‘Soft power’ on campus
Contracts suggest Beijing’s Confucius Institute holds sway over Canadian schools and colleges
Sonia Zhao had to lie, in effect, when she left China to teach Mandarin at an Ontario university. The contract she signed with the Beijing- run Confucius Institute indicated that Falun Gong practitioners, people like her, were barred from the job. But she kept her beliefs secret and hoped she could find more freedom in Canada. It was not to be.
She says she was trained beforehand to spin Beijing’s line if students asked about Tibet and other taboo topics, while Chinese staff at Mcmaster University’s branch of the institute made clear Falun Gong was poison. After a year, she quit and sought asylum here, becoming perhaps the world’s first Confucius Institute whistleblower.
“I think they’re aiming to build a really beautiful, healthy image (of China) among those students,” Zhao said about the institute’s ultimate purpose. She believes Canada should have nothing to do with the organization. “It isn’t worth it to give up your freedom of speech or freedom even of thinking, just to learn about a different language or culture.”
Her experience in 2011 did lead Mcmaster to end its relationship with the institute, a division of China’s education ministry that pays for Mandarin- language and cultural programs worldwide — and has long been embroiled in controversy. Advocates call the organization a generously funded cultural bridge, critics decry it as a “Trojan horse” for Chinese propaganda and influence.
But 10 other universities, colleges and boards of education across Canada still host their own Confucius outlets. And a National Post survey of the closely guarded contracts they signed found little in them that might prevent the kind of censorship and discriminatory hiring highlighted by Zhao.
Only one of seven agreements obtained by the Post includes any protection for academic freedom.
Several of the contracts indicate the local institutes must accept the agency headquarters’ assessment of “teaching quality.” One, at the University of Waterloo-affiliated Renison College, says any disagreements about running the institute should be referred to the Beijing headquarters, called Hanban.
Almost all bar the institutes from contravening Canadian or Chinese law. They also require compliance with the institute’s own constitution and bylaws. To this day, Hanban’s website says overseas teachers must have “no record of participation in Falun Gong and other illegal organizations,” a clear violation of Canadian constitutional and rights.
“I would say ( Confucius headquarters) have absolute control,” said lawyer Clive Ansley after reviewing some of the contracts. The former China studies professor practised for several years in the country. “Any decision on what they call teaching quality, teaching materials, it’s all going to be made by Hanban.”
Ivy Li of the group Canadian Friends of Hong Kong said she was struck by the different roles set out in the contracts she perused at the Post’s request.
The Canadian hosts agree to provide office and classroom space and a steady supply of students, and in some cases to promote the program. Most of the contracts also say the Canadian school will provide funding, directly or in kind, at least equal to what the Chinese government contributes.
Hanban, the contracts stipulate, supplies the content — Mandarin teachers, textbooks, course software and other educational materials — that Li said come with Beijing’s particular spin.
“Even purely from a business point of view, it’s a very bad deal,” she charged. “Our universities are being used as a platform to promote (China’s) message, and that message is disinformation.”
But administrators here argue that despite what the contracts suggest, China does not actually interfere in the arrangements, and argue the institute provides an important conduit between the two nations. Meanwhile, they say, political issues never arise in the type of activities
Confucius oversees, from language training to Tai Chi.
“We have not had any pressure from China to do anything other than enhance cultural understanding,” said Lorne Parker, an assistant superintendent with the Edmonton public school division. “We are looking at our relationship with (Confucius Institute) as building a cultural bridge and not a wall. You can have more influence … by having those bridges.”
Launched in 2004, Confucius has opened 540 branches around the world. Unlike Alliance Francaise, the Goethe Institute and other cultural-outreach groups funded by some European states, it is an actual department of government and embeds itself, uniquely, inside foreign educational bodies.
The organization is hosted in Canada by two school boards — Coquitlam, B.C. and Edmonton, plus two colleges — Montreal’s Dawson and Toronto’s Seneca. And it is in six universities — Saint Mary’s, Carleton, Waterloo, Brock, Regina and Saskatchewan.
The official stated goal is to teach Mandarin and spread the good word about Chinese culture and traditions. But even Xu Lin, Hanban’s director general, has said Confucius Institutes are “an important part of our soft power.”
“We want to expand China’s influence. This relies on our instructors, Confucius Institutes and language,” she told a conference in Beijing.
After a burst of expansion in Canada, there has been some retrenchment. Both Mcmaster and Quebec’s Sherbrooke University shut down their institutes, while New Brunswick is in the process of closing the Confucius program run through one of its school districts. Toronto’s board killed the institute in 2014 just as it was about to launch. The B.C. Institute of Technology’s branch has been suspended.
But the program appears to be going strong elsewhere. To understand what the remaining hosts agreed to in exchange for Beijing’s largesse, the Post asked all for copies of the contracts they signed. Three refused. Carleton University and Seneca College offered no reason for the denial; St. Mary’s University in Halifax said its contract is “with an external organization, and is a record that is not publicly available.”
In fact, several of the Confucius contracts contain non- disclosure clauses.
Other schools said they had secured Hanban’s permission to release their agreements, or the documents had already been disclosed to local media after freedom of information applications.
All set up an arrangement between the Canadian educational facility and a partner college in China, with a director appointed from each side and a board to oversee the institute. In almost every case, Hanban agrees to supply Mandarin teachers, as many as 3,000 textbooks and other teaching material. Some mention startup funding from Beijing in the range of $150,000 to $250,000.
China provides about 15 teachers at a time to the Edmonton school district, though they act as “supports” in Mandarin classes that are led by the board’s own staff, said Parker.
“We received about a million dollars’ worth of books and materials from Hanban,” Bob Lajoie of the Coquitlam School District enthused to filmmaker Doris Liu in her documentary, In the name of Confucius.
The nature of those books is a concern for some critics. Terry Russell, a senior scholar in China studies at the University of Manitoba, said institute texts he’s seen talk of Tibet being “liberated” by China and Taiwan forming part of the country.
“The perspective that is set out in the teaching materials is very much the Chinese perspective,” he said.
Most of the contracts also contain a clause that says “the institute must accept the assessment of the headquarters (Hanban) on the teaching quality.”
It suggests a degree of control by Beijing that director general Xu spelled out openly in an interview previously posted on the organization’s website.
“We haven’t lost education sovereignty,” Xu said. “It’s like the foreign universities work for us.”
Zhao said training before she left China was clear: never mention sensitive topics and if asked about them, offer Beijing’s standard line, that “Tibet is part of China and the government is treating them nicely, that Taiwan is part of China.”
But Edmonton’s Parker said Hanban does not assess the teaching work there, and suggested the clause was included to ensure the agency’s teachers provide good-quality instruction.
A Coquitlam spokesman said that its Confucius staff are hired locally, without the agency’s input, and Hanban has never visited the district to perform assessments.
Institute administrators in Canada also deny having to abide by any aspect of Chinese law or Hanban rules, despite what the contracts say.
“I’m not aware of any of those restrictions,” Parker said when asked about the Falun Gong teacher ban.
But if some Canadian Confucius partners dismiss any suggestion of undue influence from China, and their contracts erect limited firewalls against potential Beijing meddling, there is at least one exception.
When the University of Saskatchewan renewed its agreement with Hanban in 2016, it managed to include a provision that said the institute’s activities “will respect academic freedom and transparency, as well as University of Saskatchewan institutional values, priorities and policies.”
Without that caveat, the contract would not have been extended, Karen Chad, the university ’ s vice- president research, said in a statement.
But critics of the Confucius Institute question whether it will have much impact. To achieve its goals, they say, the institute has never needed to overtly propagate Chinese propaganda. It has taught Mandarin and presented Chinese culture in a way that simply avoids mention of religious persecution, censorship and other topics unflattering to the Communist regime.
“The Canadians get duped as they most often do when they deal with the government of China. They get duped into thinking these things are just cultural institutions and ‘Hey it’s a good idea to have a lot of Canadians learning Mandarin,’ ” said Ansley. “That’s not the Chinese goal at all … The goal is soft power, to promote a favourable image of China in the minds of Canadians.”
EVEN PURELY FROM A BUSINESS POINT OF VIE W, IT’S A VERY BAD DEAL. OUR UNIVERSITIE S ARE BEI NG USED AS A PLATFORM TO PROMOTE (CHINA’S) MESSAGE, AND THAT MESSAGE IS DISINFORMATION.
— IVY LI, CANADIAN FRIENDS OF HONG KONG