New row over Confucius Institutes’ role on campuses

The cancellation of events at two German universities promoting a book on China’s leader Xi Jinping, allegedly due to pressure from Chinese diplomats, has reopened the debate in Germany about university-hosted Chinese Confucius Institutes and renewed calls for government funding of more independent China research at universities.

The China-funded Confucius Institutes at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany’s Ruhr area, and at Leibniz University in the northern city of Hannover were to hold the events this week for the book Xi Jinping – The most powerful man in the world by Stefan Aust, a former editor-in-chief of Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, and Adrian Geiges, a China correspondent for weekly magazine Stern.

But the event at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) was suddenly cancelled with the book’s publisher, Piper Verlag, saying this was “due to Chinese pressure”.

The publisher said the Chinese consul in Düsseldorf, Feng Haiyang, had allegedly personally intervened to stop the event at the university.

Head of the publishing house Felicitas von Lovenberg said the cancellation was “a disquieting signal”.

According to publishers Piper, the Hannover event scheduled for this week was cancelled after the university’s partner institution Tongji University in Shanghai intervened and took up the matter with the Confucius Institute.

The book’s co-author Adrian Geiges told German broadcaster NDR that the authors have already held events at Confucius Institutes in Leipzig in Eastern Germany and Freiburg in Southern Germany without problems, and the one this week had been planned long before the attempts to intervene.

“We were very surprised it was cancelled a few days before. Not only us but also the Confucius Institute in Hannover itself said they had not experienced such strong influence and massive pressure before.”

Geiges said such actions simply highlighted what critics had always maintained – that Confucius Institutes are the ‘long arm’ of China, and that they cannot hold their own programmes, rather they are dictated to by China.

He noted that a Confucius Institute official had described Xi as “untouchable” and a subject that could not be discussed. “That’s nothing new in China but that it is now extended to Germany, that’s new,” Geiges said.

“In Germany there is academic freedom and freedom of expression. All who live and teach here should be aware of this. Therefore, cancelling the conference at the two Confucius Institutes is not acceptable,” said Björn Thümler, science minister for the German state of Lower Saxony where Hannover is the state capital.

Confucius Institutes are a state-funded Chinese cultural and educational organisation under the Ministry of Education in Beijing which recently restructured them to bring them under a foundation based at Beijing Foreign Studies University, in part in response to concern internationally of state interference.

Academics note, however, that they are still under the influence of the Communist Party. There are around 550 Confucius Institutes worldwide with 19 in Germany, mostly affiliated with universities and often with a Chinese university partner as well.

Strong stance by universities

Both universities have taken a strong stance to protect academic freedom on campus.

“Apparently under official pressure, the Confucius Institute Metropole Ruhr cancelled the presentation of a book on Xi Jinping. The UDE was neither involved in the planning nor in the cancellation of the book presentation at the affiliated institute,” said a 25 October statement by the University of Duisburg-Essen.

“For us this decision is incomprehensible and it must not be repeated,” Ulrich Radtke, the university’s rector, said.

UDE said in its German-language statement that the university had not in the past become aware of any cases of direct influence by the Chinese government on the programmes of the Confucius Institute in Duisburg. The university management is “all the more irritated that pressure has now apparently been exerted from official quarters to prevent this event”, it said.

“We will therefore now seek a discussion with the management of the institute,” announced Radtke.

The university added that UDE academics have “followed developments in China critically and will continue to do so. This applies to the university as a whole, but also especially to the IN-EAST Institute for East Asian Studies”.

The book event was later shifted to the university’s own Institute of East Asian Studies in what some described as a ‘face-saving’ move after the outcry at the Confucius Institute cancellation, and was held on campus on 27 October.

Leibniz University also attempted to distance itself from the cancelled event which has not been rescheduled yet, though the university has offered to host it instead of its partner Confucius Institute.

In a statement on Monday the university said it had been “in no way informed about the planning of the event” of the Leibniz Confucius Institute, “or involved in its cancellation”.

It described the Confucius Institute’s actions as “unacceptable, strange and incomprehensible to the management of Leibniz University”.

The university “sees itself as a cosmopolitan university with space for critical scientific discourse and exchange. It sees the ability to engage in dialogue as a prerequisite for innovative action, intelligent and constructive discussion with the other as a guarantee for progress”, adding that it is closely connected with many partner universities internationally, including Chinese universities.

“These partnerships are very important to the university; they enrich university life and advance research and knowledge across borders. Any attempt by foreign governments to exert political influence on research, teaching and public relations work at Leibniz University must be strictly rejected.”

It said the university management would promptly seek a discussion with the board of the Confucius Institute cooperation partner “to check possible further cooperation”.

The Chinese Embassy in Germany said in a statement: “Activities of the institute are based on full communication between all partners, in line with the common interests and concerns of both parties.”

“The Confucius Institute should be a platform for comprehensive and objective understanding of China. China firmly opposes the politicisation of academic and cultural exchange activities.”

Spotlight on Confucius Institutes in Germany

While the two universities have been at pains to show they do not condone restrictions on freedoms, the developments this week have thrown the spotlight on the independence of universities in holding China events.

Andreas Fulda, associate professor at the University of Nottingham, UK and an expert on Germany and European Union relations with China and on academic freedom, told University World News that shifting the events to the university rather than allowing them to be cancelled outright was a damage limitation exercise by the universities which should have been more aware of the risks of hosting Confucius Institutes.

“The one-party state [China] wants to guide global public opinion even in far-flung places like Germany. And that is where these Confucius Institutes play a very important role,” Fulda said, while adding that universities in Germany and elsewhere help the Confucius Institutes to engage in “reputation laundering”.

Fulda argues in a recently published paper together with Germany-based Sinologist David Missal, ‘Mitigating threats to academic freedom in Germany: the role of the state, universities, learned societies and China’, that there are “deep-seated structural problems in German academia in general and Chinese Studies in particular”.

“Our research reveals that the German state, universities, and learned societies have so far failed to properly identify – let alone mitigate – threats to academic freedom emanating from state and non-state agents under control of the CCP,” the paper said.

“These [Confucius Institutes] are not cultural organisations, they have a political function. And by aligning themselves with a German university, they can then say it is a quasi-academic activity or cultural activity. But members of the German public will not be able to see through the shenanigans,” Fulda told University World News.

“What German universities with Confucius Institutes have done is [they have] invited a gatekeeper into their house, where they've handed over the keys, and then basically said: ‘Okay, you can have a say over the kinds of activities we run’. And then, of course, organisers have to think, is this activity going to upset people in the Confucius Institute?”

Do universities need Confucius Institutes?

Fulda said universities in Germany do not need to rely on Confucius Institutes to organise events on China.

But he said it was also a matter of prestige for universities. “If they have a Confucius Institute, and they have research collaboration with China, they can say, ‘look how international we are!’”

Fulda noted the problem is that the protocols in place to structure these partnerships are outdated. “They're not up to scratch for the kind of challenges that we are now dealing with,” he said, referring to academic collaboration with autocracies and what he called “bad faith actors”.

Sigrun Abels, a Sinologist and head of the Centre for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China at the Technical University of Berlin – which does not host a Confucius Institute – told University World News that the events of the past week had raised awareness in universities in Germany of some of the risks.

Now every German higher education institution needs to draw up a China strategy or guidelines, she said.

“Universities with a Confucius Institute should sit down again with the management and try to find a way to cope with these sorts of challenges that will come up even more. The stronger China is and the more aggressive or self-assured China is, there will be more challenges. This is not the first time and it will not be the last.”

“It is difficult to be independent and follow your line on academic freedom if you have such an institute at your university. You have to make compromises,” she said.

Pointing to UDE and Leibniz, she said: “I think the compromise they made, and maybe you can call it naive, was a bad compromise.”

Independent research

Several academics said this week they expected stronger calls for the closure of Confucius Institutes in Germany, a debate that is growing, though still quite polarised in the country.

“Whatever universities thought they would get out of these partnerships with Confucius Institutes, they need to be mindful that in the end, it is backfiring. There will be more incidents like this in the future,” Fulda noted. “Some might just pull the plug.”

Universities in Hamburg and Düsseldorf have already shut down their Confucius Institutes and Germany’s liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), currently in talks with the Social Democrats to be part of a coalition government in the wake of September’s federal elections, has also called for partnerships with the Institutes to be terminated.

Others note that the Confucius Institute in Munich is not attached to a university, and has even held events on Tibet, a subject that is highly sensitive in China, although academics noted that the discourse stuck closely to the official Chinese line.

The FDP proposes independent alternatives in the form of chairs and institutes of Chinese culture that are independent of political influence and can also involve academics, artists and human rights activists who are persecuted in China.

In June, before the federal election, the country’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research announced it was boosting funding for independent expertise on China at German universities “based on European values”.

Federal Education and Research Minister Anja Karliczek said then: “I don’t want China to influence our universities and society.”

“Germany has to concede self-critically that in the past, in some respects, we have given the Confucius Institutes too much leeway and done too little ourselves to develop independent expertise on China in Germany,” she added.

The European Union has also put out a call that closed this month inviting universities within the EU to bid for Horizon funding and inviting proposals for raising independent knowledge on China. A number of German universities have joined consortia bidding for funds, with academics noting it is important to have alternatives if partnerships with Confucius Institutes come under fire.