The UK government has decided to stop its funding of £27 million for Mandarin teaching at branches of Chinese state-linked Confucius Institutes. This move is expected to be announced by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Tuesday, according to a report by The Guardian. However, the report adds that the funding will be stopped, but the branches will not be closed.
Last year, Rishi Sunak, who was then a contender for the prime minister’s post, pledged to close the Confucius Institutes in the UK, which promote the teaching of the Chinese language and culture in foreign countries. This decision comes as research showed that a visa scheme had been used to fast-track Chinese government-vetted staff to come to the UK to promote the values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at these institutes.
The UK has 30 branches of the Confucius Institutes, each based in a British university and in partnership with a Chinese entity (usually a university) and the Chinese government. The purpose of these institutes is to advance the CCP’s interest in British higher education and society more broadly. However, a report by UK-China Transparency, a charity, found that Chinese people applying to teach at the institutes were vetted by Beijing for their political characteristics, ethnicity, and ability to comply with CCP’s guidelines for foreign affairs.
The Guardian report also mentioned that the Home Office believed that Confucius staff were subject to the UK’s employment law. However, British universities said in a survey that they were not the employer of the staff at the institutes.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is expected to make a statement on Tuesday about China’s authoritarianism and the UK’s need to engage with China on issues such as health and climate emergency. He would also say that a cold war with China would be a betrayal of the security interests of the UK.
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