UK expected to stop funding for Mandarin teaching at Confucius Institutes: Reports

The United Kingdom (UK) government's funding worth £ 27 million for Mandarin teaching at branches of Chinese state-linked Confucius Institutes will be stopped. According to a report by the Guardian late Monday, (April 24) the step is expected to be announced by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly later on Tuesday. The report added that the funding would stop but the branches would not be closed.

In July last year, Rishi Sunak, who was then a contender for the prime minister's post, pledged to close the Confucius Institutes in the UK. These institutes promote the teaching of the Chinese language and culture in foreign countries.

And Tuesday's expected decision comes as research showed that a secretive visa scheme had been used to fast-track Chinese government-vetted staff to come to the UK to promote the values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at these institutes.

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The UK has 30 branches of the Confucius Institutes in total. On Monday, a report by UK-China Transparency, a charity, said that each institute is based in a British university and is a partnership between that British university, a Chinese entity (usually a university), and the Chinese government.

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"Its staff typically include administrative staff from the UK, Chinese language teachers from China, a ‘British co-director' recruited by the British university, and a ‘Chinese co-director' recruited by the Chinese partner entity but based in the British university at the Confucius Institute," the report said, adding the purpose of such institutes is to advance the CCP's interest in British higher education and society more broadly.

The report also found that Chinese people applying to teach at the institutes were vetted by Beijing for their political characteristics, ethnicity and ability to comply with CCP's guidelines for foreign affairs. These guidelines require staff to enforce the CCP's values.

The Guardian report, meanwhile, said that Home Office believed that Confucius staff were subject to UK's employment law. However, British universities said in a survey they were not the employer of the staff at the institutes.

On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would say that a cold war with China would be a betrayal of the security interests of the UK. He would also insist that the UK must engage with China on issues such as health and climate emergency.

The British foreign secretary is also expected to say will be unflinchingly realistic about China’s authoritarianism, The Guardian reported.

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