Anecdotal Evidence: why there can be no Chinese Soft Power – and why Cooperation with Beijing may Corrupt us

Messages from Beijing are in conflict with each other when the Dalai Lama – and the degree to which he may become internationally noticeable – is the issue. On the one hand, the Dalai Lama doesn’t belong in Tibet, from Beijing’s point of view. He therefore doesn’t belong in China either. On the other hand, Beijing reacts angrily when the Dalai Lama “denies his Chinese citizenship”. And the Chinese leadership seems to suggest that it has a say in foreign leaders’ appointment diaries.

The Dalai Lama is quite powerless, but a discussion with him is probably much more enriching than one with Hu Jintao, Jackie Chan, or Zhang Ziyi.

That’s one of the problems with Chinese “soft power”, I guess. Whatever could be a factor in building such power is either in exile, or (mostly) silent.

But above all, it is childish when Chinese authorities condemn meetings with people outside their jurisdiction. And when Chinese editorialists who take their orders from those authorities demand that “hosting Dalai Lama must come at a high price”, there are two obvious objections. For one, David Cameron and Nick Clegg apparently met the Dalai Lama at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Downing Street didn’t host him. But above all, a nexus between economic cooperation with China and “hosting the Dalai Lama”, as advocated by the “Global Times”, shows how shaky the foundations of our economic cooperation with China actually are.

Maybe we should think about our own reasons to limit cooperation with China. Because one day, we might feel that we can’t “afford” certain values and views of our own anymore. Other governments have come to such misguided conclusions already.

Dharamsala,

by Ankur Aras.

Sovereign Debt Crisis, hence no Conflicts of Interest

Huanqiu Shibao, April 23

French Pesidential Nominees play the China Card, Sarkozy says he Pays Close Attention to Tibetan Issue  (法总统竞选打出中国牌 萨科齐称关注西藏问题)

From our France, Germany, Britain, U.S., Russia correspondents

Huanqiu Shibao reports that an anti-Chinese overseas exile Tibetan website reported on April 21 that during the April 22 presidential elections, Dalai supporters and French paper “Nouvel Observateur” addressed the Tibetan issue. From ten nominees, nine affirmed that they would meet with the Dalai. The report says that Sarkozy told the “Nouvel Observateur that “he frequently addressed the Tibet issue in talks with Chinese leaders”, and that “Tibet is an important topic for the French people, and for me”. Hollande said that the Dalai was a “respected religious personality, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and he abandoned all political roles. Therefore, I have no reason to refuse a meeting with him”.

据4月23日出版的《环球时报》报道，一家海外流亡藏人反华网站21日报道称，法国22日迎来第一轮总统大选，达赖支持者和法国《新观察家报》提出有关西藏问题。10个竞选人有9个证实，他们将会见达赖。报道称，萨科齐对《新观察家报》表示，他经常“向中国领导人提起西藏问题”，还称：“西藏对法国人民和我本人来说是一个重要议题。”奥朗德声称，达赖是一个“受尊敬的宗教人物，诺贝尔奖得主，他已放弃任何政治角色。所以，我没有理由拒绝与其会面。”

A Chinese person living abroad told “Huanqiu Shibao” on April 22 that some countries in Europe have not abandoned “democratic” etc. issues as means of pressure on China, and provocative intentions. However, under the current difficult economic difficulties, some comparatively reasonable politicians could exercise some restraint. China’s tough stance could leave some politicians with no choice but to face the realities. If they were provocative, they would certainly have to pay a price.

一名旅居欧洲的华人22日对《环球时报》说，欧洲一些国家没有放弃在“民主”等问题上对中国施压、挑衅的意图，不过，在当前经济困窘的情况下，一些相对理性的政客可能会选择克制。从之前的事件来看，中国展示强硬立场会让一些政客不得不面对现实，他们如果挑衅，肯定得付出代价。

Beijing Normal University Political Science and International Relations department deputy director Zhang Shengjun told “Huanqiu Shibao” that these presidential elections wouldn’t change French China policies on the whole. Chinese-French relations didn’t show great conflicts of interests, and all of Europe was actively seeking cooperation with China to solve the European sovereign debt crisis.

北京师范大学政治学与国际关系学院副院长张胜军对《环球时报》说，这次总统选举的结果整体上不会改变法国对华政策。中法之间没有较大的利益冲突，整个欧洲都在解决欧债危机上积极与中国寻求合作。

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Le Nouvel Observateur, April 17, 2012

Dalai Lama – what the Candidates say (Ce qu’en disent les candidats)

Question five: Once you are president, will you receive the Dalai Lama? (Question n°5 : Une fois Président, recevrez-vous le dalaï-lama ?)

Nicolas Sarkozy:

I remind you that I’m the only president of the French Republic who talked with the Dalai Lama. That was in 2008. I also had the opportunity on several other occasions to talk about the Tibetan situation with the Chinese president. Of course, I intend to continue doing so. Tibet is an important topic for the French, just as for me. As far as the Dalai Lama is concerned, as a matter of principle, I’m not forbidding myself anything.

“Je vous rappelle que je suis le seul Président de la République française à m’être entretenu avec le dalaï-lama. C’était en 2008. J’ai par ailleurs eu à plusieurs reprises l’occasion de parler de la situation du Tibet avec le Président chinois. Mon intention est bien sûr de continuer à le faire. Le Tibet est un sujet important pour les Français, comme pour moi. S’agissant du dalaï-lama, par principe, je ne m’interdis rien.”

Francois Hollande:

The Dalai Lama is a respected religious personality, and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He has abandoned all political functions. I have no reason to refuse meeting him a priori. This will, of course, depend on the context of the appropriate time.

“Le dalaï-lama est une personnalité religieuse respectée, prix Nobel de la paix. Il a abandonné toute fonction politique. Je n’ai pas de raison de refuser a priori de le rencontrer. Cela dépendra évidemment du contexte le moment venu.”

Francois Bayrou:

If the Dalai Lama wishes to meet me, I will receive him, of course.

“Si le dalaï-lama souhaite me rencontrer je le recevrai naturellement.”

[...]

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Related

The Patriotic Road Abroad, August 15, 2009

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Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art co-sponsors Cultural-Year Exhibition

The following is a translation from a China Radio International (CRI, Chinese-language) article, published on Friday. Links within blockquotes added during translation – JR

China Tibet Contemporary Art Exhibition Launched in Berlin (中国西藏当代画展在柏林开展)

Online report by reporter Yin Fan — On the evening of April 12 local time, the China Tibet art exhibition “Tibet Impressions” [German: "Tibetische Impressionen"] opened at the China Cultural Center in Berlin.

国际在线报道（记者殷帆）：当地时间12日晚，《西藏印象》中国西藏当代画展在柏林中国文化中心正式开幕。

It features 42 works by twelve contemporary artists of all ages, reflecting the [Tibetan] Plateau’s characteristics. Among these works, there are ones reflecting the Plateau’s old history and modern civilization, and there is no lack of religious deep thought and ethnic customs, as well as Tibetan fine arts works of meticulous composed, well-developed, coordinated and varied fine and delicated paintings and age-old, historic Thangkas.

本次画展共展出了12位西藏当代老中青年画家创作的42幅反应高原文化特质的作品。作品中既有反应高原古老历史和现代文明的画面，也不乏宗教深思和民族风情的内容，其中还有西藏美术中特色最为突出的构图严谨、丰满、协调、多变的工笔重彩画和历史悠久的唐卡。

According to the introduction, the works shown at “Tibetan Impressions” is the first group of Tibetan contemporary paintings on display in Germany, and even in Europe. The organizers hope that this kind of exchange and dialog can form a bridge to the snow-covered plateau, and help German friends from all walks of life to better understand the development and changes of Tibetan traditional culture. At the same time, the artists from Tibet also have the opportunity to understanding outstanding German culture and fine arts.¹⁾

根据介绍，此次《西藏印象》中国西藏当代画展展出的作品是西藏当代画家在德国乃至在欧洲的首次群体性展出。主办方希望这样近距离同雪域文化使者的交流和对 话能够让德国各界朋友更好地了解西藏传统文化的发展变化。同时，来自西藏的艺术家也有机会了解学习德国优秀的文化艺术。

2012 marks the 40th anniversary of establishing Sino-German diplomatic relations. To celebrate this, China holds “Chinese Cultural Year” activities in Germany during the year, to reinforce the promotion of better mutual understanding between the two countries’ people. The “Tibetan Impressions” exhibition is one of these activities.

2012年是中德两国建交40周年。为了表示庆祝，中国2012年在德国举办“中国文化年”活动，以进一步推动两国人民的相互了解。本次《西藏印象》中国西藏当代画展就是“中国文化年”期间的活动之一。

It is organized by the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles²⁾, and the China Cultural Center in Berlin. It is scheduled to go on until April 20th, and will then continue in Cologne.

本次画展由西藏自治区文联和西藏美术家协会主办，德国柏林中国文化中心协办。展览将持续到20日，之后还将赴德国科隆继续展览。

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Notes

¹⁾ One can easily overinterpret things, but the way the article puts this – “lái zì xīzàng de yìshùjiā yěyǒu jīhuì liǎojiě xuéxí déguó yōuxiù de wénhuà yìshù” – might either be interpreted as a free tour of foreign works, or as a guided one, in accordance with the 17th Central Committee’s Culture Document‘s prescription:

Actively absorb and learn from outstanding foreign cultural achievements. Adhere to the principles of self-dependance, self-regardness, to learning from every experience that helps to strengthen the building of our country’s socialist construction, from all positive achievements that can enrich our people’s cultural life, from everything that is conducive to our country’s cultural activities, and to its cultural management concepts and mechanisms.

²⁾ In a blogpost based on a feature program she previously wrote for Radio Free Asia (RFA), Woeser remembered a political inspection during the time when she worked for the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles’ Tibetan Literature, magazine more than a decade earlier. She wrote the post in January 2011. From an English translation:

I remember, ten to twelve years ago, I was an editor of “Tibetan Literature”, which belonged to the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles. One day Jamyang Sherab, a good friend of mine who has already passed away, told me that the next day the head of the Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles was going to inspect the homes of all Tibetan staff and I should quickly hide my portrait of Gyalwa Rinpoche (the Dalai Lama), which I had standing in the Buddhist altar at home. Jamyang Sherab was the Vice-Chairman of the Writers’ Union and hence of course informed of this secret action to inspect the houses of Tibetans. The Tibet Autonomous Region Federation of Literary and Art Circles employed about 70 staff, of which half were Han Chinese and half Tibetan, and reportedly, they were only going to check Tibetan people’s houses, not those of the Han.

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Related

» A more wealthy, civilized Tibet, CNTV, April 15, 2012
»Exhibition photos, Xinhua/Jiangsunet, April 13, 2012

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Links to Tibet: German Sycophants, few Secular Books, no Indian Friends

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Huanqiu Shibao on Tibet Action Day

On March 10, some 1,150 (if not more than 1,200) cities, counties, and communes  in Germany took part in a Tibet Action Day which includes flying a flag from administrative buildings, usually the town hall. Huanqiu Shibao‘s count was that more than one-thousand German cities and towns had raised the Tibetan independence flag, remembering the so-called Tibet revolt (纪念所谓西藏起义):

According to “Berliner Morgenpost” on March 12, more than 1,000 German cities and towns flew the Tibetan “freedom” and “justice” flags in front of their city government houses to remember the so-called Tibetan revolt’s 53rd anniversary.

However, Huanqiu Shibao’s correspondent in Germany did some research on official German websites and found that many of these activities were mostly carried out at small communes and towns, and that in other cases, only single departments had participated. All the same, Huanqiu (apparently) quotes an expert – Lian Xiangmin (廉湘民) of the China Tibetology Research Center (中国藏学中心) -, history has proved that Germany holding such supportive actions of the Dalai Clique created harm for Chinese-German relations.

The report was filed under Huanqiu’s military category.

How afraid should Germany be?

Either way, there is constructive advice in the commenter thread (where the soothing effect of Huanqiu’s investigative journalism appears to remain rather limited):

if Germans love that dreg of society (the Dalai Lama) so much, they should cut some German territory and hand it over to the Dalai. Or, chancellor Angela Merkel should hand political authority to the Dalai, given that her subjects (子民) had sworn allegiance to him anyway, because they had capitulated, by hoisting the Dalai’s independence flag on German soil, and by kneeling under his feet as his sycophants.

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The Epic of King Gesar – Cultured without Buddhism

Tibetan history has often swung between centralized and stateless poles, and the epic of Gesar reflects the tensions between central authority, as embodied in religious orthodoxy, and the wild, nomadic forces of the autarkic periphery. There are versions that adopt Gesar as a lama showing him as a tamer of the wild, but, in so far as his epic retains his old lineaments as a maverick master of shamanic powers, he represents the stateless, anarchic dimension of Tibet’s margins, and is rather a tamer of corrupt monastic clerics and, thus, it is not coincidental that the epic flourished on the outlying regions of Kham and Amdo.

According to Mountain Phoenix, the story of Ling Gesar Gyalpo is one of rather few not-so-religious Tibetan books,  or a story of indigenously Tibetan, heathen origins – one that her father had kept reading through all his lifetime.

Few years ago at a Tibetan gathering, I heard the Dalai Lama talk about the importance of the Tibetan language and he gave tips to youngsters on how to work on their Tibetan. He said: “If you want to improve your Tibetan, you should read Peja (Buddhist scriptures)”.

We can all imagine the youngsters jumping for joy on the inside exclaiming: “Yeah, Peja! Finally! So exciting”!

Her father never touched a Peja in all his life, but

Still I conclude from comments his surviving peers make that his Tibetan didn’t pale in comparison to some of the erudite clerics who used to live in our vicinity. Astonishing for a Tibetan of his generation, that he somehow managed to become “cultured” without cosing up to Buddhism.

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Indian-Tibetan Relations

Woeser quotes Tibetan voices from India – nothing representative, she cautions, and collected through social media, but with an eye-catcher among the statements:

Lobsang Wangdu, for instance, says that only in recent years did he see some civil society groups supporting Tibet appearing in India and after having lived in India for over 10 years, he has never had a single Indian friend, many Tibetans are like that. I asked him whether this may be because India is too big, has too many people, too many different religions and cultures? He said that this could be one reason, but also thought that Tibetans had not made enough effort; at the same time, however, he also felt that it is difficult to come into contact with Indians.

The debate described by Woeser also involves the Karmapa incident, apparently referring to Indian allegations that the Karmapa Lama were a man of many connections into China, i. e. a Chinese spy, and in violation of India’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. The Lama was reportedly cleared of the forex allegations soon after.

Kabir Bedi, an Indian television and film actor whose mother converted to Tibetan Buddhism, urged the authorities to show the Karmapa Lama more respect:

The Karmapa’s office applied for, and received, permission to bank the money under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Inexplicably, this permission was withdrawn after the first $1,00,000 was received. And the Karmapa’s re-application has been pending, and pending, since 2002. What can a monk do with a growing pile of donations that can’t be banked, except to keep it in cash and use it for expenses?

And [h]ow would we look if he – the Karmapa Lama – sought asylum in a friendlier country?

To look at clerics as useless moneybags is a tradition that goes far beyond China, India, or Tibet. But while Mountain Phoenix may prefer secular literature, Chinese politics has proven that Tibetan Buddhism is actually much more scientific than she might think.

Tsewang Norbu was Right about the first “Dialog” accompanying the “China Cultural Year 2012″, and this is Why…

Ironically, the prelude to the cultural dialogue program for the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany is opened with Helmut Schmidt in Berliner Kommandantenhaus which is jointly organized by the Bertelsmann, Bosch and Koerber Foundation. The Ex-Federal-Chancellor is one of those weighty admirers of the Chinese economic miracle of the last 3 decades and is unfortunately also the most prominent representative of cultural relativism when it comes to criticism of China. He, therefore, acts as an apologist for the totalitarian rule of the Chinese communist regime and not as an advocate of the forbidden artists or oppressed peoples.

Tsewang Norbu,  cofounder of Association of Tibetans in Germany und Member of the Executive Board of Tibet Initiative Deutschland e.V., in a statement about the opening “dialog” accompanying the China Cultural Year 2012 in Germany (his statement in German here).

I would like to explain in some more detail why I believe that the three men on stage, Gu Xuewu, Helmut Schmidt, and Frank Sieren, proved Tsewang Norbu’s criticism correct. Their approach wasn’t complicated, but it was [update/completion: but it was cheap]. At the core, Gu and Schmidt put two concepts side by side: human rights and human responsibilities. The latter one isn’t entirely new, either; it was first brought up by a InterAction Council, with Malcolm Fraser, Helmut Schmidt and other retired politicians, in the 1980s. It was renewed and recommended to the United Nations in 1997.

A podcast of the Gu-Schmidt-Sieren talk in Berlin (in German), on January 31 this year, can be found here.

In that “dialog”, Gu was apparently the first participant to address the issue of human responsibilities. Asked by Sieren “what separates China and Germany”, Gu said that

what separates China and Germany seems to be a different idea of what people should do – that’s to say, in my view, an idea of more human rights or more human duties – this is a difference (was China und Deutschland trennt, scheint mir die unterschiedliche Vorstellung zu sein, was die Menschen tun sollen. Das heißt aus meiner Sicht, die Vorstellung von mehr Menschenrechten oder mehr Menschenpflichten – das ist ein Trennungspunkt).

Gu then linked the concept of human duties or responsibilities with Confucianism – as a concept of what people needed to do for society, for a collective, family, danwei, or the nation, rather than to make demands.

I’m not trying to judge if the “responsibilities” approach as described by Gu would indeed be Confucian. The interesting bit in my view was that neither Schmidt nor Sieren disagreed when Gu suggested that

somehow, a compromise needs to be found, a balance between human rights and human duties. As long as this balance isn’t there, I see a big problem for an understanding between Germans and Chinese people (es muss irgendwie ein Kompromiss gefunden werden, eine Balance zwischen den Menschenrechten und den Menschenpflichten. So lange diese Balance nicht da ist, gibt es aus meiner Sicht ein großes Problem für das Verständnis zwischen den Deutschen und den Chinesen).

Gu saw no such balance – neither in Germany, where human rights were “overemphasized”, nor in China, where collective duties were “overemphasized”.

Gu and Schmidt didn’t disagree with each other – if there was a “dialog”, it was one with little or no potential for genuine arguments, and indeed, there were no arguments.

A benevolent look at this kind of search for a “balance” between rights and responsibilities might suggest that there is an underlying, fundamental misunderstanding at work, of what human rights actually are.

After all, human rights do determine one fundamental duty: a duty to respect not only one’s own human rights, but others’ human rights, too. That requires no second, complementary charter of “responsibilities”. In fact, much of the catalog of duties as listed by Schmidt and the “Action Council” reads like a mirror of the Human Rights Declaration – and even if these duties, rather than the rights according to the UNDHR, were used as a standard, the West and China would be just as far apart from each other.

However, a “charter of responsibilities” can help to make human rights look relative – as long as these responsibilities (and their dependence on human rights) aren’t explained in some detail. Gu, Schmidt, and Sieren certainly spared themselves and their audience the effort to explore that side of the “responsibility” concept. Such a try could have turned out to become pretty unharmonious – and the job of the dialog was, apparently, to create “a positive atmosphere”.

Provided that you invite the right people, and shun trouble-makers like Tsewang Norbu at such events, you can have a beautiful, festive “dialog” – but you might as well spend your evening humming an infinite loop of “molihua”.

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Related

» Helmut Schmidt and the Korean War, March 1, 2012

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Shortwave Log, Northern Germany, February 2012: Feel the Tibetan Happiness

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Recent Radio History

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Radio Impacto, Costa Rica: semi-clandestine, but happy to confirm your sintonía.

Don Moore, of the Association of North American Radio Clubs, described Radio Impacto‘s anti-Sandinista propaganda efforts in an article published in 1992, less than two years after the station had closed down.

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Recent Shortwave Logs

International Telecommunication Union letter codes used in the table underneath:
ARS – Saudi Arabia; CHN – China; CUB -Cuba; IND – India; TIB – Tibet.

Languages (“L.”):
A – Arabic; C – Chinese; E – English; F – French; S – Spanish.

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kHz	Station	Ctry	L.	Day	Time GMT	S	I	O
5025	RHC Habana	CUB	S.	Febr 19	21:40	2	3	2
4920	PBS Tibet1)	TIB	E.	Febr 22	22:55	4	3	3
17615	Riyadh	ARS	A.	Febr 23	15:42	4	5	4
17660	Riyadh	ARS	F.	Febr 23	15:48	4	5	4
7550	All India Radio	IND	E.	Febr 23	21:55	4	5	4
4920	PBS Tibet	TIB	E.	Febr 23	22:30	4	4	4
5060	PBS Xinjiang2)	CHN	C.	Febr 23	23:30	4	3	3

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Notes / Soundtracks

¹⁾ Listen to PBS Tibet in English, and you may feel the happiness and energy of these Tibetan young people as Tibetan New Year is here. Interesting sample of local soft-power efforts there.
——– Soundtrack »

²⁾ “The East is Red” – once the identification tune of Radio Beijing (now China Radio International) is still in use on PBS Xinjiang.
——– Soundtrack »

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Related

» Do We Need a Common Losar, High Peaks, Pure Earth, Febr 20, 2012
» Previous Logs, November 2011

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Deutschlandradio Interview with J.-M. Rudolph: can Universities keep Confucius Institutes and Science Apart?

The following is a translation of a Deutschlandradio Kultur interview with Jörg-Meinhard Rudolph – or a translation of most of the interview. The questions were asked by Dieter Kassel, and the interview was published on the Deutschlandradio website on February 6.

Kassel: The Germans have their Goethe Institute, the English have the British Council, and the Spaniards have the Instituto Cervantes. And the Chinese? They have the Confucius Institute. It hasn’t been around for too long; the first one was founded in South Korea, in 2004. But there have been Confucius Institutes in Germany since 2006, and by now, there are thirteen of them. Eleven reside at German universities, and another one at a university of applied science. This practice, [the Confucius Institute's] cooperation with domestic universities, has led to criticism, everywhere in the world. In Germany, too, some experts are asking what the whole purpose of these Confucius Institutes is. Jörg-Meinhard Rudolph is a sinologist, he is a college lecturer at the University of Ludwigshafen’s East Asia Institute, and joins us on the line from Frankfurt/Main. Hello, Mr. Rudolph!

Rudolph: Hello, Mr. Kassel!

Kassel: This comparison, that the Confucius Institute in China is exactly the same thing, as the Goethe Institute is within Germany’s foreign- and cultural policy – is that an appropriate comparison?

Rudolph: It is not. When you are referring to the Chinese and to the Germans, one needs to ask who is standing behind it. After all, it isn’t the 1.3 billion Chinese people or 80 million Germans who operate them. The Goethe Institutes are state-run institutes, paid for by the foreign office, with tax money. The German Bundestag’s budget committee decides about the funding, and everyone here in this country can scrutinize that, and find out what’s going on there, and the employees abroad are appointed after an invitation to apply.

That’s completely different when it comes to the Confucius Institutes. In the People’s Republic of China, there’s a state, too, but there is also someone who rules that state, the Communist Party of China, who  confirm that on their website: we are the only governing party here. And behind the Confucius Institutes, there are top party departments, up to number five in the hierarchy, who welcomes the institutes’ delegates when they have a conference. The man is also in charge of ideology and propaganda, for suppression of diversity of opinion, and similar issues. Further down, there’s a huge apparat, made up by many departments of the Chinese central government, including those in charge of censorship, and similar ones. You can’t compare that. Nobody can look inside, it’s not transparent. That’s the issue – this is a political party, an interest group, which launches all these institutes here, which can’t be scrutinized by anyone in the People’s Republic of China. That’s a big, crucial difference.

Kassel: Alright, that’s the crucial difference between the two states, of course. The Federal Republic of Germany is a parliamentary democracy, and the People’s Republic of China surely isn’t.

Rudolph: No, in China, you don’t even have elections as you have them in Belorussia, or in Iran. [...] If you want to stick to this comparison, one could at best say that both of these institutes are meant to promote the states they come from, for those who finance them. They are meant to create a good atmosphere, put positive things across, etc. That’s what the Chinese say, too. We have the China Cultural Year here in Germany right now, with the Confucius Institutes being involved. The Chinese party leadership talks about exerting soft power abroad, and the Confucius Institutes are to help  with that. This soft power has been defined for this cultural year, too. A new image of the People’s Republic of China is to be conveyed, as open, progressive, tolerant, and bustling.

The issue isn’t that the Confucius Institutes do that – that’s alright, and I have no problem with that. But that German universities, or universities at all, which are meant to be free and independent, are taking part in it, and get paid for it, that’s the issue. The Chinese want to do their propaganda, the Germans, too, for all I care, and let’s see who’s doing better, but that universities and professors provide their reputation to this end, that, in my view, is not acceptable.

Kassel: The university in question say, almost in unison, that they are able to keep these things separate. The Confucius Institutes are located within the universities – you mentioned that, some of them are renowned universities, Freie Universität Berlin, Düsseldorf University, Nürnberg-Erlangen and many others -, but they all say that they keep this separate: we have the Confucius Institute on the campus, there are language courses there, and cultural events, but our sinology institute is still free and independent.

Rudolph: That’s not quite right. The [censoring] scissors are at work in the heads of these people. They know exactly that, if they are sinologists, for example, having cooperations or research, field research in China, they can’t do it the way Chinese, for example, can do it here. They have to cooperate with Chinese bodies. In many cases, these, too, are sub-departments of the central committee. And everyone knows what happens if you attend a talk by the Dalai Lama, for example. There are university boards who don’t go there, and they will tell you why: because they fear that their cooperations will suffer. That, in my view, is not in order. This is where you have to safeguard your independence. After all, that’s how universities came into being in Europe, during the 12th century – as independent institutions.

Kassel: I’d like to quote Michael Lackner, sinologist in Nürnberg-Erlangen, at the sinology department there, and also deputy chairman of the Confucius Institute there. He doesn’t contest what you say. You mentioned the Dalai Lama, and Michael Lackner once said, analogously, that for him, too, the Confucius Institute isn’t the right place to “discuss Tibet, Taiwan, and the Tian An Men massacre”, but added within the same reply that he’s not doing it there, but he’ll walk over to the sinology institute, and  can discuss these things freely there. Don’t you think that this works?

Rudolph: If this is what he does, let’s see what’s going to happen at the Confucius Institute this year, once the material, announced by the Chinese state agency, about Tibet will be published, and which the Confucius will explicitly be provided with, too. That, and other cultural procurement we’ve touched upon. It will all be on display there, it all comes from the People’s Republic of China. Let’s see what they will say about Tibet, or Xinjiang, or other issues. It seems to me that it would be the right time then to discuss one or another of these issues after all. If that should be possible at the institutes, that would certainly spell progress.

[...]

Kassel: Has the presence of the Confucius Institutes, and cooperation with them, really led to tangible consequences, in your view? There is this criticism, in the media, that German sinologists don’t get frequently involved in discussions in Germany, about the way the People’s Republic deals with dissidents.

Rudolph: Yes, they contain themselves in this field, that’s true. I’ve seen this myself, when the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Liu Xiaobo, when Liu…

Kassel: … when it went to Liu Xiaobo, yes, …

Rudolph: … and at the time, I was contacted by some of your colleagues, and often, when I said yes, and glad to discuss this with you, there was this interjection: at last someone who’s willing to discuss this! – Yes, you could say that there is some reservation. It is, of course, an issue what German sinology is doing here, as to how they provide information, and it isn’t a real lot, I believe. What annoys me, for example – but I’m not quite innocent there, either -, is that the big China bestsellers in this country have all been written by people who can’t even read a Chinese newspaper. And yes, I’d blame a certain failure of sinology.

Kassel: Then I won’t keep you from getting down to work and write the next bestseller!

Rudolph: Okay!

[...]

Deutschlandradio added a disclaimer, saying that interviewees’ statements reflect their own views, and that the station doesn’t adopt such statements as its own.

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Related

» He Who Pays the Piper, Jan. 30, 2012
» Come on, Let’s Twist Again, May 26, 2011