NEWSLETTER: Our new report - “Confucius Institutes: The CCP in British Universities”
Updated: Jan 9
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Committee News
On Wednesday 12th October the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and the Henry Jackson Society will launch their report “Confucius Institutes: The CCP in British Universities’. The report reveals that Confucius Institutes act as arms of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), engaging in a wide variety of activity beyond their stated remit of ‘language and culture.’ The report looks at thirty Confucius Institutes around the UK and further in depth into eight, including those at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Edinburgh. While the study identifies over £33 million in funding from China the actual amount is more likely to be around£43-46 million. The event will include a discussion of the report’s findings, their ramifications, and how best to draw up a policy response. Contributing to the discussion will be Sam Dunning, the report’s author; Bob Seely MP, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Stephen Vines, journalist, writer and broadcaster (and long-time Hong Kong resident); Louisa Clarence-Smith, education editor for The Telegraph and Sam Armstrong, former director of communications at the Henry Jackson Society. To attend the launch of the report register here.
Hong Kong
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China released a report ‘Hong Kong’s Civil Society: From an Open City to a City of Fear’ this week, including first-person accounts of the Hong Kong’s government’s efforts to dismantle civil society since the 2019 demonstrations. Patrick Poon, visiting researcher for comparative law at Meiji University, stated: “The National Security Law means the end of political space for civil society organisations. The Chinese Communist Party thinks that it is in a life-and-death struggle with foreign forces in Hong Kong. It is determined to make the civil society collapse.”
A group of U.S. lawmakers condemned executives of America’s largest banks who are attending the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in November. The event is expected to be attended by senior executives from JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Morgan Stanley.
The series of illustrated children’s books about sheep and wolves, for which five Hong Kong speech therapists were found guilty of sedition, have been made available