A Canadian-made documentary that shines a light on one of China’s largest soft-power initiatives is starting to pick up awards as it makes its rounds on the film festival circuit.
Filmmaker Doris Liu, a Chinese-Canadian journalist based in Toronto, got interested in Confucius Institutes when she heard the story of Sonia Zhao, who defected to Canada and went on to expose the unsavoury behind-the-scenes practices of what China bills as a Chinese language and culture program.
Zhao came to Canada to teach at McMaster University’s Confucius Institute in 2011. Liu’s documentary “In the Name of Confucius” tells Zhao’s story amid the backdrop of a public showdown over the Toronto District School Board‘s controversial decision to bring a Confucius Institute (CI) to Canada’s largest school board.
China has made deals to install CIs in hundreds of educational institutions around the world by giving those institutions the ability to offer Chinese language and culture classes using teachers and curricula selected and paid for by the Beijing regime.
CIs are commonly acknowledged by intelligence agencies as tools to extend the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) soft power. According to Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior manager with the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency, CIs are part of a larger network of organizations used by the CCP to advance its influence abroad. (more...)
“In the Name of Confucius” is the first documentary exposé of China’s multi-billion dollar Confucius Institute program and the growing global controversies surrounding it, ranging from erosions to academic integrity and violations to human-rights codes, to foreign influence and potential infringements on national security.
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Back in my day, in addition to the stock Cultural Marxists, the schools were full of closet Nazis. The Chinese are just doing what every other ideologue has been doing in Canada since before the earth's crust cooled. It's astounding how little integrity our academics have; how willing they are to sell out foreign influence.
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