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Geoffrey Maslen

Liz Gooch

Academics have rejected a claim by a former Australian consul general to Hong Kong that Confucius Institutes could threaten  academic freedom.
Addressing the Sydney Institute think-tank on Monday,  Jocelyn Chey  warned  accepting grants from the mainland to set up institutes could threaten universities' autonomy. She said academics should be aware of potential bias when institutes sought to undertake teaching or research.
But the heads of Confucius Institutes in Hong Kong and Melbourne rejected her claims, and a senior academic at  the University of Hong Kong countered it was 'fair enough' for governments to promote their language and culture.
Professor Chey, an Australia-China relations expert in the Department of Foreign Affairs for 20 years, said the institutes' close links with the mainland government could  lead to  'dumbing down' of research and, at worst, produce propaganda.
'The Chinese Communist Party sees promotion of Chinese language and culture as a way of creating a favourable public-opinion climate, particularly among overseas Chinese,' she said.
'This programme is modelled on the century-old Alliance Francaise system, but differs in that it is more closely managed by Beijing.
'The soft-power approach is now being applied to all countries maintaining diplomatic relations with China and particularly to those in the Asia-Pacific region, those with a large ethnic Chinese community, those with natural resources needed by Chinese industry and those with close relations with Washington.'
Professor Chey, who has lived in the mainland and was Australia's consul general in Hong Kong in the 1990s, argued that a key unstated factor in the formulation of mainland foreign policy was the role of the overseas Chinese community.
If they 'understood officially-promoted versions of Chinese history and participated in Chinese patriotic events, they would become more patriotic'.
She said as a result of  budgetary restrictions on university finances, 'these financial contributions are attractive to host institutions and may outweigh consideration of loss of academic independence'.
Professor Chey is now a visiting professor at the University of Sydney, which will shortly become the fourth Australian university to establish a Confucius Institute.
Sydney academics and those  at  the University of Melbourne, where a Confucius Institute was opened in June, have objected to the institutes operating on their campuses.
Although they were only set up three years ago, there are now more than 150 institutes operating in 52 countries, with 28 in US universities, 13 in Thailand and 10 in South Korea.
Kam Louie,  dean of  HKU's arts faculty and a former student of Professor Chey's, said all governments wanted to promote their cultures.
'It's fair enough that the government wants to promote the Chinese language and culture now that China is becoming economically more and more powerful,' he said.
Asked whether the Confucius Institutes posed a threat to academic freedom, Professor Louie said  although  academics should always be careful that they did not become a voice for governments, it was difficult to say the Chinese government was using the institutes to try to create a 'patriotic front'.
'The stated aim is to promote Chinese language and culture in the world. That seems to be what governments are meant to do,' he said.
Director of the Confucius Institute in Melbourne, Barbara Hilder, denied  the institute would pose a threat to academic freedom.
None of the non-award courses being offered by the institute were connected with those being run by the university.
And the Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, which opened at Polytechnic University last year, also defended its autonomy.
Deputy director Chan Shui-duen said:  'I have complete freedom to do whatever I consider appropriate.'



Academics deny 'freedom threat from Confucius'