Chinese Ministry of Education Inspects Confucius Institute in UCD

The news comes as a new €7 million Confucius Centre is currently being constructed for the Institute beside the Engineering building in UCD.

The first inspection of the Institute by the PRC (People's Republic of China) government was in 2012, when Xiaochun Yang the International Chief of the Chinese Ministry of Education, led a group to examine the Institute's work in UCD.

Confucius Institute

The Confucius Institute in UCD is one of hundreds of institutes set up by the Chinese government in universities around the world. The objective of the Institutes are to promote Chinese culture, and they primarily teach Mandarin language or Chinese business classes.

Alexander Dukalskis, a politics & international relations lecturer in UCD who specializes in Asian and authoritarian political regimes, said he would not comment on the specific CI (Confucius Institute) in UCD. But he did outline however “that there are many controversies and concerns about CIs. Generally those revolve around academic freedom and administrative transparency”.

Hanban is the sector of the Chinese Education Ministry responsible for the PRC’s Confucius Institutes around the world. In 2013 they sent another delegation to visit the UCD institute, led by Prof. Huiling Yang, vice president of Renmin University of China.

UCD college President Andrew Deeks has also travelled to the Hanban headquarters in China to meet representatives from the Chinese education ministry and government officials. The new Confucius Centre will be completed by 2017 and will cost €7 million to build, it is the first of its kind to receive direct funding from the Chinese government.

Documentation presented by the university President to the UCD Governing Authority in 2013 obtained by the Tribune, outlines that even the architectural design and location of the new Confucius Centre had to be approved of by Hanban in China.

Key members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Politburo Standing Committee have also visited UCD in recent years. Liu Yunshan attended a ceremony held by the Confucius Institute in 2014, and in 2012 Xi Jinping also visited UCD. Both Yunshan and Jingping are key figures in the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The Politburo of the CCP is the main decision making body of the government in China.

The rest of this article can be read on The College Tribune website here