“They know that we are right and they are wrong,” says journalism professor Mar Llera, who in early April 2024 elbowed her way into the inauguration ceremony for a Confucius Institute being set up at Seville University in Spain.
Before being booted from the dais, Llera and her colleague Santiago Ramírez, a researcher, displayed banners at the event (shown above) to publicize their objections.
Una amenaza
The message carried by Ramírez says, in part, “Servicios de inteligencia europeos y espanoles han advertido sobre los Institutos Confucio como ‘amenaza para la seguridad nacional,’ ” which means something like “European and Spanish intelligence services have warned that the Confucius Institutes are a ‘threat to national security.’ ”
Worried that the university might provide a home for one of the Institutes, Llera had been trying for quite some time to obtain an audience with university officials to explain her concerns. She finally got a brief meeting with the vice-chancellor of the university not long before the Institute was to be ceremoniously welcomed.
“One month ago, the vice chancellor, knowing that they were going to open this institute without [our] being informed, received us. I should acknowledge that I was late because I was confused [about the venue]. So we had just 15 minutes,” she told Radio Free Asia.
“During these 15 minutes I explained that, first of all, 130 Confucius Institutes have been kind of closed down all around the world and this is because…there is evidence shown by the intelligence services that they pose a threat to our national security. They spy on scholars and students….
“She couldn’t provide me with any counterargument, and she just said, ‘we will pay attention to what’s going on.’…
“The vice-chancellor [also] said, we don’t have any premises, any venue, any appropriate building to carry out these activities. So we’re not going to do anything. And she was clearly lying to us.”
Naïve or cynical
RFA notes that the University of Seville, which declined to comment on Llera’s claims, is thus bucking the global trend of at least ostensibly relinquishing relationships with Confucius Institutes. (The qualification “ostensibly” is necessary because many erstwhile Institutes may be simply adopting new names and superficially different form while keeping the same CCP agenda.)
If Llera’s account is accurate, the unnamed vice-chancellor presented herself as a babe in the woods with no idea of the connection of the Confucius Institutes to the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party even as she was lying about the school’s plan to provide a venue for an Institute. Perhaps she and other Seville University officials already knew that the Institutes are a surveillance and propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party but didn’t want to rock the boat because of CCP donations to the school.
I don’t know whether this is the situation. But it’s a question that in his latest column James Roth encourages us to ask.
Also see:
The Diplomat: “The Rise and Fall of Confucius Institutes in the US”
“It remains to be seen if the stringent financial sanctions colleges faced for hosting Confucius Institutes will be enforced on their copycat programs or not. If not, China will continue to exert its influence and interests on a cooperative, collaborative American academia for years to come.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “China’s Donations to Your Alma Mater”
“Funding ensures the academic equivalent of ‘good will’ toward the donor.”
