Confucius Institute Censorship Over Xi Jinping Biography and the Hardening Western Stance on China
Education and academia have become another front in the Western position against China
Another line of controversy has emerged in the increasingly tense relations between the liberal Western world and China. On October 22, German journalists Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges were disinvited from giving public talks about their new biography of the Chinese president titled Xi Jinping: the Most Powerful Man in the World, at Confucius Institutes affiliated with universities in Hannover and Duisburg, Germany following pressure from Beijing through the Chinese consul general in Düsseldorf. Chinese authorities ostensibly disagreed with Aust and Geiges’ take on President Xi in this new book.
Originally, both the German Confucius Institutes as well as their Chinese university counterparts had agreed to hold the talks until orders came down from higher Chinese authorities. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Aust explained that the cult of personality surrounding Xi in contemporary China has made it impossible to have any realistic discussion of the president even as a human being who has had formative life events. In response, the German universities organized their own events to host the two journalists outside of the Confucius Institute context.
Confucius Institutes are educational programs generally affiliated with universities abroad that are intended to promote the Chinese language and culture in foreign countries. While they present themselves innocently as these educational and cultural organizations in the same vein as the British Council or the Goethe-Institut, it is widely accepted that Confucius Institutes notoriously have ties to the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Chinese Communist Party government itself. This forms the basis of the debate over the true intentions of Confucius Institutes and the political implications for their presence at foreign universities.
This incident has sparked, yet again, the question of whether or not free, western educational institutions should retain affiliations with Confucius Institutes due to their restrictions on free speech, thought, and expression, which are hallmarks of western universities. The decision by the German universities to go ahead with the talks outside of cooperation with the Confucius Institute is the best solution to the tension surrounding the content of this book. However, the controversy illustrates the precarious position that China has entered into both at home and abroad.
Domestically, Chinese society has nestled itself once again into a ‘Mandate of Heaven’ paradigm whereby the Chinese ruler is elevated to a quasi-deified role whose very position is ordained by the divine. The great fear of rulers under this designation has always been the mishandling of large-scale catastrophes such as floods, famines, droughts, earthquakes, rebellions, and military challenges. Just as their rule is legitimized by divinity, it can also be stripped when governance fails. In modern China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is poised to shape domestic policy such that President Xi may end up ruling the country for the rest of his life.
In this most elevated position, Xi’s rule must be seen as impeccable and his regime will not tolerate any events that may portray the direction of China otherwise. Thus, any economic stagnation, earthquake in the central regions, floods in the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, disturbances in Xinjiang, or Taiwan separatism has the potential to balloon to enormous proportions as headaches for the Chinese regime.
On the foreign stage, the governance of the second-largest economy and most populous country in the world under a cult of personality figure should give the rest of the world some pause as well. As China’s integration into the global community has deepened since its economic liberalization a few decades ago, the regime’s track record on liberal values has become a growing concern around the world. If an international affair would challenge the legitimacy or credibility of the ruling regime, there could be a grave miscalculation at the highest levels of leadership. As the west increasingly projects power in Asia as a counter to China, the potential for a misstep increases dramatically.
In Germany, almost all the major political parties have taken a critical position toward China, focusing on geostrategy, economic relations, and human rights. Germany has pledged to keep a long-term presence in the Pacific where it has echoed the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Biden administration’s position that China is threatening the ‘rules-based international order.’ The policy is part of the larger western shift toward the Indo-Pacific region to counter China in Asia, especially in the South China Sea.
In the name of free speech and thought, cutting ties with Confucius Institutes would be a step in the right direction in the realm of education and academia. In the U.S., the federal government forced universities that had affiliations with Confucius Institutes to choose between keeping them open and funding from the Defense Department. The controversy over free speech at western universities vis-à-vis Chinese influence at Confucius Institutes makes up just one part of the overall growing rift between China and the West at large as ideologies, economic relations, political positions, and security concerns ramp up closer to more serious forms of confrontation.