China’s communist regime has set up technical training centers–under the umbrella of the so-called Luban Workshop—in dozens of countries in recent years, replacing its overseas propaganda organization, the Confucius Institute.
Experts have warned that Luban Workshop is the regime’s new way of covertly exporting its ideology.
Zhou Dynasty Inventor
The technological training centers are named after legendary ancient Chinese inventor Lu Ban who lived in Zhou Dynasty (507 BC – 444 BC).Through them, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exerts its political and economic influence along its BRI expansion routes, such as the international railways in BRI participating countries, including Kenya’s Mombasa-Nairobi railway, the Hungary-Serbia railway, the China-Laos railway, and others.
Luban Workshop centers in participating countries have opened courses in automation, industrial robots, new energy, railways, EMU maintenance, automobiles, machinery, and electronic information.
In recent years, Party leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly promoted the Luban Workshop on international occasions. At the opening ceremony of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2018, Xi proposed to set up 10 Luban Workshop centers in Africa.
‘Purpose is to Buy People’s Hearts’
Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 6 that the CCP has a huge propaganda budget that feeds such initiatives as the Luban Workshop.Regime interest groups and those linked make money by engaging in such projects, Feng said, adding that they search for the most favorable entry point in the international community.
The main purpose of the Luban Workshop is to serve as part of the CCP’s overseas propaganda effort, which is, in the CCP’s own words is about “telling Chinese stories well.”
“The message is that it [the regime] is very generous and provides technology,” he said. “The purpose is to buy people’s hearts.”
Feng said that the CCP has the ability to do this because it takes away Chinese people’s wealth, and there is no restriction or supervision on how the regime spends it.
“In the past, when the outside world talked about Chinese culture, they thought of Confucius. Many people had a good impression of Confucius, so CCP used the brand of Confucius Institute to export its ideology,” Feng said.
“But because it has been done so aggressively, it has been boycotted by many countries, and it can no longer continue. So CCP changed to use another name,” Feng said.
Li Yuanhua, a former associate professor at the School of Educational Sciences at Capital Normal University in Beijing who currently lives in Australia, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 7 that the CCP’s infiltration abroad is omnipresent.
“Besides institutions or enterprises such as the Confucius Institute and Luban Workshop, Chinese embassies have always controlled local Chinese associations in foreign countries, such as Townsmen Associations and Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which are extensions of the CCP,” he said.
Li said that the CCP directly exports totalitarian politics to other countries and undermines the laws of host countries. Now some countries have recognized the threat of the CCP, but some countries still do not.
