How American Academia Misleads About China

The Confucius Institute Building on the Troy University Campus in Alabama, U.S. on March 16, 2018 Kreeder13 via Wikimedia Commons

WASHINGTON—U.S. academia is having difficulty giving students and the public at large an honest picture of today’s China, according to experts.

Scholars are self-censoring, Chinese students attending U.S. colleges are kept on a tight ideological tether, and China-sponsored institutes for teaching Chinese culture are offering propaganda.

Self-Censorship

Perry Link, emeritus professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, says that for various reasons, especially to gain access to China for study, American scholars practice self-censorship about China and adopt the official narrative of the Chinese regime when talking about sensitive issues.