A senior academic at Sydney University has raised concerns that a deal between Australia's oldest university and China's Confucius Institutes could compromise the university's prestigious reputation.
The University of Sydney has an "in-principle agreement" with Chinese education authorities to become host to an institute but details are still be finalised, The Australian reported.
Professor Jocelyn Chey, a former diplomat and now lecturer in Chinese Studies, said Confucius institutes were primarily propaganda tools for the Chinese Communist Party and should not be integrated into the regular academic system.
"I was concerned that the University of Sydney was entering into an agreement with the [Chinese] Ministry of Education without considering what the objectives of the Chinese side were," she told The Epoch Times.
"I understand that the university might see some benefits in doing that but they should be doing that with their eyes open."
Sydney University will become the fourth university in Australia to house a Confucius institute, after the University of Western Australia in 2005, Melbourne University in 2006 and the University of Adelaide in March 2007.
The Sydney Confucius institute will also become one of dozens that have are already been set up in leading universities around the world and will form part of a network which, the institute website in Melbourne says, will eventually incorporate 100 institutes.
Confucius Institutes are considered to be similar to France's Alliance Francais and Germany's Goethe Institutes in the way they are government funded and organised to promote language and culture but according to Adelaide University academics, Professor Purnendra Jain and Dr Gerry Groot, there are distinct differences.
"Those European organizations… locate their offices in normal commercial locations wherever their governments can rent appropriate space," they write on Asia Times online. "There is no attempt to integrate them into their host societies via institutional link-ups."
"In contrast, the Confucius Institutes are being incorporated into leading universities and colleges around the world as well as being linked to China not only by their Hanban [Chinese Office for language] connections, but also by supportive twinning arrangements with key Chinese universities," they said.
Professor Chey, said the institutes varied from campus to campus but most offered Chinese language courses to the local community.
"That is fair enough but the reason I was concerned," she said, "was that the University of Sydney was proposing to integrate the Confucius Institute into the regular academic program."
This would be totally inappropriate she said as "it would be more difficult for academics to maintain their freedom and independence."
Professor Chey said there were many others that shared her concerns about Beijing's use of "soft power" or persuasive means to influence regional perceptions of it.
"They [the Chinese] are in a more sophisticated way using trade, aid and cultural exchanges of one kind and another to influence public opinion around the world to create an atmosphere which makes it easier to achieve their political objectives," she said, "and the establishment of Confucius institutes is part of that international campaign."
Professor Chey said the strategy seemed to be working as recent surveys of public opinion in this country indicated that the public held a positive view of China and did not rate it highly as a threat.
Joshua Kurlantzick author of the book China's Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power said China was downplaying its military power (hard power) while highlighting its "soft power" right across the region. This "could be disastrous for South East Asia'" he warned, "for democratization, for anticorruption initiatives, and for good governance."
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