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Conclusion and Recommendations
US-China academic exchanges are valuable to both China and the United States and should be maintained and developed. However, in doing so, universities must be alert to the risks of engaging with the Chinese government, institutions, and funders and be proactive in applying a higher level of due diligence and vigilance as a defense of the core principle of academic freedom, especially when conflicts take place at home in their own universities.
Promote Transparency
Confucius Institutes We do not endorse calls for Confucius Institutes to be closed,
as long as several conditions are met. US institutions should make their CI agreements public to facilitate oversight by members of the university community and other concerned parties. Those agreements, in turn, must grant full managerial authority
to the host institution (not on a shared basis with the Hanban), so the university has full control over what a CI teaches, the activities it undertakes, the research grants it makes, and whom it employs. The clause in all Hanban contracts that CIs must operate “according to China’s laws” must be deleted.
If these standards cannot be attained, then the CI agreements should be terminated. Furthermore, universities should prevent any intervention by Cls in curricular requirements and course content in their overall Chinese studies curricula or other areas of study by maintaining a clear administrative separation between academic centers and departments on the one hand, and CIs on the other. Finally, universities must ensure that all public programming offered by their CIs conform to academic standards of balance and diversity and do not cross the line to become a platform for PRC propaganda, or even a circumscribed view of a controversial issue. In fact, this report would suggest that universities not permit Confucius Institutes to become involved in public programming that goes beyond the CI core mission of education about Chinese language and culture. To go beyond these two categories invites opportunities for politicized propaganda.
Apply Due Diligence To minimize the risks just identified, universities must rigorously apply far stricter due-diligence procedures to scrutinize the sources and purposes of gifts and contracts from China to ensure that they do not interfere with academic freedom. Universities accepting gifts from Chinese nationals, corporations, or foundations must insist that there be no restrictions on academic freedom. Foreign donations should continue to be welcomed, but universities must ensure that the conditions of acceptance are reasonable, consonant with their principles, subject to oversight, and do not allow the program to become a beachhead for inappropriate influence. It is important that all universities exercise high standards of due diligence and not only scrutinize the source of the gift but consider the implications of such
Universities
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