In targeting Mandarin, British MP steps on Confucius

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, while submitting an amendment to the British government's Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that will make it mandatory for education institutions to report the funding and activities of the Confucius Institutes, recently said:"Our students, our kids, our under-18-years olds are taught Mandarin by the Confucius Institutes which are an arm of the Chinese state. Confucius Institutes are supervised by the Chinese Communist Party through the Ministry of Education."

She launched a scathing attack on China, a country of 1.4 billion people, just for click-baiting and going viral. She called China a "genocidal regime" and demanded that the 30 Confucius Institutes in the United Kingdom be pulled up or banned.

Not knowing Mandarin, many British elites fear China. Fear in German is angst. And angst leads to ohnmacht, which means "without power".

Did I just use a foreign language and it sounded like a political statement?

Kearns knows the effect a foreign language has on fearful natives. To her, language is always politics. Therefore, China must not teach the Chinese language, because it's all politics.

Continuing her diatribe against China, she said: "I have recently discovered that Edinburgh University's Confucius Institute has representatives of the Chinese Government's embassy on its board."

True, there are Chinese people on the board of the Confucius Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. But is that a crime?

The director, however, is a German woman.

Chinese studies in Britain appear very loud compared with Chinese studies in Germany. That has to do with the British bombarding Chinese ports in Guangzhou in 1839, capturing Hong Kong in 1842, burning down the Old Summer Palace in 1860, and drugging more than 30 million Chinese people with opium.

During the last 150 years of "exchanges" with China, the British have meddled in Tibet, Taiwan, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, but never attached much importance to Chinese studies or learning Chinese. Call it an import ban.

Now,"Global Britain"－the official UK slogan according to Kearns－has this huge pent-up demand for Chinese language, culture and history. And those Confucius Institutes Kearns wants banned are providing the most authentic and prestigious Chinese language teaching for students outside China. Mastering the Chinese language requires thousands of hours of hard recitation, rote learning and love for China.

Yet Kearns said:"I would argue that it is impossible for Confucius Institutes to operate in this country without undermining our nation's security." The truth is that Chinese teaching courses in the UK can keep up with those in China precisely because British institutions, such as the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, have established cooperation mechanisms with Chinese universities and other education institutions.

Today, the SOAS claims to be "the world's leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East". However, it wasn't the world's leading institution in Chinese studies. But things look much better now that the SOAS has a real Confucius Institute.

Kearns also said that the Confucius Institutes are a threat to freedom because "they are not allowed to hire teachers unless they have been vetted by the Chinese Communist Party". Which means that Kearns, in a way, is admitting that the UK doesn't have qualified Chinese language teachers. And yet, despite not knowing anything about the Chinese language and culture, she wants the institutes to be banned.

The British MP should know that the Confucius Institutes are partly funded by China and partly by the host university, and generate tuition fees and partner with British education and cultural institutions. All this is transparent, yet Kearns demands transparency. She could also have demanded fair weather.

There are about 100 million Mandarin learners in the world, and most of them will eventually achieve proficiency in the Chinese language. But since 40 percent of them are studying Chinese outside China, the best place for them to do so is an accredited Confucius Institute.

Also, the UK is obsessed with James Bond-type spies. Before 2003, there were at most 300 undergraduate students studying Chinese in the UK, and the MI6, MI5 and DI intelligence services recruited many of them because they could read Chinese.

On the other hand, there could be about 100,000 Chinese students in the UK today who can read English, so everyone is paranoid.

If Kearns succeeds in keeping China out of Chinese studies in the UK, it could cancel "Global Britain" once and for all.

The writer is the author of The East-West Dichotomy and Shengren-Above Philosophy and Beyond Religion. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.