LOS ANGELES—Recently Beijing established many Chinese “Confucius Institutes” around the world through cooperation with Asia-Pacific research institutes or Chinese language centers in universities overseas. However, this move is criticized for exporting communist ideology in the name of language education.
In the United States, there are about 40 such Confucius Institutes. Their students also include government officials and consultants who advise decision makers.
Patriotism for the Communist Party and China
China’s state media people.com.cn reported the curriculums and teaching materials of the Institutes come from the Confucius Institute Headquarters located in Beijing. The Institutes follow a standardized instruction, testing, and training system.
The teaching materials are widely adopted by local Chinese schools overseas. Yao Zhe, a Chinese school teacher in southern California, confirmed this. Yao said, “Through the teaching material, Beijing propagates its ideology of patriotism for the Communist Party and China, autocratic culture, and nationalism. Almost all Chinese schools in the United States that teach simplified Chinese adopt materials from the Institute.” Yao called it a ‘soft cold war,’ ‘a battlefield without a smoking gun’ because they brainwash people without them knowing it.
‘Report Teachers That Are Undercover Agents’
Yao at one time applied to be a journalist in the United States. She later became a Chinese language teacher because she saw how Beijing had infiltrated overseas media. She realized such infiltration could be seen everywhere in the United States.
Beijing also aggressively develops colonies of its ideology and imperceptibly brainwashes overseas Chinese. When there is an incident, these Chinese people will take the same stand as Beijing and view overseas Chinese dissidents with hatred. They become Beijing’s voice in other countries.
Insider information from China’s Linguistic Committee indicates that one of Hu Jintao’s think tanks suggested to him that although China was invaded many times during its history, Chinese culture was never compromised. This proves its strength, so they suggested the establishment of Confucius Institutes, and in the name of teaching Chinese language, teach Communist ideology instead of Confucianism’s principles.
‘I Am Chinese, Not an American’
Chinese journalist Li Gong noted in a 2007 interview that he saw a Chinese language public school teacher in the United States teaching students to say in Chinese, “I am Chinese, not an American.” “How can American children learn to love their country when they are taught this way? It terrifies me,” Li said. “Cultural infiltration using language is against the principles of Startalk.”
Startalk is a program of the National Security Language Initiative established by former President Bush in January of 2006. The initiative seeks to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are not now widely taught in the United States. It started with Arabic and then added Chinese.
Li by chance, met a Language Section Chief of the Department of Homeland Security who requested anonymity, since he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the department. Li asked why both languages (Arab and Chinese) are listed as homeland security strategy languages? The section chief answered Arab is for preventing terrorism, but only smiled when asked why Chinese was on the list.
When Li asked the section chief about the infiltration of agents into the schools, the section chief replied that two years ago, the CIA had asked the public to report any Chinese teachers who act like spies in Los Angeles.
Covert Brainwashing
It should be noted that the Communist Party’s propaganda website states that overseas language schools are one of the “three pillars” of the party’s international propaganda effort.
Parents are not aware that subtle methods of brainwashing are occurring in the textbooks and research assignments.
According to a Chinese language teacher affiliated with a Confucius Institute in the United States, who wishes to remain anonymous, parents and educators are not aware of the subtle methods of brainwashing occurring in the textbooks and assignments. These assignments include research into the lives of communist leaders, merits of communism, etc. Additionally, research assignments require students to use party English language websites hosted in China, the contents of which are generally not reviewed by the U.S. school system.
The HanBan, sponsor of the Confucius Institutes has various levels of textbooks for teaching Chinese courses. This Chinese language teacher provided the scanned upper half of page 93 in Volume 3 of Contemporary Chinese by Dangdai Zhongwen, volume 3, in use in 2008 in the United States, the English translation of a Chinese section states:
Going to see Ma Kesi means going to see God
The teacher posed the question, “Why do they discuss god? Why isn’t Ma Kesi literally translated? Ma Kesi is the god of communism. They don’t want the students to know the name.”
During the horrific Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong exhorted members of the Communist Party and its organizations that do its bidding to the death, “They will be greeted by Karl Marx.” Karl Marx in Simplified Chinese is pronounced Ma Kesi, the god of communism.
The teacher said that some may consider such matters trite. One must consider what else is hidden in these institute teaching materials and especially the research assignments in its curriculum.
‘... Because we don’t have communism in America’
One reason for this teacher’s willingness to give an interview was an unexpected meeting with a former student taught several years before. When asked what university the student was going to attend, the student replied, …
“I don’t want to attend any universities in America, or even in Tokyo. I want to go to a university in Beijing, because they teach communism there. I don’t understand why we don’t have communism in America.”
This teacher ended, “They have no idea about the truth, they don’t know the true history of the party!”
As a reporter and writer, I have shared this student’s statement with several seasoned educators and administrators through various channels. One senior administrator in Montana was skeptical; he could not believe that this had taken place. He thought I was misrepresenting the situation. Montana had already agreed to an institute. He knows the history of the communism, but the students don’t.
My grandfather once sheepishly shared with me that he was a communist in the Netherlands through the carpenters’ guild. After World War I, economic times were hard in Europe and many of the commoners in Europe were enamored with the communist promise of “Heaven on Earth.”
However, the Communist Revolution quickly opened their eyes. What happened in Russia caused the Dutch to renounce any affiliation with—quoting my grandfather—“The blood thirsty party.”
As our economy slows and more families are affected, the promise of “Heaven on Earth” could deeply affect how communism is viewed by our young people.
The Confucius Institutes, the third pillar of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine will not be covering the finer points of the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, let alone the systematic genocide of Falun Gong practitioners and other targeted groups taking place in China today.
Read the original Chinese article
