Confucius Controversies

By Elizabeth Redden. The debate about whether North American colleges should host Confucius Institutes – centers for Chinese language and culture study funded by an entity of the Chinese government – has intensified in recent weeks. About 90 American universities and eight Canadian higher education institutions house Confucius Institutes, which are run in collaboration with Chinese partner universities and staffed, in part, by visiting language instructors hired by Hanban, the Chinese government agency that oversees the Confucius Institutes as well as a parallel program at the K-12 level, the Confucius Classrooms. Hanban also supplies Confucius Institutes with Chinese language textbooks and teaching materials. Read more...