The Chinese communists’ relentless campaign to gain influence at all levels of Australia, from agriculture to government, has been labelled a Silent Invasion. Beijing’s most successful bridgehead may well be universities. Apparently besotted by both rivers of Yuan and the Marxist left’s undying loyalty to authoritarian regimes, Australia’s universities secretly put themselves under Beijing’s control. Forget freedom, the overwhelmingly left-wing academics have greeted the buckets of Chinese funding by dropping their trousers, bending over, and asking “How much?”
RMIT agreed to give a Chinese government agency overriding authority over teaching at its Confucius Institute, one of 13 China-funded cultural education centres at Australian universities.
In agreeing to comply with Beijing-based Hanban’s decision-making authority, RMIT’s previously undisclosed contract is similar to a handful of other Australian Confucius Institute agreements uncovered earlier this year.
“The institute must accept the assessment of the [Confucius Institute] Headquarters on the teaching quality,” the agreement between Hanban and RMIT states…The teaching quality clause is identical to those agreed to by the University of Queensland, Griffith University, La Trobe University and Charles Darwin University.
Which just goes to show how easily “academic integrity” is bought.
Despite the benign name, “Confucius institutes” are infamous as Trojan horses for the communist regime. Beijing’s agents not only police what is taught in Australian universities, they spy on and intimidate Chinese nationals studying in Australia, and interfere in local politics, as shown by the violent attacks on recent pro-Hong Kong events.
The institutes are joint ventures between the host university, a Chinese partner university, and Hanban, an agency under China’s education ministry which supplies funding, staff and resources. Confucius Institutes provide teaching on Chinese culture and language and some hold public events on political, social and economic issues.
Another newly uncovered agreement, struck by the University of Adelaide and Hanban…states the institute will be governed by a board, with the composition of the board to be negotiated and a director to be appointed by the university subject to Hanban’s approval.
theage.com.au/politics/federal/rmit-granted-beijing-authority-over-teaching-at-confucius-institute
This is even more intrusive than the relatively mild governance model suggested by the Ramsay Institute for its proposed Centres for Western Civilisation – which sent Australia’s academics screaming to the press about “academic freedom”, “racism” and “fascism”. Yet, they happily acquiesce to far more sinister control from Beijing.
It’s beyond obvious by now that too many Australian academics have bugger-all concern for actual intellectual freedom. All they want is the freedom to hate Australia and further the Marxist Long March through the Institutions.