China Gives to U.S. Universities and Attaches Political Strings

An education group linked to China’s government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to establish Chinese language and culture programs around the world, many of them at U.S. universities, and it has exerted pressure on some recipients to steer clear of delicate topics like the Dalai Lama and Tibet, according to Bloomberg.

Since 2004, Beijing-based Hanban, an affiliate of China’s education ministry, has launched 350 Confucius Institutes worldwide, about 75 of them in the United States. Once focused largely on teaching Mandarin and Chinese arts like calligraphy, Hanban is now funding research at elite schools, sparking concerns about academic freedom.

Stanford University initially rejected $4-million when the group insisted the professor it would endow could not discuss Tibet, which was taken over by China in 1959. The school accepted the money after Hanban relented and will use it for a course on Chinese poetry. At some campuses Confucius Institutes have objected to appearances by exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.

Junbo Chen, Hanban’s North American representative, said the group’s funding is “unconditional.” Michael Nylan, a professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, said the institutes have learned from “early missteps” and become less heavy-handed in their demands on host schools.