UK-China Transparency today publishes its first project, Are Confucius Institutes legal?
The project consists of the publication and analysis of a range of primary source data about British universities’ Confucius Institutes. The data is fully searchable and hosted on UK-China Transparency’s digital library
Our findings suggest that:
- Staff at Confucius Institutes are recruited in a highly discriminatory way that is illegal under UK law.
- Staff are being recruited based on their ability to enforce ‘CCP discipline’ in the UK and are obliged to undermine free speech and to conduct harassment on command.
- Universities are systematically enabling this in a way that breaches their legal obligations to staff and students.
- The Home Office is systematically enabling this by means of an unlawful dedicated visa route which makes the employment status of Confucius Institute staff unclear.
The project has so far received coverage in The Guardian and The Times in the UK.