Supporting Letter to No-CI Rally at Tufts Univ.
反對塔芙茨大學孔子學院集會的支持信

I commend the Tibetan, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Falun Gong communities and anyone who have voiced out your concerns about the Confucius institutes. I wish I could be part of you, and in spirit I am with you.

Dear sisters and brothers pushing the No-CI campaign in Boston,

This is Doris Liu, director of the documentary “In the Name of Confucius”. I am writing from Toronto, Canada to support and join your great effort in urging the Tufts University to close its Confucius Institute (CI).

It has been widely known now that the Confucius institutes are a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to wage a charm offensive to the western free world. Disguised by language and cultural education, the CIs target the universities, colleges and school boards in order to influence the young minds who are the future leaders of our societies. The textbooks used at the CIs are mostly selected and approved by the government of China. The Chinese teachers working at the CI’s are hand-picked by the Chinese Communist Party and trained to tell the CCP lines as well as to stifle free speech on foreign campus.

The main character in my film, former CI teacher Sonia Zhao, told me that during the training before she was sent to Canada, she was told to avoid discussions about the sensitive topics such as Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen, or Falun Gong, and if she had to answer the students, she must say what the CCP requires her to say. A Chinese teacher at the now closed Stockholm University CI was disciplined by his director after expressed different political views.

It is also an unwritten precondition for CI host institutions that they would not discuss in their Confucius Institutes the issues that are deemed as taboos by the CCP. A CI director at a Canadian University admitted to one of my journalist friends during an interview that they would not discuss Tibet or Falun Gong at his Confucius Institute. However, he said, outside the CI in his university, they are free to discuss anything.

While I was traveling around the world attending screenings and discussions of my film, I had the opportunity to meet with some CI representatives, some of whom also admitted to me, face to face, that they would not discuss those sensitive topics in their Confucius institutes and that was a mutual agreement when they negotiated with Hanban the opening of the CIs. Again, they were satisfied that they have other places in their universities to talk about the CCP taboos, although they do not have such freedom inside their own Confucius institutes.

In the few times when these topics are discussed at the Confucius institutes, based on my research, either the content was provided by the Chinese government or the discussion was to the satisfaction of the CCP. A Tibet picture exhibition held by Maryland University CI was such an event where The Chinese consulate official criticized the Dalai Lama at his opening remark. Another similar event took place at a Canadian CI where the pictures in exhibition were all from the Xinhua News agency, which we know is the CCP mouthpiece. The students and teachers of the CIs were shown the beautiful landscapes of Tibet and the happy faces of Tibetans, but never the true and sad reality of self-immolation or other ordeals. I’m sure if a CI talks about the Uyghur issue today, it will portray the concentration camps as just what the Chinese government calls the “re-education” camps when in fact the dealing of the ethnic minority is seen as genocide.

On top of the academic concerns, there is also an issue of human rights violations – the Chinese government hires CI teachers under a discriminatory policy, which says in black and white that the CI teachers cannot participate in Falun Gong. This was the very reason that Canada’s McMaster University closed its CI in 2013. The CI host universities and schools have been hiding behind the fact that the hiring of the Chinese teachers was done by the Chinese government not by the host institutions. They take it as an excuse and turned a blind eye to this sheer discrimination. Hasn’t a single school, except McMaster University, ever requested Hanban to remove that discriminatory clause.

Anyone who upholds the values of academic freedom, freedom of speech, and human rights would be dismayed by the fact that some of our educational institutions have agreed to compromise these fundamental principles to the CCP’s almighty dollars.

Among all the threats that the Confucius institutes have posed to foreign countries, the most dangerous one is national security. Both directors of FBI and CIA have publicly warned about the CIs. The Trump administration passed laws to restrict the ability of the CI host schools to apply funds from federal government. Former Secretary of State Mr. Pompeo designated the Confucius Institute US centre as a foreign mission.  The Australian government requested the 13 universities to register there Confucius institutes as foreign agents. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has pointed out that the Confucius institutes are the Chinese communist Party’s soft power, and they post grave threats. The Belgium intelligence agency urged the universities in its country to close the Confucius institutes. On March 4^th, the US Senate unanimously passed a bill that requires the CI host universities and schools to have full control of the institutes from the hiring of Staffs to the use of textbooks otherwise the host schools could suffer from getting funding.

More than 40 universities in America have closed their Confucius institutes, including last month the Portland State University who had also gone through a prolonged review of its CI agreement.

I am extremely disappointed that even after an internal review and hearings from concerned groups and experts, including myself, Tufts University decided to renew its CI agreement. I understand as a private university, Tufts may not be affected by the federal legislations in terms of getting funding. However, as a higher educational institution, Tufts is obliged to safeguarding our fundamental values of freedom and human rights. Therefore, I call on Tufts to reconsider your partnership with the Confucius Institute, and do not be complicit to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence propaganda operations in America by hosting the CI.

I commend the Tibetan, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Falun Gong communities and anyone who have voiced out your concerns about the Confucius institutes, and particularly you people who have come out every Saturday in the blizzard winter of Boston to protest the Tufts CI peacefully and persistently. I wish I could be part of you, and in spirit I am with you.

Last, I wanted to take this opportunity to update you that my film “In the Name of Confucius” is now available on major digital platforms (details enclosed below), so if you wish you could watch it yourself and share it with others.

Thank you so very much for your great effort!

Love,

Doris

March 7, 2021