In August 2020, the U.S. State Department announced that the Confucius Institutes, which had been developed by the Chinese Communist Party since 2004, would be registered as a diplomatic mission. In an interview with Fox Business Network last October, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked schools at all levels to close Confucius Institutes by the end of last year, and on January 16 of this year, AIT Director Li Yingjie attended a forum on Chinese language teaching in Taiwan and encouraged Taiwanese teachers to “fill the gap. Taiwan Can HELP, to tell American students learning Chinese a story different from the one interpreted by the Chinese Communist regime in Taiwan, directly indicating that Confucius Institutes will be coming out of American campuses.
Since 1993, Chinese Communist scholar Wang Huning introduced the concept of “soft power” (Soft Power), first coined by Joseph Nye, a renowned professor of international relations at Harvard University, in 1990, and published the article “Culture as National Power: Soft Power. “In 2007, Hu Jintao, then the fourth-generation leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), formally proposed the strategic layout of “improving the country’s cultural soft power” in his political report to the 17th National Congress.
Since then, Confucius Institutes have sprung up all over the world, and have been tasked with beautifying the Chinese Communist regime, with a maximum of over 500 Confucius Institutes and 1,000 Confucius Classrooms in more than 160 countries.
In the early days of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule, it was a severe “criticism of Confucius and Qin”. The first leader, Mao Zedong, said in a mocking tone at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth CPC Central Committee in May 1958: China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, had only 460 Confucian scholars, while our regime (the CCP) slaughtered 460,000 Confucian intellectuals. Although the Chinese Communist Party has since changed its line of “respecting Confucius” and has invested in Confucius Institutes in various countries, under the Chinese Communist Party’s mindset of “power comes from the barrel of a gun,” either criticizing or respecting Confucianism has nothing to do with Confucianism, but only serves as a tool and a means of ruling.
Therefore, when Chinese intellectual youths were fighting for freedom of the press, freedom of speech and political democratization in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the second and third generations of Chinese Communist leaders could ignore the concerns of Confucianism, international public opinion and governments, and kill thousands of Chinese civilians and students with the military in full view of the public.
The essence of the CCP’s Confucius Institutes is that they are “in the name of Confucius”, using Confucianism’s revered moral code to clamp down on ideology and consolidate power internally, and to control speech and infiltrate the united war effort externally. “In late 2017, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) called it “Sharp Power,” which means that instead of influencing other countries through appeal and persuasion, it targets specific countries to spy and engage in It has not only openly violated the academic freedom of higher Education in other countries by cultural means, but has also led to the closure of Confucius Institutes in the United States, Canada, Australia, France and Sweden, and has interfered in the internal affairs of other countries by means of bribery, enticement, financial assistance, manipulation, pressure, intimidation, subversion, and other sharp-edged methods, in order to suppress speech and manipulate ideology from abroad.
The withdrawal of CCP Confucius Institutes from U.S. campuses is the beginning of the gradual return of teachers of proper Chinese language around the world to their past involvement and support of traditional Chinese language learning in various countries.
Taiwan has three major advantages: the preservation of traditional Chinese culture, the use of Chinese as the official language, and a free and democratic system.
In addition, Taiwan has a rich digital learning platform, quality Chinese language teaching materials, various short and long term language classes and observation groups, and international exchange and competition activities to meet the needs of Chinese language enthusiasts at different learning levels.
Countries around the world have been making efforts to promote their culture, values, political ideals, and foreign policies globally, and to enhance communication through issue setting to achieve the purpose of “pleasing people from near and far”, which is regarded by scholar Joseph Nye as the source of “soft power”; this was done as early as 1883 In France, the Alliance Francaise was created in 1883, followed by the British Council and the Goethe-Institut in Germany. The main purpose of the initiative is to encourage Chinese schools around the world that teach orthographic Chinese characters and traditional Chinese culture to transform into community-based Chinese language learning centers, encourage overseas Chinese school teachers to take education credits to teach in primary and secondary schools in their Home countries, and To promote industrial cooperation between overseas schools and Taiwanese Chinese language teaching institutions, and to jointly demonstrate the spirit and practical action of learning Chinese in Taiwan can Help!
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