Beijing Replaces Discredited Confucius Institutes With Luban Workshop

A file image of Chinese leader Xi Jinping (C) with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (L) and Senegalese President Macky Sall (R) during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 4, 2018. (Lintao Zhang/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

The first Luban Workshop center was established in Thailand in 2016, according to a Voice of America (VOA) report. Now 25 centers have been opened in 19 countries around the world, the VOA stated.

The export model of Luban Workshop and Confucius Institute is basically the same—Chinese state-funded vocational and technical schools look for local partners in foreign countries, set up courses in local schools, teach Chinese standard technologies, and students will work in local projects after graduation. These specific projects are related to China’s Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) in these countries, VOA reported.

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.

This picture taken on Feb. 8, 2020, shows a part of the first rail line linking China to Laos, a key part of Beijing's 'Belt and Road' project across the Mekong, in Luang Prabang. (Aidan Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

This year, when Xi met with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, and Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Zaparov, he also mentioned establishing Luban Workshop centers in those countries.

‘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.

Protesters march through Tufts University against a Confucius Institute in Somerville, Mass., on March 13, 2021. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)

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.

Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya contributed to this report.