When the first CIs were founded, I welcomed them as a chance for foreigners to learn the wonders of Chinese language and culture. I rather like Confucius. I’ve studied his works in the original and done calligraphy of some of his Analects.
I hoped the CIs would not turn political. But I was not surprised when they did. They are political with a very nasty twist. Pressure on universities to hew to Chinese policy and the Chinese world view: eg on Xinjiang and Tibet. Punishing China’s overseas students who step out of line; punishing their families at home in China. Communal guilt: very fascist.
This is happening all over the west. The vehicle of transmission to the CIs and CSSAs is the China United Front Works Department, not mentioned in this article, but established during the revolutionary wars and since grown into the largest covert propaganda body in the world.
Professor# Kaplan and Metz give a good account of what’s going on:
Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Beijing this past February, students at George Washington University (GWU) put up posters criticizing the Chinese government’s policies. The posters decried the internment and cultural genocide of Uyghurs, the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and China’s lack of transparency during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were quickly removed and would have gone largely unnoticed had it not been for the firestorm ignited by the university’s response to a student petition.
In the petition, which was sent directly to GWU’s president, Mark Wrighton, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) demanded that the university remove the posters, identify the students responsible, and “punish them severely” for “insult[ing] China.” In a leaked email response, Wrighton wrote that he was “personally offended” by the posters and promised to have them removed. Then, almost casually, he committed to “determin[ing] who [was] responsible.” There was a swift backlash both online, where freedom of expression advocates like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) condemned the email, and among GWU students, who organized a protest in response. Within days, Wrighton issued a statement promising not to punish the students involved.
Given the freedoms typically touted on college campuses, GWU’s reactionary effort to limit student criticism of the Chinese government might stand out as unusual. But it is part of a larger pattern — one linked to a multipronged effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence and control its image abroad. That image is particularly vulnerable now because, as the U.S. Department of State and numerous other countries have concluded, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is committing genocide against the Uyghur people, among other human rights abuses.[Read on…]
