The wise Confucius is no longer welcome in Australia

In recent months, around half of the Confucius Institutes at Australian universities have disappeared. Six universities from Brisbane to Sydney and Melbourne to Perth quietly allowed their existing contracts to expire – only a report by the national broadcaster ABC made the closures public. According to the ABC's compilation, seven Chinese institutes remain in Australia.

Confucius Institutes are institutions maintained by the Chinese Ministry of Education to promote Chinese language and culture. They are named after the philosopher Confucius, who lived in the fifth century BC. The Communist Party presents the great thinker as a role model because he advocated for order and harmony. The fact that he also taught critical thinking and questioning authority is something the CCP fails to mention.

The institutes do not operate independently, like the Goethe Institutes, but are embedded in universities in the host countries. Teachers and learning materials are provided by Hanban, the Chinese state-run language training center.

Australian universities have long been very receptive to this type of collaboration because it allows them to offer Chinese language courses at low cost. As Australian governments have reduced subsidies to universities for many years, universities are seeking additional income. Many are also specifically recruiting foreign students, from whom they can charge higher tuition fees. Chinese students make up the largest group.

Confucius Institutes, Chinese students, and research agreements with Chinese institutes have offered the Chinese Communist Party numerous opportunities to influence Australian science and education, says Clive Hamilton. The ethics professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra was one of the first to draw attention to Chinese attempts to influence Australia's education, economy, and politics. His book "Silent Invasion" caused a stir when it was published in 2018, partly because his established publisher refused to publish the book for fear of Chinese reprisals.

"Of all the public institutions, universities were the most denial-prone that there was a problem," Hamilton says in an interview. He blames academic arrogance: "Professors said to themselves, 'We're so smart that we could never be affected by the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.'"

At some universities, the change of heart hasn't really taken place yet. The universities aren't closing Confucius Institutes because they consider them problematic. "They're doing so because the government has made it clear to them that it sees the institutes as a problem and that government funding could be at stake," says Hamilton.

Since Hamilton's book was published, the tide has shifted. China is now viewed much more critically in Australia. The intelligence agencies are paying close attention to where and how the Chinese Communist Party attempts to manipulate Australian politics and society. The University Foreign Influence Task Force (UFIT) was established in 2019, bringing together representatives from government and universities. UFIT has developed guidelines for dealing with foreign influence .

Two years ago, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government made it clear that it would not approve any new Confucius Institutes. However, the existing institutes were not closed. However, Hamilton said, universities had realized that the Confucius Institute model was no longer politically viable.

The era of Confucius Institutes in Australia is clearly over. The remaining institutes are likely to disappear just as quietly as the others. Even if the Liberal Party wins the elections in early May, it wouldn't change anything. It is at least as critical of China as Albanese's Labor Party.

This raises the question: What have the institutes achieved?

Not much, says James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology in Sydney. While the Confucius Institutes have influenced the censorship of certain topics that Beijing wanted to avoid, Laurenceson says, "you can't say they have actively engaged in propaganda."

In its early years, Acri itself came under fire because it was financially supported by a businessman of Chinese descent who had contacts with the Chinese Communist Party. Today, awareness is completely different, and Australian intelligence agencies are closely monitoring where and how foreign powers—primarily China—attempt to exert influence, says Laurenceson.

Hamilton sees it similarly: For a time, the Confucius Institutes made the political environment at Australian universities more receptive to Beijing's worldview, but they were never the primary channel for the CCP's influence—in business and politics, it was much greater. "But the institutes were very visible; it was a form of influence that everyone understood," says Hamilton: "The Confucius Institutes are a very powerful symbol. Their disappearance now represents the changing attitudes in Australia toward China."