Talk:Criticism of Confucius Institutes

Improving lead

In the content transfer from the original CI article, the Schimdt (2010b) reference was lost and misquoted. Although Schmidt mentions "scant evidence of meddling" at 61 US universities (not "hundreds of Institutes already established"), he also details the Tel Aviv University legal controversy. I've added the reference, revised the citation, and reduced the wordy lead.

Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the Ulara Nakagawa reference. However, I cannot find the source for this paraphrase: "Perhaps out of fear of provoking further criticism, the Institute has largely avoided controversial issues and has limited itself to language education programs." The closest seems to be the Don Starr quote, "The Chinese are going to avoid contentious areas such as human rights and democracies and those kinds of things." Please clarify. Keahapana (talk) 23:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It's actually a paraphrase of two separate sentences in the article. The first part of the sentence ("Perhaps out of fear of provoking further criticism, the Institute has largely avoided controversial issues") is a paraphrase of "The Chinese are going to avoid contentious areas such as human rights and democracies and those kinds of things", while the second part ("has limited itself to language education programs") was meant to be a paraphrase of "All this seems to make sense, and after speaking to a range of people I’ve seen little to support the notion of Confucius Institutes as ominous propaganda. On the contrary, those involved who I’ve spoken with seem genuinely interested in promoting cultural understanding and better communication". I've rephrased the second part to "has been perceived as limiting itself to language and cultural programs", to closer match Nakagara's original line . I apologize for not making that clear.--JeremyMiller (talk) 13:33, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Some general observations

Since I was so aggressive in my edits of this content at Confucius Institute I though it would be most appropriate to hold off from editing this page at least for some time. Nonetheless I have a few general observations which I believe are worth discussing.

1. The page content as it is is somewhat redundant. I believe that it would be more logical and easier to read were it organized thematically and not chronologically. similar events could be grouped together, and quotes which are pretty much the same could be merged. The events don't follow a logical chronological order, one event does not seem to lead to the next. That one event happened in 2005 appears to have very very little relevance, so organizing the contents by years is fairly arbitrary. I'm not going to decide what those themes are but the few that come to mind are: 1. professors fear for academic integrity. 2. organized opposition to the establishment of CIs. 3. Tel aviv University
2. . As it is the article is mostly a collection of quotes without much context. The article should help the reader understand how the topic breaks down not just tell them what a bunch of people have said about it taken out of context.
3. if changes make the article shorter, that should not be seen as a bad thing. A very informative and well-written short article is always better then a long article which doesn't provide some insight for the reader.
4. the idea that the CIs actually avoid politics instead of censoring them is worth expanding upon. There's a quote in there somewhere about it but I don't think its explained well enough. What I know of the CIs this makes alot of sense, they want to have influence but they don't want to play into fears that folks are bound to have of a PRC initiative, that it is meddling in political speech at the university. I don't think avoidance and censorship are unrelated. they're also not the same.

I'm not going to make these changes, at least for now. The above are, of course, just suggestions. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 06:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

1. We agree that the content is somewhat redundant and needs improvement. The current organization by years isn't ideal, but it seems more workable than any of the previous organizations, as discussed in the CI Talk Archive. It would be great if we can find a better thematic division of sections, but I don't know which would work. These two hypothetical "professors fear" and "organized opposition" themes overlap because teachers' opposition is at the core of most reported controversies. That would leave two sections, controversies in Israel and in all other countries. You're correct that Tel Aviv University was egregious an example of CI interference, but the Schmidt ref also mentions the University of Oregon and University of Washington. In my personal opinion, I think the unethical and unpunished actions of the CI director at the University of Waterloo were equally egregious. (Incidentally, that's why I wrote "few" instead of "one")
2. Yes, it would be useful to add better context, as long as it doesn't mean deleting relevant references or informative quotes. Perhaps we could move some of the lead into a new Background section. Another possibility would be to write a summary for each year, noting developments like institutions revoking contracts with existing CIs beginning in 2010.
3. Although less is sometimes more, now that we've split the content here, I don't think length is a problem. The current page is much smaller than the comparable Concerns and controversies over the 2008 Summer Olympics, Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Winter Olympics pages.
4. Yes, that's an interesting idea, but (as mentioned above) not what the Nakagawa article says. Should we wait to hear from JermeyMiller or change it now?

Thanks again for your skillful editorial improvements to this and the CI articles. Perhaps we or some other contributors can think of better thematic sections. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 23:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I can reassure you about thematic divisions by saying they will evolve over time. The sections I have proposed are certainly not perfect, maybe not even very good, but if you can think of something better I suggest you just go for it, even if it ends up seeming a little choppy. The article is not very polished as it is and since we both agree that organizing it by year isn't the way to go then just go for anything that seems better. Other editors will be there to help make it work, or change the organization further. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 00:26, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with both of you that it would be better if the article was divided thematically. Perhaps "Protests and petitions" (Combining the professors fear and organized opposition themes into one), "Government responses" (For direct responses by government officials on CIs. There's an interesting quote on the Pentagon strangely providing funding for the CI that we could use), and "Evaluations of Conduct" (For how the CIs have been evaluated so far. Other than the embarrassing and blatant Israel incident, sources like the Chronicle of Higher Education contend that there hasn't been much evidence of direct inference so far. There have been many cases where individuals affiliated with a CI have made embarrassing or controversial comments, but nothing especially egregious.)--JeremyMiller (talk) 14:01, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

We could also have a section on "Speculation of Intent", to group all the speculative claims made in the article, which could help reduce the redundancy affecting the current article.--JeremyMiller (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, just make sure that we are stating claims with the right language, and that we aren't using those claims to make our own arguments, especially with that bit about the pentagon, sounds interesting but we shouldn't over generalize or add our own implied arguments. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 18:23, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for suggesting "Protests and petitions", "Government responses", "Evaluations of Conduct", and "Speculation of Intent" divisions. They're reminiscent of the original CI article Controversies section divided between government officials, educators, and journalists. They were impractical because many CI controversies involve two or three of these thematic divisions, creating an either/or Procrustean bed where a ref is understated or duplicated. For instance, the recent New South Wales controversy involves all four: petition, government response, evaluation, and speculation.

Metal.Lunchbox is right about avoiding POV paraphrases. For the Nakagawa article, instead of footnoting the quotes, we should move them into the page text. The current restatement uses some loaded words not found in the article: "Perhaps out of fear for provoking further criticism ..." What do you think? Keahapana (talk) 22:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Questions about Siow quote

Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the excellent Siow reference. After finding the original Asia Pacific Bulletin link and reading the article, I'm curious about this: "Han Ban’s annual budget was only US$145 million in 2009 so it would be false to state that China has been spending massively on these institutes." Why does the Hanban's official 2009 Annual Report list a CI budget of 1,228,258,000 CNY? That's about $180 million at the 2009 rate of 1 CNY = 0.1464 USD. If no one mentioned massive spending, is this a straw-man argument? Keahapana (talk) 02:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Page organization

Apologies for what will be a fairly cursory comment, but I'd like to propose a revision of this article's organization. Currently it is organized more or less chronologically, but I think it would serve the reader much better if we could arrange it thematically. For instance, we might decide to organize the major subheadings as follows (this is entirely open to debate, of course):

• History / Background
• Relationship to Chinese party-state
• Financing
• Espionage
• Viability
• Function as a tool of soft power / overseas propaganda
• Concerns over academic freedom
• Discrimination
• Interference in free expression (vis-à-vis Tibet, Taiwanese independence, Falun Gong, etc.)
• Other controversies

Thoughts?Homunculus (duihua) 05:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh man, I really need to read previous talk discussions before starting a new topic. In any case, I'm glad to see that there's a general consensus in favor of a thematic reorganization, but since no outline was previously agreed upon, my above post may still have some merit. Homunculus (duihua) 05:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to assume silence means consent. I've started working on this, but because it's such a major restructuring, I can't really implement it incrementally on the page, so I'm putting it together offline. Stand by.Homunculus (duihua) 13:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please try. Let's hope this reorganized version doesn't lose existing quotes and references, which has happened before. Thanks, Keahapana (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I will be mindful to preserve all that is good from the current page. I realize a lot of research has gone into this product, however disorganized it may be.Homunculus (duihua) 02:49, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it sounds good. I want to say however that we should not be over cautious about removing quotes. As it is the article is very quote heavy which is not good. We need to be summarizing information found in WP:SECONDARY sources as much as possible, not selecting quotes. There's nothing wrong with quotes per-se, but from WP:Quotations: "Where a quotation presents rhetorical language in place of more neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias, it can be a backdoor method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia's narrative on the subject, and should be avoided." Regardless of the motives of the editor selecting the quote, it is preferable to summarize in neutral language where possible when dealing with controversy. There seems to be consensus that the current organization is subpar and your proposal seems logical, go for it. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 05:50, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I should also add that in some cases quotes can mess with our need for verifiability and can be generally confusing. In the event the quote is some statement of fact the reader will look at the quote marks and wonder, well did it really happen that way or is wikipedia just saying that this one person says its that way, why? We should stick with WP voice as much as possible, especially since some of these quotes are unnotable personalities saying essentially the same thing, something we could easily summarize in language appropriate for an encyclopedia like ours. Much of the article is in fact just a list of quotes with some context, the reader could use a little more in-depth summary than that. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 06:01, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that we should add more contexts from the references and delete quotes from non-notable sources (Who's "Falk Hartig"?). My concern derives from previous edits that misconstrued critical quotes. The history of the Confucius Institute's "Controversies" section shows repeated POV distortions through paraphrasing people who criticize CIs. Please understand that I'm not trying to be dickish. I only want to maintain the integrity of the references (full disclosure: many of which I've contributed), and avoid misusing summary to make the CI controversies seem uncontroversial. WP:QUOTE also says:

"In some instances, quotations are preferred to text. For example:

• When dealing with a controversial subject. As per the WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV policy, biased statements of opinion can only be presented with attribution. Quotations are the simplest form of attribution. Editor of controversial subject should quote the actual spoken or written words to refer to the most controversial ideas. Controversial ideas must never appear to be "from Wikipedia"."

Keahapana (talk) 20:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Let us try to keep these two concerns in mind then. I think we can all agree that these are both valid concerns. Don't worry too much about being perceived as dickish. You make an argument that is reasonable and backed up in written policy, nothing dickish in that. It is easy to get overzealous when working on a page with so many quotes. The solution is simply everyone being mindful of this pitfall and all working to reorganize and reformat the page in a manner that is more balanced than one editor might be able to achieve on their own. The page isn't going to be fixed all at once and no deletion of content is permanent. One category of quote editing that I think fits neatly within both of these concerns is the consolidation of quotes which say more or less the same thing. It seems reasonable to pick the better one and incorporate the others into the summary-style prose around the kept quote. I'm not saying we should get rid of all these quotes but a quick look at the article it to be more like a chronological sources list than an article on the topic. In particular we should focus on cases where something actually happened and tell the reader what happened in neutral language instead of just giving them a couple relevant quotes about it. For one thing we make no effort to give the reader the information they need to evaluate the claims made in the quotes. They can do a google search to find out what some editorials have to say about CIs, our job is not to collect those quotes but to put together an encyclopedia article which provides general information on the topic.

The paragraph in 2010 based on Ren Zhe's (who?) paper is particularly troublesome. That paper does not cite any of its sources for the accusations and appears to be the unsourced opinions of one research fellow, "The views expressed in this commentary are solely the author’s own." Naturally we should not simply summarize the accusations and make them in wikipedia's voice. In this case I think we need to ask if this passes WP:VERIFIABILITY. The accusation of corruption cannot be verified. It is of little use to our readers to know simply that some un-notable scholar made such a claim. I find the claim dubious and while it would we interesting if it is in fact true, We can't uncritically repeat unsourced hearsay. It may be most effective to put the issue of specific quotes aside for the momment and simply focus on reorganization first. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 23:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the Ren Zhe paper, there are a few things in there that are helpful, including information on budgets and operations. I would like to be able to draw from it, and plan to enquire with the George Washington University about this publication. If it is subject to a reasonably rigorous peer-review process, I think it should pass as a reliable source.Homunculus (duihua) 21:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I encourage contacting them. I had the same idea a while back, as it would be nice to use the source but I tried to contact the author to no avail. I cannot be sure but it does not look peer-reviewed, or even particularly academic. That no sources are mentioned is a bit problematic and then that disclaimer about it being the opinion of one author. I can't be sure what exactly the paper is though. I'd be curious to see was GWU folks say about it. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 00:37, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The Sigur Center at the Elliot School of International Affairs is certainly reputable. I also tried emailing Ren Zhe (任哲) at Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center, but no reply. Let's see what we can learn before deleting. Keahapana (talk) 02:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. The Ren Zhe publication was part of a series of policy commentaries published by the Sigur Center's Rising Power Initiative. The publications are reviewed by the initiative's three directors, all of whom are professors at the Elliott School in an Asian studies/political science field. It's not as formal a peer review process as one would find for publication in an academic journal, but is certainly far more demanding than any news article.Homunculus (duihua) 18:57, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Summary of changes

I just implemented the planned page reorganization. There's still a lot of room for improvement in this article, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I preserved the vast majority of content from the previous page, though many of the critical, non-specific quotes are now consolidated into one section. Otherwise it is organized thematically, though I suspect there is a certain inevitable amount of overlap in some of these themes. I also added in some additional research, and hope to do more of this. Some of the sections lack a cohesive narrative, so that's another thing to address. Not sure there's too much else to say at this point; I'll let the page speak for itself.Homunculus (duihua) 21:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to be slow in replying. Thanks to Homunculus for all the reorganizing work. The revisions are coming together nicely. I fixed the capitalization in section headings, and tagged the missing "BCIT" reference. Could this be the "Has BCIT sold out to Chinese propaganda?" article? There a few minor omissions and two more significant ones (about the University of Waterloo and Osaka Sangyo University). Was this just an oversight or was there a reason? Thanks again, Keahapana (talk) 02:52, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks great, I'll be by to delete everything tomorrow, not really - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 05:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Keahapana, the reference to the University of Waterloo incident, whereby a Confucius Institute instructor organized students to protest Canadian media coverage, is very interesting (and, if you ask me, a validation of concerns that CIs could be used improperly). But the source appears to be a blog, so I was reluctant to include it. If I'm wrong, or if you think that this is a good time to ignore RS guidelines, I won't protest. Regarding the Osaka apology, I don't have strong feelings either way. If you think it warrants inclusion then feel free to add back in. But again, while it was an interesting exchange, I'm not sure what it adds. That a professor at Osaka University called the CI a front for espionage is not necessarily illuminating, nor is the fact that the University apologized for it. Homunculus (duihua) 05:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Homunculus, thanks again. Yes, the Waterloo incident is interesting and I included the Chinese literary blog because it details Yan Li's career and interviews her. The Global Times story accurately quoted Li, but that ref was justifiably deleted. Perhaps we will find a better English-language reference. The Osaka incident is noteworthy as (the first?) university cancelling their CI contract. I've tentatively put the Yan Li story under the "Other controversies", but you might have a better placement. In addition, is this MA thesis is worth including as an external link? It has numerous useful references.

• The Confucius Institutes and China's Evolving Foreign Policy, Stephen J. Hoare-Vance, University of Canterbury

Keahapana (talk) 02:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about including an MA thesis as an external link; WP doesn't even regard MA thesis works as sound reliable sources in most instances (which is kind of funny, if you ask me; a journalist with no specialized knowledge can be a RS, but not an MA candidate with specialized knowledge). It raises my estimation of Mr. Hoare-Vance that his supervisor was Anne-Marie Brady, but he loses points with me for the use of excited punctuation(!). Anyways, my opinion doesn't matter. If there is useful information in his thesis that you can tease out—and especially if it is well referenced—then let's evaluate it on its own merit. I'll try to set aside my prejudice against people who use exclamation points.Homunculus (duihua) 04:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Next steps

During my last round of edits, I was asked to try to preserve as much sourced information as possible. I tried to do this, and seeing as my reorganization has more or less been accepted, I wanted to ask if we can revisit some of the content that was carried over from the previous version. Namely, the section on "Critical perceptions of objectives." Right now it's just an indiscriminate collection of criticism and concerns, and is not bound together by cohesive prose. Moreover, some of it is pretty redundant. Does anyone want to have a stab at writing at nice(r) narrative, and possibly summarizing a couple of the critiques more concisely? Homunculus (duihua) 04:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Bloomberg just wrote a good article we should seek to draw from.[1] Homunculus (duihua) 02:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits

An editor has recently made a series of fairly substantial edits to the page, but has neglected to provide any explanation of said edits. If possible I hope to recuse myself here and allow others to weigh the validity of these changes, but I thought I would do everyone a courtesy by providing a summary of the relevant diffs. This series of edits involved several rearrangements of the page, which can make the task of parsing through changes difficult. The edit summaries, moreover, were frequently misleading (or, at a minimum, very unhelpful). Here is my best attempt. Some of these changes are innocuous, others a little questionable, but some of them strike me as fairly obvious attempts to defend CIs and marginalize or delete critical views. I'll let others judge:

[2] (Rightly) removes speculation on CI’s motivations for avoiding topics like human rights.

[3] Paraphrases second part of quotation, removes and compresses details about the suppression of Chinese dissidents abroad as part of CI mandate.

[4] Moves location of a paragraph on China Daily’s comparison of CIs to Alliance Francaises and Goethe-Institut, rearranges the rebuttal. In the course of doing so, adds his own qualification that CIs “frequently” attach themselves to other educational institutions.

[5] Renames section headings, deletes heading ‘interference to free expression in universities,’ and moves corresponding content to another section. Renamed sections include changing “influence over academic freedom within universities” -> “Concerns over academic freedom,” which, while more concise, changes the meaning of the section title. “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party and government of China” is changed to “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party,” as though the government and party are the same thing (they are not; UFWD is Party, Ministry of Education is government). Other renamings seem like good moves, ie. Espionage -> Espionage concerns.

[6] Homunculus deletes PCPP’s qualification that institutes “frequently” attach themselves to educational institutions. The qualification “frequently” is not necessary, nor is it used in the sources.

[7] PCPP reverts Homunculus, asks for proof that the qualifier “frequently” is not necessary.

[8] Deletes sourced content pertaining to the use of simplified characters in Confucius Institutes. (Personally I agree that a criticism of simplified characters is beside the point, but would recommend this sentence be rewritten drawing from the source, not deleted altogether.)

[9] Adds, removes some categories.

[10] Deletes two sourced paragraphs containing anecdotes involving individual CI directors. Writes in edit summary that individuals are not representative of the whole.

[11] Deletes large amount of sourced information from a paragraph concerning discrimination in hiring policies against the Falun Gong. Removes reference to Falun Gong being “persecuted in China.” Deletes sentence that “human rights lawyers and media commentators in North America suggested that the hiring practices were in contravention of anti-discrimination laws.” Deletes paragraph with relevant commentary from media commentators and legal scholars. Deletes paragraph about CI director’s response to the policy. It is worth noting that these edits are probably a violation of a topic ban currently in place against the editor.[12]

[13] Reorders paragraph on parliamentary debate in Australia, provided additional defense for CI program from CI director.

[14] Deletes paragraph from lede describing concerns and controversies. Adds paragraph defending CIs. Gives edit summary reading “Reworded title per NPOV.”

[15] Adds NPOV tag to the top of page, without any talk page discussion.

[16] Provides some alternate sources, paraphrases things and removes the quotations, removes mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, deletes citation to ABC news Australia, adds more defense of CI teaching methods.

[17] Substantial rearrangement of content. Possible that things were deleted or added amidst this, but not sure.

[18] Further rearrangements to the section on censorship, adds paragraphs to top of section that would appear to defend CI methods.

[19] Moves contents of “other controversies” into other sections of the article (I’m not sure these moves are appropriate or helpful)

[20] Removes duplicate sentence

[21] Deletes paragraph about Der Speigel reporting, paragraphrases what was previously a quotation from the Indian government, deletes the Jonathan Zimmerman quote that describes Communist Party as “cruel, tyrannical, and repressive,” chooses different Zimmerman quote.

[22] Deletes paragraph describing incident at Tel Aviv University, suggests it's enough that the event is alluded to in passing elsewhere on the page. Again, this is probably a violation os the editor’s ongoing topic ban.

[23] Moves two paragraphs into section on academic freedom.

That is all. Homunculus (duihua) 17:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I was not surprised to see that the editor was PCPP. For most of these, I think the best we can do is ask him to explain himself. If you numbered the points using the '#' thing, and deleted the lines between them, then we could easily refer to the different points. I'd remove the non-controversial ones from the list, but by numbering them and asking for an explanation of what prima facie appears to be clear pro-CI editing, it may allow PCPP a chance to respond. Whether he'll take it is his choice. Some of the edits are definitely reasonable or neutral, but the general trend is the same: a clear attempt to show the actions of the Chinese government in a positive light and suppress negative coverage. The other point to consider is that he has very probably violated his Falun Gong ban. On that I will take it to the administrator's board, because we've seen too much of this. On the others, please number the edits you seek an explanation for, and let us allow PCPP a chance to explain himself. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)