Chinese influence in world education
9:24 AM
it's a move that outraged Beijing two things are being reviewed in India first -
the local chapters of Confucius institutes in India and second agreements between Indian and Chinese institutes .
china says india is politicizing Chinese institutes it feels the review is unfair we say it's long overdue .
why this scrutiny is necessary china's meddling in education is seen as a threat to academic freedom the world over and India.
No exception on your screen now is a report from human rights watch it came out last year the report calls -
Confucius institutes as extensions of the Chinese government censorship is rampant in such schools and hiring of teachers is based on political loyalty to China.
of course china runs hundreds of such institutes the world over according to human rights watch many teachers feel uncomfortable with the presence of such schools on their campus. they feel their teaching could be compromised in certain places the chinese influence.
In 2019 the victoria university in australia wanted to hold a screening but they had to cancel it why because they wanted to screen a documentary which was critical of chinese institutes .
now this university had one such school on campus ,a chinese school it lodged a complaint the screening had to be cancelled this .
what China does? what has all of this got to do with India?
you may ask well india has three such institutes three that we know of all of them are essentially extensions of the chinese government .reports say indian intelligence agencies have raised security concerns about these institutes ,china says these schools only promote chinese language teaching and people-to-people contact, but there are teachers cannot talk about tibet taiwan and tiananmen.
That cannot be mentioned any chinese school in the world knows that these three subjects are off limits and they certainly promote one chinese value which is censorship.
which is what they do chinese schools have reportedly often put pressure on their host universities abroad .they proactively pressurize hosts to silence anything.
deemed controversial by beijing in 2014 references to taiwan were removed from a conference program in portugal pages were literally torn from the handbook in 2018 china played censor at a conference in america too bethany allen .
a journalist was invited to speak at the savannah state university in her bio allen had mentioned that she reported from taiwan but when the event materials were printed the reference to taiwan had been dropped because the event sponsor was a chinese institute.
this is how china infiltrates classrooms ,it funds schools in the name of culture and people-to-people ties, then it imposes censorship on campus .the entire operation is orchestrated from beijing by the communist party.
This is a chinese body ,this is part of china's ministry of education the freedom of speech is dominated by officials of the communist party.
the executive council of the hanbin has 12 representatives from china's top state agencies this includes. the ministry of foreign affairs as well as the state press and publishing administration an arm used by china to push its propaganda and the director general of school is part of China state council .
The state council is the highest organ of state power in china .now the money when it comes to chinese propaganda there is no dearth of money no compromise on the budget by 2017.
these institutes had a budget of 314 million dollars reports say chinese institutes are now present in at least 548 universities in almost 1200 schools 1200 across 154 countries more than 1 million students study in these institutes .
over 46 000 teachers work there and china is not done yet as of last year it planned to have 1 000 such institutes these schools serve only one purpose for china push communist party propaganda around the world and ensure the party's influence spreads beyond china's borders when india opens the doors to foreign universities it must watch out for Chinese incursions on its campuses .