chinese side never interferes in academic freedom and that there is a complete system of open standards for the application, assessment, approval and establishment of Confucius Institutes,” Liu wrote.

The programs help foreigners get a more comprehensive and objective view of China, said Guo, the Shanghai professor.

“Some programs have expanded from merely language teaching to a wider scope of activities, such as seminars or lectures that promote China’s political, economic and social achievements,” Guo said.

“Though well-intentioned, such activities have brought unnecessary misunderstanding and accusations,” he said.