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Chinese propaganda is
infiltrating British primary and secondary schools under the guise of
government-funded Mandarin lessons, a report by campaigners alleges. The Chinese government provides hundreds of thousands
of pounds and more than 90 teachers to schools across the UK as part of a
Chinese-language teaching project. An investigation by
campaign group Free Tibet found that British educational institutions are
hosting so-called Confucius Classrooms without prior discussion of their
content.
Critics argue the
language classes present students with a “whitewashed” view of China’s
government and human rights record.
GRAPHITTI NEWS reports:
Freedom of Information
(FoI) requests revealed that in 37 out of 95 schools, governors have not been
critical of Confucius Classrooms before approving their activity in the school.
Out of 80 FoI requests,
Free Tibet discovered only one single school governor had raised concerns about
the program during a meeting.
One FoI request
revealed China currently injects US$10,000 annually into cash-strapped British
schools after Confucius Classrooms’ budget and plan have been rubber stamped by
the project’s headquarters in Beijing.
In addition to paying
the salaries of Mandarin teachers, The Confucius Institute – also known as
Hanban – pays for teaching resources and even subsidizes school trips to China.
Hanban offered a total
9,000 Chinese courses for 260,000 students around the world in 2009.
The program says it is
meeting the “sharp increase” in global demand for Mandarin lessons,
while also promoting Chinese culture abroad.
Critics argue it also
plays a part in Chinese soft power, seeking to alter Western attitudes to a
country which is notoriously strict on censorship and freedom of speech.
Li Changchun, a retired
senior government official and Politburo member, described it “an important part of China’s overseas
propaganda set-up,” according to the Economist.
Mandarin teachers, who
are recruited from the Hanban headquarters in Beijing, are vetted by the
Ministry of Chinese Education before being dispatched abroad.
According to Free
Tibet, “They are obliged to support
the positions and policies of the Chinese government.”
“Hanban teachers present students with an
exclusively positive view of China and prevent them learning about the lives of
Chinese people in an authoritarian state and about wider issues such as
democracy, human rights, Hong Kong and Tibet,” the group said.
Free Tibet has sent a
dossier to Confucius Classroom schools in the UK which outlines the “risks” associated with hosting the
Mandarin teachers.
The organization asks
schools to demonstrate how they are offering a balanced education which does
not lead to a “whitewash” of
the government’s human rights record in China and Tibet.
“However well-intentioned [schools] may be in
hosting Confucius Classrooms, they must understand that China’s authoritarian
government is seeking to control what British children learn about China,”
Free Tibet Director Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren said.
“Councils and governors seem to have nodded
through the Confucius Classroom program with their eyes closed. We hope
teachers have been more vigilant and are already providing balance in the
education their pupils receive about China, but there’s an urgent need for
local and national debates about the place China has been given in the
education of our children.”
The UCL Institute of
Education, which hosts the Confucius Institute for England, said it is still
considering a number of FoI requests from Free Tibet and could not comment on
the concerns until the requests have been resolved.
“Schools employ and fund teachers of Mandarin Chinese on the same terms
as their other language teaching staff,” the institute said.
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