India is taking a “hard look” at two Chinese-language learning programs within Indian universities, with experts saying the Beijing-controlled Confucius Institutes (CI) are spreading the Chinese regime’s communist propaganda inside other countries.
India’s decision to review the programs is a sign of the deteriorating bilateral ties between the two countries following a bloody clash in June between the Indian military and the People’s Liberation Army in June at Galwan in the territory of Ladakh.
“This is a part of the overall strategy to bring pressure on China,” Bibhu Prasad Routray, an Indian strategic analyst and the director of Mantraya, a Goa-based think tank, told The Epoch Times.
Eventually, the officials narrowed their focus to two CI branches—at the University of Mumbai and The School of Chinese Language in Kolkata—after the first high-level review meeting of the ministry took place on Aug. 5.
“There are some facts that came to our attention during the review which we feel require deeper scrutiny.”
Rachelle Peterson, a senior research fellow at the New York-based National Association of Scholars, told The Epoch Times in an email that the Indian government should be wary of CI programs because they are a part of “China’s overseas propaganda network.”
Threat Behind Confucius Institutes
Doris Liu, director of the award-winning documentary “In the Name of Confucius,” told The Epoch Times that Confucius Institutes are absolutely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and thus they serve its agenda.More than 1,700 foreign education institutes in more than 162 countries or regions have adopted CI programs since they started being promoted by the Chinese regime in 2004, Liu says.
“Those institutes could practice espionage activities on behalf of China’s government. So they pose infringements of national security of whatever country [where] they are physically opened,” she said, adding that these espionage activities and the inherent threat would have likely increased as the bilateral ties between India and China deteriorated following the bloody clash in Galwan.
The United States declared the headquarters of the CI in Washington as a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China on Aug. 13.
Routray said India’s concerns are also the same, as China isn’t as open to India as India is to China, and India doesn’t get anything out of the education exchange.
“This is a present tactic by India to say that we will go to any extent to sort of cut ties with you. Because we have invested a lot, but we got nothing in return from you,” he said, adding that India’s efforts to review the institutes show that it is trying to act in unison with the United States.
“India is trying something that represents a kind of convergence between Indian strategy and the U.S. strategy against China.”
‘Whitewash China’s Human Rights Abuses’
Experts said another threat to countries that host the CI is the role these institutes play to build China’s image and silently promote its communist agendas.“Confucius Institutes teach Chinese Communist Party-aligned materials, whitewash China’s human rights abuses, minimize China’s aggression, and entirely excise events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. They bring Chinese government-selected teachers and textbooks to college classrooms. There is no appropriate place for Confucius Institutes on college campuses,” Peterson said.
Liu, who was working as a lecturer in a leading university in China that delivered support to CI programs before she migrated to Canada 15 years ago, highlighted three reported incidents in the past when Confucius Institutes interfered in free activities in host countries to protect its image.
Tel Aviv University closed an exhibition in 2008 about Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline banned inside China, under pressure from its CI program. A year later, North Carolina State University canceled an on-campus speech of Dalai Lama for the same reasons.
The most recent incident that Liu cites is from 2014 in Portugal and involved a leading official of Hanban, or the Office of the Chinese Language Council International, that until two months ago administered the CI globally.
“Hanban director Xu Lin ordered her staff to remove the few pages from all program books of the European Association for Chinese Studies’ annual conference because these pages contained information about Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation which was also a sponsor of the event,” said Liu.
‘Breach of Academic Freedom’
Liu said the CI censors and breaches academic freedom as the Chinese regime promotes its global agendas including its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road) through it.“Teachers and students were required to watch the CCP’s 19th National Congress and study Xi Jinping’s opening remarks, including the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative,” Liu said. At the Sapienza University of Rome, for example, CI program students were made to watch propaganda films promoting the Party line and the BRI as part of their study of the CCP’s 19th National Congress.
The Indian Ministry of Education hasn’t yet disclosed what it’s specifically scrutinizing about the two CI programs, but Routray said the Indian government is aware of how these institutes are spreading CCP influence inside India.
“The government assumes that these institutes are not just educational institutes, per se, but also are being used by the Chinese to influence the thought processes within India to generate a pro-China lobby within India to support academicians who want to have some kind of a soft leaning on the Chinese thought process,” Routray said.
