Hanban

Template:ChineseText Hanban (Chinese: 汉办) is the colloquial abbreviation for the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.

Administration

It is governed by the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Zhongguo Guojia Hanyu Guoji Tuiguang Lingdao Xiaozu Bangongshi, Chinese: 中国国家汉语国际推广领导小组办公室), a non-government and non-profit organization affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China.

According to the mission statement: "Hanban is committed to developing Chinese language and culture teaching resources and making its services available worldwide, meeting the demands of overseas Chinese learners to the utmost degree, and to contributing to global cultural diversity and harmony." Generally, the Council is charged with cultivating knowledge and interest in the Chinese language and culture in nations around the world that are not native speakers of Chinese.

The following twelve state ministries and commissions are represented in the Chinese Language Council International:

• General Office of the State Council
• Ministry of Education
• Ministry of Finance
• Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• State Development and Reform Commission
• Ministry of Commerce
• Ministry of Culture
• State Administration of Radio Film and Television (China Radio International)
• State Press and Publications Administration
• State Council Information Office and the State Language Committee

Criticisms and controversies

Academics and journalists have criticized the Hanban, particularly the Confucius Institute program that has rapidly grown worldwide since 2004.

Confucius Institute

Main article: Confucius Institute

Hanban is most notable for the Confucius Institute program, but it also sponsors the Chinese Bridge competition, which is a competition in Chinese proficiency for non-native speakers. The current President of the Council is State Councilor Chen Zhili. On April 2007 while inspecting Hanban, Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo in charge of ideology and propaganda stated that: "the construction of Confucius Institutes is an important channel to glorify Chinese culture, to help Chinese culture spread to the world...(which is) part of China's foreign propaganda strategy""

The CIs are also criticized for their hiring practices. It was revealed that CI teachers are forbidden to have any in class discussion on or any involvement with topics sensitive to the Chinese regime, such as the Uyghurs, Tibet, Falun Gong, democracy advocates, etc. Canada's McMaster University terminated its contract with its CI after Sonia Zhao, former teacher at the University's CI, quit her job, and subsequently appealed to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario for the university's “giving legitimization to discrimination.” Under her job contract with the CI Ms. Zhao was forced to hide her belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by the Communist party of China.

EACS conference censorship

A international incident occurred in July 2014 when Hanban director Xu Lin ordered pages torn out from the main conference program of a major European Sinology association conference in Portugal, the night before the conference, to remove any reference to Taiwan institutions. The reason for the censorship was apparently concern that the publicity for independent Taiwan institutions cast doubt on China's claim to Taiwan. The association protested in the strongest terms and reprinted all the deleted materials to distribute to all conference members.

The night before the 23–26 July 2014 conference of the European Association of Chinese Studies (EACS) at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, Hanban Vice-Minister Xu Lin (许琳), who is Director-General of the Confucius Institute Headquarters (CIH), ordered that pages to which she objected be torn out of the conference abstract and program. Roger Greatrex, President of the EACS, subsequently issued a Report on the deletion of pages from conference materials and a public Letter of Protest at Hanban interference at the conference. The report detailed the timeline of events concerning Xu Lin's censorship.

Sun Lam, conference co-organizer at the University of Minho and director of the Confucius institute there, had applied for funding from the Confucius China Studies Program (CCSP), which is administered by the Confucius Institute, and had received €28,040. The Taiwanese Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange was another sponsor of the conference, as it has been for 20 years.

The money from the CCSP included the €7,000 cost for printing 400 copies of the conference abstracts; it did not include the cost of printing the conference program, which was paid for by EACS members. The CCSP international conference funding application states, "The conference is regulated by the laws and decrees of both China and the host country, and will not carry out any activities which are deemed to be adverse to the social order." Dr. Lam submitted a draft copy of the program to the CCSP for approval on 4 July 2014, and was told that it looked "splendid" (piaolang 漂亮).

Conference registration began on 22 July 2014, and about 100 participants received complete copies of the abstracts and program, which comprised 89 pages plus cover and front matter, printed double-sided on 48 pages. However, after Xu Lin arrived that evening, she "issued a mandatory request that mention of the CCSP sponsorship be removed from the Conference Abstracts", and ordered her entourage from Confucius Institute Headquarters to remove all conference materials and take them to the apartment of a local Confucius Institute employee. When the remaining 300 participants arrived for conference registration on 23 July, they did not receive the printed abstracts or programs but only a brief summarized schedule. After last-minute negotiations between Xu Lin and conference organizers to ensure conference members received the program, a compromise was made to allow the removal of one abstract page that mentioned the CCSP support of the conference.

On the morning of 24 July, the remaining 300 conference participants received their materials, which were now missing four printed pages: the frontispiece mentioning CCSP sponsorship in the conference abstract, and three pages from the conference program. These expurgated pages contained information regarding:

• Hanban's Confucius China Studies Program, and recommended restaurants in Braga (15/16)
• the book exhibition and library donation organized by the Taiwan National Central Library as well as other publishers exhibiting books, and Dr. Sun Lam and Ambassador Joao de Deus Ramos, the keynote speaker (19/20, not removed from some copies)
• self-presentation by the Taiwanese Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which has sponsored EACS conference for over twenty years, and conference activities (59/60).

When Roger Greatrex, president of the EACS, learned of this censorship, he ordered that 500 copies of the original program immediately be printed and distributed to participants. He later wrote, "The seizure of the materials in such an unauthorized manner, after the conference had already begun, was extremely injudicious, and has promoted a negative view of the Confucius Institute Headquarters". The EACS letter of protest said this had been "the first occasion in the history of the EACS that its conference materials have been censored." It concluded, "Such interference in the internal organization of the international conference of an independent and democratically organized non-profitable academic organization is totally unacceptable."

Tseng Shu-hsien (曾淑賢), director-general of the National Central Library, stated that EACS officials and members had spoken out against Xu during the opening ceremony.

See also

• Chinese Bridge

External links

• Official website Template:Zh icon
• Official English website