My Response to a Coquitlam Confucius Institute student’s letter - after replying to me.

Re: “The Chinese Language and Culture Institute does not push propaganda” (Tri-City News, Oct. 29)

The Editor:

Letter-writer Adam Long claims that Coquitlam School District 43’s Chinese Language and Culture Institute, formerly known as the Confucius Institute, is “non-governmental”.  Fact: nothing is non-governmental in today’s China.  He also claims that it is “non-profit.”  Fact: it was formed to advance China’s “soft power”, to create a favourable body of opinion in the host country, much like sowing seeds overseas for cultivation. (To give an example: I studied in England which perhaps predisposed me to the UK despite its current government).

Trained as an educator, I am only too aware of what goes into curriculum – and what gets left out.  That material on Einstein and Darwin is part of its language program reflects how China is now ruled by engineers, including President Xi himself, who leaves his impression on everything. While hyperbole like “brainwashing” should be avoided, it is most concerning that mandarin immersion students at SD43 were subjected to ideology as a result of the 10^th anniversary celebration of the Institute.

Can language instruction be neutral?  When sponsored by China the answer is: no. Given the repressive nature of the regime, its imperialism regarding other language minorities, for example, and the absence of free speech within its borders, this is an impossibility.

Finally, there is the curious claim that “so many” Institute-detractors are “outside of the district”.  Must we build a wall around SD43, as well?  Or has it already done so?  

The Coquitlam Confucius Institute is a pretext for “good will”

In an effort to eliminate “confusion” the Coquitlam Confucius Institute is now rebranding after dropping the name of China’s most famous philosopher.[1] Meanwhile, in another shell game, it is no longer affiliated with Hanban, a branch of the Chinese Ministry of Education but will be headquartered in Guangzhou at the South China Normal University in a so-called sister-to-sister relationship with School District 43. 

This is all sleight-of-hand. Consider the front page headlines from the Globe and Mail which raise specific concerns, as SD43 applies white-wash. [2] Children celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Confucius Institute in Coquitlam can be found in a YouTube video all synchronized and pumping their fists in the air while reciting “I am proud. I am Chinese”, lines from a patriotic poem which also praises the “five-star red flag” as well as the spirit of the Communist revolution.

SD43 Superintendent Patricia Gartland has also long claimed that Confucius Institute teachers are sourced within Canada and have undergraduate degrees or more.  But upon investigating LinkedIn accounts the Globe and Mail determined that “at least two instructors worked as teachers in mainland China shortly before beginning work for the Coquitlam Institute, which says it only uses local staff.”

On top of this there have been problems with educational materials in the form of textbooks from China which depicted Taiwan as a province and Tiananmen Square as sanitized.  Clearly SD43 has been less than truthful about the China’s influence, and Gartland and our Trustees should be held accountable.

But what is the true cost of doing business with Beijing? SD43 sees it as a boon with about 10 percent of its budget paid for by fees from overseas Chinese students, on average twice the rate of other school districts in the province.  Lest we forget, however, about the over 5,000 British Columbians who have died from overdoses of illicit fentanyl which derives from China. In today’s postcolonial world, it’s likely considered payback for that country’s national humiliation following the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century.

If we look at the controversy surrounding Huawei, Global News has reported on the link between that company’s sudden rise and the bankruptcy of Nortel, Canada’s telecommunications gem.[3]  Too interested in profit margins, Nortel failed to protect its own research and development as China-based military hackers downloaded and stole from executive accounts.  The Globe and Mail has also reported that listening devices were found in the former Nortel building walls.  Perhaps SD43 would consider this sort of information  as beyond its purview.

Myopia prevails at SD43. Speech is not free in China.  It’s a police state with internet firewalls, censorship in overdrive, intrusive facial recognition technology, and a pervasive social credit system to regulate its people.  There is no “public” in mainland China, a concept which suggests “openness” – something President Xi sees as a political enemy.  It also has an aggressive international agenda which should be clear to all.  In other words, the Coquitlam Confucius Institute is just a pretext for Chinese Communist Party “good will”.

Confused?  Beijing certainly is not – though it appears SD43 is muddled about which side of the Pacific Ocean it is meant to serve: China and its despotism, or Canada and its democracy? I know which I prefer.

 

 

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[1] “China has no influence on schools, say trustees, as they double down on Confucius Institute”, Tri-City News online, Wednesday October 14, 2020.

[2] “Beijing uses B.C. schools to push agenda”, The Globe and Mail, Thursday October 15, 2020.

[3] “Inside the Chinese military attack on Nortel”, Global News online August 25, 2020.

Coquitlam’s Confucius Institute in light of Covid-19

 

School Trustees in SD43 missed their annual trip to China this past spring, and likely they will remain home again next year – one minor consequence of the virus originating from and mishandled in Wuhan.  And as the entire globe grapples with Covid-19, President Xi has galvanized Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ambitions – over Hong Kong, the Himalayas, Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, Mongolia, the South China Sea, and, of course, democratically-elected Taiwan, the so-called “renegade” province.  What sort of government is this in China, where one man rules over its only party without limits?  Are not the new Emperor’s boundless aspirations rather self-evident?

Aside from the many overt geopolitical ventures, Xi persists in “hostage diplomacy”, the latest victim being Chinese-born Australian news anchor, Cheng Lei.  Hostage diplomacy is essentially an ugly Communist habit picked up from Stalin, who held a number of hostages in his time, including Chiang Kai-Shek’s only son, which gave the Soviet-supported CCP leverage as the they and the Nationalists (and Japanese) fought over control of China in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  According to Jung Chang and John Halliday’s book, Mao: The Untold Story, Mao’s famous “long march” was saved precisely because of Stalin’s hostage diplomacy.[1] It was also used during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.  Today Xi is copying from Mao.

Meanwhile, in sleepy Coquitlam BC, our “public” school board maintains a Confucius Institute, not at all far removed from the autocratic reach of the CCP itself, in the hopes that it will lure “business” in the name of overseas students thus adding to its coffers, since depleted because of Covid-19.  I am sure Chinese students will always want to come to Canada, not only for the fresh air, but also for a bit of breathing space, as Xi clamps down on even freedom of thought, where nothing within its grasp is deemed independent of the CCP.  But closing the Confucius Institute requires principle.  No school district should have one – or rely on the income from overseas students.  It’s a stand SD43 seems unwilling to take, owing to its sorry addiction to the cash nexus, induced by BC government chronic underfunding of education. History will not take too kindly to this Canadian yearning for the yuan.

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[1] Jung Chang and John Halliday, Mao: The Untold Story (Toronto: Random House, 2005), pp. 130-137.

Pandering to Chinese money: Coquitlam School District (SD43) - and B.C.’s universities

Re: “Trip to China just business: SD43” Tri-City News, Thursday, July 18, 2019[1]

The Editor:

Letter writers to the Tri-City News (myself included) are only knocking their heads against a brick wall each time they wish to publish criticisms of SD43’s (Coquitlam School District 43) “business” relationship with China.  Nothing is going to change unless, maybe, there’s a Tiananmen-like repeat in Hong Kong, which would press the otherwise naïve mandarinate on Poirier Street.

The bureaucracy at SD43 – not unlike like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – is an institution, and all institutions want to enlarge themselves and then reward their members: that’s why our school trustees are the highest paid in B.C.  In other words, just by virtue of their salaries alone the trustees are in a conflict of interest.  They have paid themselves off for the hard work of their annual all-expense-paid excursions to China.

Both of these institutions, as the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott would like to say, are driven by “the politics of faith”: each of them has their own “mission statement”.  One treats the individual as a “blank slate” to be shaped into becoming a productive member of commercial or industrial society, the other wants to exercise minute control of the population by means of government or police apparatus.  Each shares a belief in the ability to master the world, but because of the CCP’s exclusive and iron-fisted rule within the Chinese mainland – and now given the size of China’s economy - it poses a problem for the rest of us.

While SD43 does pander to Chinese money, it is not the only educational institution in B.C. to do so.  SD43 is just mimicking their so-called betters, especially UBC (University of British Columbia) which is most egregious in this respect.  UBC is supposed to be a “public” first-tier research university, but it has built and staffed its own college to teach overseas students whose English is not good enough for first-year.  So one reason why UBC Vantage College exists is because UBC has around 5,000 mainland Chinese students – about one third of its overseas contingent – all of whom can afford the tuition fees and residence costs, and they come in reliable numbers.  Not to be outdone, SFU (Simon Fraser University) – at about 2,500 Chinese students - has a relationship with Fraser International College, but the latter has the merit of being private.

We ought to ask ourselves: who is coming over here? After Mao died in 1976, huge billboards that once wished him a long life were converted into conspicuous advertisements for consumer goods that were at the time unavailable in China.  Today at either our schools or universities, Chinese students are driving high-end luxury cars the values of which far exceeds any budget of their teachers or professors.  How do they pay for them?  What connections do they have with the CCP?  And, given their wealth where is the real academic incentive to learn? Finally, why do we continue to let our public institutions cater to the elite of a foreign country which doesn’t abide by the rules?

The answer appears to lie in the fact that even ivory towers in B.C. aren’t immune to pull of the “cash nexus” which is now so familiar to SD43.  In other words, there’s an exchange going on but it’s not very cultural, or so we like to think.

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[1] The Tri- City News serves Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.  An edited version of this letter was published by the Tri-City News on Thursday, August 15, 2019.

“The Revolt of the Elites” in British Columbia

The fact that another School District 43 trip to China is planned for 2019 can be explained by Christopher Lash’s best-selling book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, a work which anticipated the rise of populism in America over 20 years ago.[1]  The “elites” in the Tri-Cities[2] are the professional managers at SD43 whose loyalties are international rather than local, and where the language of money speaks more loudly than our democracy, to whom our school trustees are beholden.

So trips to China “strengthen the district’s international education program”[3] and allegedly create “world citizens” – but of whom – our Chinese guests who pay fees of $15,000 per year, or the Canadian students who learn that money talks in our public school system?

And the more SD43 deepens its ties with China the more it compromises Canadian multiculturalism: just look to the network of forced indoctrination behind razor wire of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region.[4]  Estimates are that about one million Uyghurs are being re-purposed as model Communist citizens, which some call cultural genocide, and that’s about the Muslim population in Canada.

So if SD43 again goes free to China, what does that say to our Tri-City’s Muslim population?

The elites at SD43 can offer all the buzzwords it wants to explain why $62,725 for a 6-trustee trip to China was reimbursed by Hanban, the cultural arm of the Chinese government, but clearly it has abandoned (as Lash would put it) the ‘obligations of citizenship’, both local and Canadian.

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[1] See especially Ch. 2 “The Revolt of the Elites” in Christopher Lash, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), pp. 25-49.

[2] The Tri-Cities are Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.

[3] See “More Cash for SD43 trustees” Tri-City News (Friday, Nov. 23, 2018), p. A3.

[4] See “Inside China’s campaign against the Urghurs,” The Globe and Mail (Monday Nov. 5 2018), Front Page.

Mandarin Immersion?

Thanks to Premier Christy Clark’s non-adhesion to two decisions by the B.C. Supreme Court, the Coquitlam District school board has cut millions of dollars from this year’s budget and millions again from last year’s budget.  The impact on the school system is huge, and deleterious: increased class sizes, no job security for teachers with 10 years’ experience, Special Education Assistants are spread thinner and thinner, librarians are gone, no cafeterias in Middle Schools, and buses slashed (adding to greenhouse gases).

But has anyone at the School Board thought about cutting Mandarin Immersion from the public purse? As a Canadian I find Mandarin Immersion in Coquitlam rather odd.  Once the dialect of northern China, Mandarin is now the official language of the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan, where everyone is expected to speak it.  Mandarin is also the native language of maybe 250,000 immigrants spread across Canada today, approximately 30,000 of whom are of Taiwanese origin. In 2011 Statistics Canada reported 94,000 Mandarin-speaking individuals in B.C., or 2.2% of the population, so that is hardly enough to justify public immersion classes in Coquitlam.

Yes, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to “instruction in minority language educational facilities provided out of public funds”.  But the Charter implies that only minority language parents have rights for their own children “where numbers warrant”.  Are we talking about “minority language educational rights,” as per the Constitution, or are we talking about opportunity for instruction in an “official” language that is neither English nor French?  I suspect the latter.

Because the number of Mandarin-speaking immigrants has not reached any sort of ‘critical mass’, we can see that the decision to bring about these immersion classes was based on factors not protected by the Constitution. Most students in these immersion classes likely come from outside of Mandarin-speaking immigrant families, yet the public is footing the bill for nearly exclusive, other-Chinese or Asian communities to learn Mandarin as a second, or possibly third language. The decision to have Canadian taxpayers fund Mandarin immersion in British Columbia takes a block of parents off the hook for funding the education of their own offspring, aided as they are by the Confucius Institute, which quietly peddles China’s soft power.

But wait!  China is going to be the premier world economic superpower, I hear, which is the real reason behind Mandarin Immersion.  We need to understand language and culture better in order to do business with the Chinese state and economy, which wields greater and greater influence. The philosopher Karl Popper, in his classic The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) describes this kind of argument politely as moral futurism because it “takes sides with the powers that will be, with the rulers of tomorrow”.  One finds many moral futurists in different parts of Canada who do not realize that their logic tends to undermine what it means to be Canadian.

Yes, language is important, so is cultural heritage, and immigration. And the ability to speak a number of languages fluently is admirable and pressingly urgent, but the case for Mandarin Immersion violates the spirit of the Canadian Charter while at the public’s expense.  Given the scarcity of resources in Coquitlam’s school district, perhaps it’s time to give Mandarin Immersion a serious re-think.