China’s attempts to set up Confucius Institutes in foreign countries as an advance guard for the Great Foreign Propaganda, which last Time this program mentioned its borrowing from Mester, the former dean of the law school at the University of Strasbourg in France, and the fact that some French universities have been subjected to every attempt by the Chinese government to squeeze Confucius Institutes into their campuses. Mester, the China affairs fixer, is particularly in tune and cooperative with Chinese officials, and this is the odd top French cadre that deserves further observation. In the past few years, the authorities of the Alsace department, to which the University of Strasbourg belongs, have even experienced the Chinese government’s use of the Confucius Institute to play a leading role in the long-term operation of infiltration into the university, causing concern in the French academic community and public opinion. In addition, we may not have noticed in the past that the first Confucius Institute set up by China in France, the Chinese state-owned enterprise ZTE can be said to have played an important role and made a great contribution. These details and China’s long-standing business practices have recently been revealed in lengthy reports in the French media, and we continue to provide further information in this China World.
Robin, a Tibetologist professor at the French Institute of Oriental Languages in Paris, mentioned the year when she invited the Dalai Lama to a seminar and was stalked by Chinese officials and approached them 2 times. She recalled that at that time, the Chinese side had come 2 times, but verbally, they would not be so considerate of the need to be subtle in their attitude. She recounted that there were plans to send 30 exchange students to China, and she was concerned that the plans would be thwarted by inviting the Dalai Lama to a seminar. The rector at the time, Manuelle Franck, was a member of the faculty. Manuelle Franck was introduced to the stage during the seminar and attended the entire event. Although the Chinese Embassy had forbidden her to do so. But as a result, that too was not done. She even went to China later in December to sign a new cooperation agreement. Therefore, she said, one should not back down in the face of Chinese pressure. Otherwise they see you as weak.
When the Alsace region, to which the University of Strasbourg belongs, signed an agreement with China in late 2000 to set up a Confucius Institute, they probably made the same claim as the Institut Supérieur de la Politique in Paris. 2008 saw the first Chinese attempt to claim the Confucius Institute at the University of Strasbourg meet its Waterloo, so the Confucius Institute was set up outside. Li Ligue ( Bizais-Lillig ), an expert in Chinese literature, reveals that “since the fall of 2012, the University of Strasbourg has been under a lot of pressure, not only from China, but also from the Region to set up the Confucius Institute in the University.” At that time they tried to find a compromise. The initial agreement was supposed to be reached in April 2013. The Chinese authorities said they would provide Alsace with new investment projects if the Confucius Institute was attached to the university. University scholars then proposed a montage of ways to integrate the Confucius Institute by name, but it would remain in its original location, independent of the university, a series of “failed attempts” that also showed the caution of the Strasbourg university professors. Then, also in 2013, in September, China sent Confucius to Lyon to open up its territory in the same way that it had ordered its vassals to do so, but this time it was the turn of the faculty of the University of Lyon to refuse to integrate Confucius into the second and third universities of Lyon, so the establishment of the institute was a failure. After four years of a relatively liberal approach to Education in the operation of Confucius Institutes in China, the Chinese Hanban eventually wanted to implement a kind of censorship process, which also caused a lot of backlash.
China’s Confucius Institute series network, with 18 Confucius Institutes in France. The first, opened in October 2005 at the University of Poitiers under a partnership with Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer ZTE, closed its Confucius Institute in 2013 after the Lyon university refused to accept censorship under pressure from Beijing. The following year, 2014, following another incident of Chinese censorship at the Confucius Institute in Braga, Portugal, several Western universities, including Stockholm, Sweden, and Chicago, USA, also withdrew from this Confucius Institute program. The 18th Confucius Institute in France, on the other hand, was established in 2019 in Pau. By 2020, in the United States, the Confucius Institute CI network will be classified as a “diplomatic mission,” allowing U.S. authorities to monitor it more effectively and address its operations of foreign influence.
China’s hybrid approach to the foreign world has been a shock to French sinologists when Mestre, a European law expert at the university, has become a champion of Beijing’s affairs. According to an email sent by the dean himself, in September 2014, a series of demonstrations against Tibet were organized in his department, and conferences, exhibitions, dances and concerts were organized “at the request of the Chinese Consulate General in Strasbourg”. When he left his post in early 2015, the then Chinese Consul Zhang Guobin congratulated “Ms. Fei Jin-Mestre for her efforts in organizing many cultural and artistic events and expressed her sincere gratitude” at his departure reception. The wife of the dean, a former student of the Strasbourg School of Management, founded in early 2013 an association called Sinostras, a company set up to organize the activities of the “Tibet Week”.
Ein drot and Nicolas Nord, lecturers at the University of Strasbourg, recalled that “at the opening of the seminar, the president stressed that Tibet had never been annexed by China, but that the Chinese intervention in 1950 was at the request of the Tibetans.”
Ironically, according to Nord, who was his teacher in the 1990s, Meister, when teaching, used the Chinese invasion of Tibet as an example in his classroom, pointing out that it was a classic example of aggression in international law.
In short, many of his colleagues were disgusted after Dean Meister’s full force acted as a punching bag for China, as it also indicated that they would have to cooperate with the Chinese consulate in the future. Mester also joined forces with China in 2015 to organize the “China-Europe Human Rights Forum”, a Chinese society for the study of human rights, which is actually a fake and disguised group of independent scholars organized and set up by China in 1993 and directed and manipulated by a public affairs department of the Chinese Ministry of Propaganda. In fact it is basically a whitewashing operation in various European institutions. And ironically, Meister retorts to the public that this is not a Chinese Propaganda Department group. And his good friend, Zhang Guobin, the former consul general of Strasbourg, China, has also become one of the leaders of this independent association.
China works on Meister
Meister was not elected rector in 2016, but French officials, seemingly frightened by Chinese Culture, listened to Chinese propaganda. After losing his bid, however, Meister he left there, but his self-presentation to the public still refers to himself as the honorary dean of the law school of Spaulding.
Meister spent some time teaching at the College of Europe in Bruges and increased his trips to China. Assistant Professor Nord. Reveals that one of Meister’s motivations was to be treated like a king when he traveled to China.
Meister was rector of the Robert Schuman University (l’université Robert-Schuman), which later merged with the University of Strasbourg, from 1998 to 2003. His promotion here did not go well either, just as it did during his deanship.
Meister, who is adept at drilling holes to find opportunities, was offered a professorship at Southwest University in Chongqing in 2017 and a senior official position at China’s Chahar Society, the report noted.
Roland, a fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Studies, a U.S. think tank, noted that the Chahar Institute is one of the three most important think tanks in China, and its chapter in the West is an independent institution, but in China, the so-called independence is only theoretical. In practice, it is merely a rubber stamp for the Chinese Communist Party.
In the case of the Chahar Institute, the founding president is Han Fangming, who is also the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. And former Consul General of Strasbourg Zhao Guobin is the secretary general of the Chahar Society, and then Meister easily gets a part-time, high-ranking official position in the Chahar Society.
According to Opinion magazine, this global seduction strategy is aimed at the “neglected,” that is, the disillusioned, the neglected, the countries and regions neglected by liberal globalization and the Western camp, as well as second- or third-rate institutions like certain French universities and other organizations. In this parallel diplomacy of China, it conceals its ambitions and chastening themes against the Western democracies. In the long run, everything is “coated with honey” and has the image of a “civilization of peace,” concludes Nadège Rolland, a scholar in the field of defense and security. “. She also warned in advance that “in reality, it is not a soft power, but a hard power, an Orwellian hard power.”
Roland also warned that while the United Front stood up to defend China’s resistance to the Uighurs or to deal with the Hong Kong people, Meister said with aplomb, “I am not paid at all by the Chinese Chahar Society.” But on the other hand, he admits that he is paid to be a professor at Chongqing University. He said, “I do this out of friendship, for the members of the think-tank. ” This can truly be said to be an example of the unfailing cooperation between a senior French management official and the Chinese propaganda ministry!
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