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Split is now complete, so further discussion of POV and other issues related to controversy content should happen over at talk:Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 22:27, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
We should reconsider the relevance of Wikipedia:Criticism because two pro-merger commentators have mentioned it – "Criticism articles are discouraged, except for topics like philosophy and religion, about which there is an entire literature dedicated to criticism" (15 January), and "The cantoning merely perpetuates empire building and turf wars …The essay WP:CRITICISM summarises the issues quite well." (17 January). In fact, the Confucius Institute program meets two primary criteria for a criticism article.
Subject matter. CIs are a politically controversial organization associated with the Chinese Communist Party. As an exception to general WP rules, criticism articles are sometimes allowed for six exceptional subjects: Living persons; Philosophy, religion, or politics; and Organizations and corporations.
For topics which inherently represent a point of view, the ideal approach of integrating negative criticism within the primary article may not be the best approach. For example, topics such as philosophies ( Idealism, Materialism, Existentialism), political outlooks ( Capitalism, Marxism), or religions ( Judaism, Christianity, Atheism) are topics that are inherently about a particular viewpoint. Integrating negative criticism into those articles can sometimes result in confusion: readers may not be able to discern the difference between what adherents believe versus what critics assert. For these reasons, such articles often include dedicated "Criticism" sections or "Criticism of .." subarticles. (2.2)
Independent criticism sources. Since the beginnings of the "CI Controversies" subsection and subarticle, the recurring UNDUE and POV arguments were based upon claims that too many sources were critical.
Many organizations and corporations are involved in well-documented controversies, or may be subject to significant criticism. If the sources treat these topics independently, that may result in sections and sub-articles devoted to the controversies or criticism. (2.3)
Sections and articles dedicated to controversies about a topic are generally discouraged, for many of the same reasons discussed above for criticism-related material. Articles or sections dedicated to a controversy may be appropriate if the reliable sources on the topic discuss the controversies as an independent topic. Examples of articles devoted to a controversy include Whaling controversy, Global warming controversy, 2008 Olympics controversies and Scientology controversies. (3.5)
Thus, both the Confucius Institute's subject matter and critical sources make it suitable for an independent controversy article. Keahapana ( talk) 00:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
(watch) Following a brief discussion initiated at the talk page of the subsidiary article, Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes, I would seek consensus to merge the two articles. There cannot be any objection as to the size of any potentially combined article. Stripped of duplication, it would be well below 100kb. There are a number of problems that have been highlighted, principally undue weight being given to speculative fears or general anti-PRC sentiment. I have put in substantial work into the other article, but it remains a POV fork; I also still feel that it can never be anything but an attack page. The issues are not really all that complex, in that they principally stem from the involvement of the Chinese party-state and fears over how its record of propaganda and denial of human rights would impact academic establishments hungry for Chinese hard cash. My personal view of the merger outcome would be a further substantial pruning of the content now residing at the latter so that the conclusions of both batches of text would be in political alignment. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I guess one person's tempest in a teapot is another person's exemplar in the Confucius Institute narrative. Of course, not everything meets WP standards, but this Hacienda case merits inclusion. First, it involved (and may be the earliest example of) a secondary Confucius Classroom controversy rather than university Confucius Institute. Second, it was clearly not a "local issue" limited to an "editorial in a local paper"; besides the Asian American Policy Review article (thanks to OhConfucius for citing this before deleting it), the Hacienda school board debates were reported in sources like the Washington Times, BBC, and National Review. Keahapana ( talk) 23:10, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
No, this isn't a content dispute, it's the above example of dubiously deleted content, which two pro-merger editors claim is appropriate. After we've resolved this merge proposal, we can discuss reverting Hacienda La Puente (with added refs) and the other problematic deletions. Notably, last week the C&CCI article lost about 8Kb of content in a flurry of pre-merger edits (22 by PCPP and 71 by OhConfucius) shown in this diff (see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes). Some of these were justifiable removals and stylistic improvements, but other edits like Hacienda deserve reexamination and discussion on that Talk page. I'm curious. Who thinks this kind of removal is appropriate under WP rules? Can we expect similar omissions in the merge reduction? Keahapana ( talk) 20:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
I am making this request for comment because the numerous accusations of serious political interference and censorship on both sides of this debate seem to demand further comment by neutral parties if this article is ever to meet Wikipedia standards. John Hill ( talk) 22:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your understanding, but there are no guarantees against future deletions of worthwhile information. Keahapana ( talk) 21:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
You can believe what you want, but you're still wrong about my emotional state. I'm not angry, period. We all understand the difficulties of affectively interpreting computer-mediated communication (until Emotion Markup Language is developed). In my unangry, rational, and honest opinion, the present merge process does appear like railroading. You have much more experience editing Wikipedia than I do, so please tell me. Is it common practice to propose a merge and then start merging content less than 48 hours later? I enjoyed the brilliant Newspeak of stuff that is not actually lost just invisible, reminiscent of the Recdep. While WP editors are aware that page histories record every deletion, we cannot expect WP readers to search the archives for invisible information. Keahapana ( talk) 21:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
I have reinstated some of the responses to the hiring policy. It can be more than three sentences, given the issues. Quotes and names are relevant. They are more credible than very short summaries, because they show research and authority. In fact, I just read that Epoch Times article in full and it is the most complete of the articles available on the topic (not surprising given the paper's pedigree). I think more information from it should be included, because it analyses whether it really is legal or illegal (it is perhaps not legal in the US, the article suggests). This view should appear, so it does not appear that CIs are breaking the law when they are possibly not. Ohconfucius added an RS tag. Is that to suggest the information in the article might be made up? Everyone knows the paper was started by FLG people. Is that why we wonder whether it's RS or not? I think it's sufficient that the page is linked; people can click through and find out its affiliations. People's Daily and Xinhua have their place on the page, too, and if they quote a relevant expert and that expert's views are suitable, we'd include that just the same. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 03:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Please note that I am not dismissing the idea of including the content that is currently sourced to Epoch Times, provided a better, more objective source can be found corroborating the ET assertions. Otherwise, all the references to ET and associated content should be deleted from this page. Colipon+( Talk) 12:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
This is referring to the Epoch Times coverage of the hiring policies? Several sources reported on that, including USA Today, Bloomberg and Macleans (Canada's leading current affairs magazine). It also looks like the offending regulations are still on the Hanban website. But while those sources raised the issue in passing as one example of controversies with CIs, the Epoch Times devoted a full article, which included interviews with legal scholars and CI directors. It's those quotes—not any opinion or analysis from the Epoch Times itself—that are currently in use. Whether we like it or not, the Epoch Times is the best reporting available on this topic, the potential legal implications of the policy, and the response from North American CIs. (It's also the only secondary source I could find that quoted the Hanban regulation in full; all other RS redacted it). I don't see any honest reason to doubt that this particular article or the quotes in question are unreliable. With a quick search I could find two other mainstream sources that cite the Epoch Times on this topic — Freedom House [2] and Macleans magazine [3]. With this being said, I'm not convinced that we need those quotes on the page. I think it would suffice to just note the rules, and add that they aroused civil rights concerns in North America as possibly being in violation of anti-discrimination laws. Homunculus ( duihua) 15:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Did you read my comment? Not only have other reliable sources reported on this issue (Bloomberg and USA Today, among others), some have cited Epoch Times coverage specifically (Macleans, Freedom House). That's a pretty good gauge both of notability and of mainstream sources' regard for the quality and reliability Epoch Times coverage. Homunculus ( duihua) 02:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Well done to those who've been working on this page; it's coherent and reads quite well. On reviewing it, I remain a little concerned that a POV fork has been created, and also have some specific questions:
Those are just some initial ideas. I was hoping to make some edits along these lines, but wanted to first discuss them here. My main concern, really, is that we should accurately reflect the available information and discourse around these institutes, and not relegate anything that could be classified as a "controversy" to a separate page. As I understood it, the purpose of the split was to avoid an unwieldy controversies section on the main page, which is absolutely fair, but we should still strive to ensure that a reader gets a more or less complete picture from the main page. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
This is good stuff. I'll see if I can help:
I believe our information about the leaders of CI HQ/Hanban which is now being repeated in detail in the lede, is no longer accurate. Check out the CI website and try to find info on HQ leadership, you'll quickly come across this page. This arcticle claims that Liu Yandong (politburo member) is the one in charge of the operation, but judging by the article on hanban website and other sources I've found such as this [6] Xu Lin is the director-general and the person most in charge of the Confucius institutes. I also couldn't find much evidence that other folks in leadership are high-ranking government officials, but enough reliable sources say something vaguely similar that I'm not doing anything about that claim now. Basically, the info we've got on here appears to be out of date, but there's a source problem. I don't want to use hanban sources, because this is Wikipedia and we likely independent sources. The other sources are all either CIs or college newspapers with a sensational slant suggesting that the CIs are used for spying or worse. Any help? If not at least the above should help others understand some of my related edits. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 18:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
After further research, I can't say I understand this any better, but it appears that Confucius institute headquarters is subject to two levels of governance. The directors of the Hanban/CI HQ and the governing Council. The governing council itself appears to be chaired by Liu Yandong. The rest of the leadership of the council is big time party officials, Then there are the "member" of the council who may or may not be there just for show, but they are all drawn from the host institutions. The council governs the CI HQ, the directing leadership is headed by Xu Lin and is described in the link above. I'll try to rewrite the organization section to be more clear in describing this situation, but I'm still having trouble finding proper sources, - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 19:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
This article is very quote-heavy. some of it just reads like a list of things people have said about CIs. This being wikipedia we should paraphrase and summarize in neutral language any uncontroversial statements or remove them entirely if they don't add useful info to the article. Controversial statements are trickier since we don't want to be making controversial statements in WP voice. I'll do what I can to clean this mess, you can help if you like. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 16:03, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
This issue is fixed for now. Notice the quote from Politburo guy about propaganda remains, since he's a big figure and there was a lot of commentary on the actual words of his statement, especially the word "propaganda". I think the quote should stay for this reason. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 19:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
At some point someone added a "political" sub-section to the "purposes" section. Then some quotes got dumped in there and now it says the same thing over and over and over again in a disorganized manner- namely that The CIs are part of a broader soft-power initiative in addition to their educational goals. I'm going to rewrite this section and it will be much, much shorter. I anticipate the posibility of people suspecting my motives, so I'm explaining them here first. Similar editing has been called censorship a number of times before. This is just an effort to make the subsection read more clearly. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 17:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
While I don't expect to have a consensus now about more abstract issues relating to this article, I do think there's one particular edit that can be dealt with here, hoping that the outcome is in fact consensus. Somebody in the Globe and Mail once said that the CIs use simplified characters and that such is part of some political war with Taiwan. I'm paraphrasing, loosely at that, so let's not argue about the particulars. I don't think that this nonsense opinion is relevant to the discussion of the curriculum of the Confucius Institutes and I have removed it. They use the simplified characters for the same reason they teach Chinese instead of Japanese. It's not hard to find people on TV or newspapers politicizing everything that relates to China, but we need to draw a line somewhere and decide that some of those opinions serve their interests and not ours. The use of simplified characters is still discussed in the section, but now without this quote about it marginalizing Taiwan politically. This no more marginalizes Taiwan than anything that China does may be said to marginalize Taiwan. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 03:37, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry to be slow in coming back, thanks for waiting. I've gone through the diffs and agree that many changes were constructive improvements to the article, but some were not. The biggest problem is "paraphrasing" that eliminates instead of clarifying CI criticisms. Here are three before/after examples:
To give a "correct" understanding of X ≠ to influence views of X.
Assuaging concerns of X in the context of Y ≠ assuaging concerns about Y.
Distinct in the degree to which X ≠ much suspicion about X.
Four of the five deleted sources are restored: Brady 2011, Globe and Mail 2013, Guo 2008, and Peng 2011. Even though Churchman's 2011 article is in a peer-reviewed ANU journal, we can agree that he might not be notable.
What about these ideas for revising current sections? We could change 3 Purpose and 3.1 Political goals to something like 3 Purpose split into 3.1 Academic and 3.2 Political. Changing 6 Controversies to 6 Criticisms or 6 Criticisms and controversies would me more accurate. Of course, all these changes are tentative and I hope we can find compromises that satisfy all sides. Keahapana ( talk) 22:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I now understand more clearly. It appears that we can agree about maintaining the voice of Wikipedia. As previously discussed, quotes are necessary in discussing CI criticisms, per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:CRIT, which says, "When presenting negative material, it is often best to name the source of the criticism within the paragraph or sentence, so that the criticism is not presented in the encyclopedia's voice." Keahapana ( talk) 22:02, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
I removed a quote about the use of simplified Chinese by Confucius Institutes which frames their usage not only as controversial, but also as part of a grand geopolitical conspiracy against Taiwan. The adjacent quote stated that teaching simplified characters would prohibit the students from understanding thousands of years of Chinese writing. The first is absurd and clearly not relevant to the discussion of the curriculum. They teach simplified characters for much same reason they teach Mandarin Chinese instead of Cantonese. That is the standard in Mainland China and other places. It should be obvious that this does no more to marginalize Taiwan than anything the Mainland does abroad. Just because this was uttered in a newspaper once doesn't make it relevant. After removing the quotes the section still explained that the CIs use the standard simplified characters. The Sahlins quote is equally trivial. Students can easily learn the traditional characters, read texts which have been converted to simplified or use automated conversion, such as used on the Chinese language wikipedia. No one is being "denied access" to anything just by teaching them Chinese using simplified characters. This was reverted and I'd like to better understand why we need the quotes, and how they help the reader better understand the curriculum of Confucius Institutes. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 05:20, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I might also note that there is no rule at CIs against teaching traditional characters which seems to be what these quotes are implying. In fact, many CIs teach traditional characters in a variety of settings, especially Chinese calligraphy classes. The quotes give an unhelpful and distorted interpretation of a very mundane policy. This is not-noteworthy conspiracy-theorizing and should be removed completely. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 05:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
"'Confucius Institute' is a trademarked brand name. A CI chairperson explained, 'Those who enjoy more brand names will enjoy higher popularity, reputation, more social influence, and will therefore be able to generate more support from local communities.'"
I deleted the above quote for a variety of reasons I thought would be pretty uncontroversial, but that was reverted, so lets discuss and see if there's a consensus somewhere. Basically, this unnamed person is saying that brand names are good, totally meaningless. Beyond that, what is this anonymous quote adding to the article. The English is awkward, lacks context, and doesn't seem to be saying anything useful. The article calls it an explanation, but what about the preceding statement does it explain exactly? The quote's not totally evil, but why include it at all when we could say something clear and meaningful in WP voice instead?
Previous quote deletions have been objected to because they are attached to a ref, that's not a valid argument for inclusion. This is part of my conspiracy to increase the proportion of the article that is factual and reduce the proportion of the article consisting of uncritical repetition of something someone said one time. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 12:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
While there appears to be consensus on the Hanban talk page that the section regarding the "braga incident" is undue and too long, I can understand if someone doesn't not personally want to do the work of shortening and summarizing that section. To then take that problematic content and copy it into this article serves only to duplicate the problem. I should note that the editor Keapanna is aware of this issue as the editor has participated in the discusssions. I will revert and I hope that we can avoid making half of this article about one thing that the director of the CI headquarters did one time. It is certainly and without doubt not the most interesting or important thing about the Confucius institutes. There is plenty of coverage in reliable sources which does not relate to this "braga incident". There is a summary of the event in the article and it should stay, but we don't need a long and detailed account of the event with multiple repetition and a list of quotes taken out of context dominating the article. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 03:07, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I only asked you to explain because this statement is not quite self-explanatory. It is ambiguous because to make do commonly means "to manage with a (esp. inferior or expedient) substitute" or "take a means to an end (not necessarily a principled or ethical one)", which is not what we want for Wikipedia. Consider for example, this "make do with a single sentence" context. I apologize if my trying to understand appears to be litigating. Yes, I don't want to waste time arguing either, and agree with you that we should focus on the matter at hand, condensing the Braga and UChicago content, making it more readable and interesting. Thanks for doing a good job copyediting the Hanfeng content on Hanban. Would you like to try doing more of the same for this content? If you'll start, I'll cooperate with any reasonable reductions, and try to further condense the coverage. We could begin here or on Hanban, whichever page you like, and copy the content afterwards. Keahapana ( talk) 23:51, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
This may be of interest.
Keahapana ( talk) 23:52, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm adding a section here, although I'm not sure if the structure is appropriate, but I don't know how to ask my questions the other way. I've noticed the removal of many mention of the instances of propaganda within Confucius Institutes. There seems to be enough backing from academics and universities, that we should not cleanse the Wikipedia page from these mentions. Specifically, why is Propaganda not included within the "Focus" section of the header? Who gets to decide whether that should have been removed? lessconfusedthanbefore ( talk) 13:07, 6 June 2017 (EST)
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I have reverted a series of recent deletions. Diff can be found here.
I am far from an expert on this topic, but significant content deletion accompanied by edit summaries such as "Removing unrelated and biased nonsense","biased rubbish", "entire section is a political rant completely unrelated to the topic", and "biased and pointless portion" raise some concerns. I cannot judge if the original text is appropriate or not, but I think these deletions should be raised on the talk page first. - Eron Talk 08:06, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
The editors of this Wikipedia page on the topic “Confucius Institute” willfully act to allow mischaracterizing and disparaging the Confucius Institute. Several recent edits intended to correct the situation to make it reflect the definition of what the Confucius Institutes actually are have been made (see page history), but the editors systematically replace these edits with prior contents that is overtly biased against the Confucius Institutes and discuss a side topic that should go under “Opposition to Confucius Institutes” on a different page. Multiple suggestions to migrate critical contents onto a different page have been ignored; a clique of dishonest editors maliciously refuse to collaborate.
The editors maliciously rely on technical definitions such as “quoted contents is not opinions” but, in fact, anyone can quote anybody to support any view, obviously including a biased one. Or they retort that "consensus must be gained". But what kind of consensus is possible with biased China haters ? The issues is that the page is biased and disparages the Confucius Institutes, it does not describe what they are, it describes what a few people with warped world vision think they are, or worse, would like anyone to become convinced of. Only a very tiny fraction of Confucius Institutes run into problems because they are set among predominantly non-mainland Chinese communities that, basically, more or less hate China. The editors disguise their opposition to CI under the rubric “neutral discussion” but the page is hardly neutral, it is completely biased.
The page, as it is, is mischaracterizing the Confucius Institutes and the editors are willfully engaged in perpetuating this mischaracterization. To them, Confucius Institute is synonymous to controversy. But this notion is false . Confucius Institute is one thing, the tiny fraction of militants who oppose CI is quite another. Editors of the Confucius Institute page should be dismissed for willful collusion to maintain bias and they should be replaced with new impartial ones. Critical contents should be segregated as suggested and migrated to a different page such as ”Opposition to Confucius Institutes”. Please see the page history and click on one of the edited version around 8 February 2018 to see what the page should really look like.
Understand this: No one wants to quell free speech. That is not the issue. People opposed to CI have the right to their opinion, even though it is blatantly wrong. But it is quite dishonest for them, and the editors who support them (they are perhaps one and the same?), to use the CI page on Wikipedia to promote their opposition, blow a side issue way out of proportion, and mischaracterize what CI are. They can discuss their childish conspiracy theory against CI on another page all they want; no problem. But they should not attempt to redefine CI to mean Opposition to CI.
Thank you.
An American, speaking for many many others who are not Chinese but are very familiar with CI.
PS Come on guys, face it, CI is out to convert our youth to Communism? Are you kidding me? Do you have any notion of how silly this is? The Red Scare went out of style decades and decades ago already. Please grow up and get informed!
71.86.118.179 ( talk) 02:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Frankly I believe this is one of the poorer articles I've seen on WP, a jumbled mess that confuses facts with opinions and speculation. Meanwhile, the syllabus section noted that CI "teaches in simplified characters", and that's it. Not every section has to be about controversies, there is already a dedicated article for it, and I believe the ones that should be highlighted are those which resulted in actual consequences eg termination of CI contracts, not speculation from every angle.
I think this article should be rewritten in the style of similar articles eg British Council, including:
"Organization promoting Chinese language and culture around the world” doesn't work for a number of reasons, first it doesn't mention that its a Chinese Government organ, second it doesnt include the influence/soft power/propaganda aspect of Confucius Institutes which are arguably a higher priority than their promotional and educational work, third I believe the only language they promote is Mandarin so the claim that they promote Chinese language is overly broad as they only appear to promote a single Chinese language. Some have objected to "Chinese government education, advocacy, and propaganda organization with a global focus” and I would be interested to have those editors expand on their presumably policy based arguments. I hope we can come to a consensus that makes this article stronger. Horse Eye Jack ( talk) 17:50, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I applaud Simonm223 for suggesting the alternate short description, and I would remind Horse Eye Jack to stop unproductive grasping at irrelevant straws such as who awarded barnstars to whom. CaradhrasAiguo ( leave language) 16:24, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
There are dozens of books and articles that describe CIs in terms of "propaganda". For instance, Google Books. Keahapana ( talk) 23:09, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
The History section's first paragraph reads as follows (with bold face added by myself to point to the problem):
The CI in South Korea is no longer active. The second Confucius Institute was opened on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park, also in November 2004. Hundreds more have opened since in dozens of countries around the world, with the highest concentration of Institutes in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
The first sentence of that paragraph would appear to conflict with the last 14 words of the paragraph. I can guess (but only guess) what is meant here. Un sch ool 23:42, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
A GAO report from last year that summarizes a year long investigation into Confucius Institutes in the U.S. largely discredits many of the accusations levied against institutes in America. Much of this page seems to regurgitating debunked talking points, some of which are over a decade old and unsubstantiated. I see that the report has recently started to be cited, but the page is still wildly inaccurate. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-401T
-- Repugnantduck ( talk) 19:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
The citations you requested are now present. GrandmasterLiuHu ( talk) 13:59, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
There's a statement "however many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities" with a source https://as.tufts.edu/confuciusinstitute/about however the source does not state that many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities. The closest thing it has is that Tufts university and Hanban have signed a new agreement in 2019 without providing any more details. It does have agreement text in Chinese which is of course a primary source requiring interpretation not to mention understanding Chinese. So whats the proper procedure on English Wikipedia when the given source does not have a statement supposedly taken from it? Shall I add {{fact}} or just delete the statement in question? -- Nomad ( talk) 12:10, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
GrandmasterLiuHu has begun an edit war to insert synthesis about "intimidation" into this article. The sources [1] [2] [3] that he or she has cited to support this insertion make no mention of the subject of this article. This claim needs to be removed until reliable sources that link it to this subject can be provided. ElKevbo ( talk) 13:46, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
References
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The sources are reliable, peer reviewed, are clearly related to the subject of ethics and surveillance, and each of them individually explicitly discusses how exactly this kind of mass surveillance directly leads to unavoidable intimidation. (Therefore, it is not a synthesis, as each citation stands on it's own. The source doesn't need to make mention "Of the article" because the source applies generally to all mass surveillance. You should try actually reading the sources presented, rather than skimming them. I will not allow you to cover up racist authoritarianism and the suffering of my people.
GrandmasterLiuHu ( talk) 13:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I deleted the sentence "however, many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities" because the citation provided only links to Tufts University's 2019 re-negotiated agreement and nothing else. If other editors can find reliable sources that support this view, please feel free to add it back. Normchou 💬 15:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Per WP:V, I also deleted "However, this claim is in dispute. Michael Nylan, professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, stated that CIs have become less heavy-handed in their demands, and have learnt from "early missteps", such as insisting that universities adopt a policy that Taiwan is part of China. Nylan's survey of faculty and administrators at fifteen universities with Confucius Institutes revealed two reports that institutes had exerted pressure to block guest speakers, but both events went ahead anyway." The citation provided was "Golden (2011)" without any title or link to the source. Normchou 💬 15:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
This would seem to indicate there is a CI within the UC system. Charles Juvon ( talk) 15:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
Pompeo admitted he tells lies. How is he credible for wikipedia??? Video. (Clip) or full length... The Longer clip from Texas A&M. Secretary Pompeo Participates in Q&A Discussion at Texas A&M University At around 28:00 minutes in. CaribDigita ( talk) 17:22, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Split is now complete, so further discussion of POV and other issues related to controversy content should happen over at talk:Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 22:27, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
We should reconsider the relevance of Wikipedia:Criticism because two pro-merger commentators have mentioned it – "Criticism articles are discouraged, except for topics like philosophy and religion, about which there is an entire literature dedicated to criticism" (15 January), and "The cantoning merely perpetuates empire building and turf wars …The essay WP:CRITICISM summarises the issues quite well." (17 January). In fact, the Confucius Institute program meets two primary criteria for a criticism article.
Subject matter. CIs are a politically controversial organization associated with the Chinese Communist Party. As an exception to general WP rules, criticism articles are sometimes allowed for six exceptional subjects: Living persons; Philosophy, religion, or politics; and Organizations and corporations.
For topics which inherently represent a point of view, the ideal approach of integrating negative criticism within the primary article may not be the best approach. For example, topics such as philosophies ( Idealism, Materialism, Existentialism), political outlooks ( Capitalism, Marxism), or religions ( Judaism, Christianity, Atheism) are topics that are inherently about a particular viewpoint. Integrating negative criticism into those articles can sometimes result in confusion: readers may not be able to discern the difference between what adherents believe versus what critics assert. For these reasons, such articles often include dedicated "Criticism" sections or "Criticism of .." subarticles. (2.2)
Independent criticism sources. Since the beginnings of the "CI Controversies" subsection and subarticle, the recurring UNDUE and POV arguments were based upon claims that too many sources were critical.
Many organizations and corporations are involved in well-documented controversies, or may be subject to significant criticism. If the sources treat these topics independently, that may result in sections and sub-articles devoted to the controversies or criticism. (2.3)
Sections and articles dedicated to controversies about a topic are generally discouraged, for many of the same reasons discussed above for criticism-related material. Articles or sections dedicated to a controversy may be appropriate if the reliable sources on the topic discuss the controversies as an independent topic. Examples of articles devoted to a controversy include Whaling controversy, Global warming controversy, 2008 Olympics controversies and Scientology controversies. (3.5)
Thus, both the Confucius Institute's subject matter and critical sources make it suitable for an independent controversy article. Keahapana ( talk) 00:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
(watch) Following a brief discussion initiated at the talk page of the subsidiary article, Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes, I would seek consensus to merge the two articles. There cannot be any objection as to the size of any potentially combined article. Stripped of duplication, it would be well below 100kb. There are a number of problems that have been highlighted, principally undue weight being given to speculative fears or general anti-PRC sentiment. I have put in substantial work into the other article, but it remains a POV fork; I also still feel that it can never be anything but an attack page. The issues are not really all that complex, in that they principally stem from the involvement of the Chinese party-state and fears over how its record of propaganda and denial of human rights would impact academic establishments hungry for Chinese hard cash. My personal view of the merger outcome would be a further substantial pruning of the content now residing at the latter so that the conclusions of both batches of text would be in political alignment. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I guess one person's tempest in a teapot is another person's exemplar in the Confucius Institute narrative. Of course, not everything meets WP standards, but this Hacienda case merits inclusion. First, it involved (and may be the earliest example of) a secondary Confucius Classroom controversy rather than university Confucius Institute. Second, it was clearly not a "local issue" limited to an "editorial in a local paper"; besides the Asian American Policy Review article (thanks to OhConfucius for citing this before deleting it), the Hacienda school board debates were reported in sources like the Washington Times, BBC, and National Review. Keahapana ( talk) 23:10, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
No, this isn't a content dispute, it's the above example of dubiously deleted content, which two pro-merger editors claim is appropriate. After we've resolved this merge proposal, we can discuss reverting Hacienda La Puente (with added refs) and the other problematic deletions. Notably, last week the C&CCI article lost about 8Kb of content in a flurry of pre-merger edits (22 by PCPP and 71 by OhConfucius) shown in this diff (see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes). Some of these were justifiable removals and stylistic improvements, but other edits like Hacienda deserve reexamination and discussion on that Talk page. I'm curious. Who thinks this kind of removal is appropriate under WP rules? Can we expect similar omissions in the merge reduction? Keahapana ( talk) 20:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
I am making this request for comment because the numerous accusations of serious political interference and censorship on both sides of this debate seem to demand further comment by neutral parties if this article is ever to meet Wikipedia standards. John Hill ( talk) 22:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your understanding, but there are no guarantees against future deletions of worthwhile information. Keahapana ( talk) 21:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
You can believe what you want, but you're still wrong about my emotional state. I'm not angry, period. We all understand the difficulties of affectively interpreting computer-mediated communication (until Emotion Markup Language is developed). In my unangry, rational, and honest opinion, the present merge process does appear like railroading. You have much more experience editing Wikipedia than I do, so please tell me. Is it common practice to propose a merge and then start merging content less than 48 hours later? I enjoyed the brilliant Newspeak of stuff that is not actually lost just invisible, reminiscent of the Recdep. While WP editors are aware that page histories record every deletion, we cannot expect WP readers to search the archives for invisible information. Keahapana ( talk) 21:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
I have reinstated some of the responses to the hiring policy. It can be more than three sentences, given the issues. Quotes and names are relevant. They are more credible than very short summaries, because they show research and authority. In fact, I just read that Epoch Times article in full and it is the most complete of the articles available on the topic (not surprising given the paper's pedigree). I think more information from it should be included, because it analyses whether it really is legal or illegal (it is perhaps not legal in the US, the article suggests). This view should appear, so it does not appear that CIs are breaking the law when they are possibly not. Ohconfucius added an RS tag. Is that to suggest the information in the article might be made up? Everyone knows the paper was started by FLG people. Is that why we wonder whether it's RS or not? I think it's sufficient that the page is linked; people can click through and find out its affiliations. People's Daily and Xinhua have their place on the page, too, and if they quote a relevant expert and that expert's views are suitable, we'd include that just the same. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 03:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Please note that I am not dismissing the idea of including the content that is currently sourced to Epoch Times, provided a better, more objective source can be found corroborating the ET assertions. Otherwise, all the references to ET and associated content should be deleted from this page. Colipon+( Talk) 12:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
This is referring to the Epoch Times coverage of the hiring policies? Several sources reported on that, including USA Today, Bloomberg and Macleans (Canada's leading current affairs magazine). It also looks like the offending regulations are still on the Hanban website. But while those sources raised the issue in passing as one example of controversies with CIs, the Epoch Times devoted a full article, which included interviews with legal scholars and CI directors. It's those quotes—not any opinion or analysis from the Epoch Times itself—that are currently in use. Whether we like it or not, the Epoch Times is the best reporting available on this topic, the potential legal implications of the policy, and the response from North American CIs. (It's also the only secondary source I could find that quoted the Hanban regulation in full; all other RS redacted it). I don't see any honest reason to doubt that this particular article or the quotes in question are unreliable. With a quick search I could find two other mainstream sources that cite the Epoch Times on this topic — Freedom House [2] and Macleans magazine [3]. With this being said, I'm not convinced that we need those quotes on the page. I think it would suffice to just note the rules, and add that they aroused civil rights concerns in North America as possibly being in violation of anti-discrimination laws. Homunculus ( duihua) 15:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Did you read my comment? Not only have other reliable sources reported on this issue (Bloomberg and USA Today, among others), some have cited Epoch Times coverage specifically (Macleans, Freedom House). That's a pretty good gauge both of notability and of mainstream sources' regard for the quality and reliability Epoch Times coverage. Homunculus ( duihua) 02:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Well done to those who've been working on this page; it's coherent and reads quite well. On reviewing it, I remain a little concerned that a POV fork has been created, and also have some specific questions:
Those are just some initial ideas. I was hoping to make some edits along these lines, but wanted to first discuss them here. My main concern, really, is that we should accurately reflect the available information and discourse around these institutes, and not relegate anything that could be classified as a "controversy" to a separate page. As I understood it, the purpose of the split was to avoid an unwieldy controversies section on the main page, which is absolutely fair, but we should still strive to ensure that a reader gets a more or less complete picture from the main page. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
This is good stuff. I'll see if I can help:
I believe our information about the leaders of CI HQ/Hanban which is now being repeated in detail in the lede, is no longer accurate. Check out the CI website and try to find info on HQ leadership, you'll quickly come across this page. This arcticle claims that Liu Yandong (politburo member) is the one in charge of the operation, but judging by the article on hanban website and other sources I've found such as this [6] Xu Lin is the director-general and the person most in charge of the Confucius institutes. I also couldn't find much evidence that other folks in leadership are high-ranking government officials, but enough reliable sources say something vaguely similar that I'm not doing anything about that claim now. Basically, the info we've got on here appears to be out of date, but there's a source problem. I don't want to use hanban sources, because this is Wikipedia and we likely independent sources. The other sources are all either CIs or college newspapers with a sensational slant suggesting that the CIs are used for spying or worse. Any help? If not at least the above should help others understand some of my related edits. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 18:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
After further research, I can't say I understand this any better, but it appears that Confucius institute headquarters is subject to two levels of governance. The directors of the Hanban/CI HQ and the governing Council. The governing council itself appears to be chaired by Liu Yandong. The rest of the leadership of the council is big time party officials, Then there are the "member" of the council who may or may not be there just for show, but they are all drawn from the host institutions. The council governs the CI HQ, the directing leadership is headed by Xu Lin and is described in the link above. I'll try to rewrite the organization section to be more clear in describing this situation, but I'm still having trouble finding proper sources, - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 19:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
This article is very quote-heavy. some of it just reads like a list of things people have said about CIs. This being wikipedia we should paraphrase and summarize in neutral language any uncontroversial statements or remove them entirely if they don't add useful info to the article. Controversial statements are trickier since we don't want to be making controversial statements in WP voice. I'll do what I can to clean this mess, you can help if you like. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 16:03, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
This issue is fixed for now. Notice the quote from Politburo guy about propaganda remains, since he's a big figure and there was a lot of commentary on the actual words of his statement, especially the word "propaganda". I think the quote should stay for this reason. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 19:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
At some point someone added a "political" sub-section to the "purposes" section. Then some quotes got dumped in there and now it says the same thing over and over and over again in a disorganized manner- namely that The CIs are part of a broader soft-power initiative in addition to their educational goals. I'm going to rewrite this section and it will be much, much shorter. I anticipate the posibility of people suspecting my motives, so I'm explaining them here first. Similar editing has been called censorship a number of times before. This is just an effort to make the subsection read more clearly. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 17:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
While I don't expect to have a consensus now about more abstract issues relating to this article, I do think there's one particular edit that can be dealt with here, hoping that the outcome is in fact consensus. Somebody in the Globe and Mail once said that the CIs use simplified characters and that such is part of some political war with Taiwan. I'm paraphrasing, loosely at that, so let's not argue about the particulars. I don't think that this nonsense opinion is relevant to the discussion of the curriculum of the Confucius Institutes and I have removed it. They use the simplified characters for the same reason they teach Chinese instead of Japanese. It's not hard to find people on TV or newspapers politicizing everything that relates to China, but we need to draw a line somewhere and decide that some of those opinions serve their interests and not ours. The use of simplified characters is still discussed in the section, but now without this quote about it marginalizing Taiwan politically. This no more marginalizes Taiwan than anything that China does may be said to marginalize Taiwan. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 03:37, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
Sorry to be slow in coming back, thanks for waiting. I've gone through the diffs and agree that many changes were constructive improvements to the article, but some were not. The biggest problem is "paraphrasing" that eliminates instead of clarifying CI criticisms. Here are three before/after examples:
To give a "correct" understanding of X ≠ to influence views of X.
Assuaging concerns of X in the context of Y ≠ assuaging concerns about Y.
Distinct in the degree to which X ≠ much suspicion about X.
Four of the five deleted sources are restored: Brady 2011, Globe and Mail 2013, Guo 2008, and Peng 2011. Even though Churchman's 2011 article is in a peer-reviewed ANU journal, we can agree that he might not be notable.
What about these ideas for revising current sections? We could change 3 Purpose and 3.1 Political goals to something like 3 Purpose split into 3.1 Academic and 3.2 Political. Changing 6 Controversies to 6 Criticisms or 6 Criticisms and controversies would me more accurate. Of course, all these changes are tentative and I hope we can find compromises that satisfy all sides. Keahapana ( talk) 22:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I now understand more clearly. It appears that we can agree about maintaining the voice of Wikipedia. As previously discussed, quotes are necessary in discussing CI criticisms, per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:CRIT, which says, "When presenting negative material, it is often best to name the source of the criticism within the paragraph or sentence, so that the criticism is not presented in the encyclopedia's voice." Keahapana ( talk) 22:02, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
I removed a quote about the use of simplified Chinese by Confucius Institutes which frames their usage not only as controversial, but also as part of a grand geopolitical conspiracy against Taiwan. The adjacent quote stated that teaching simplified characters would prohibit the students from understanding thousands of years of Chinese writing. The first is absurd and clearly not relevant to the discussion of the curriculum. They teach simplified characters for much same reason they teach Mandarin Chinese instead of Cantonese. That is the standard in Mainland China and other places. It should be obvious that this does no more to marginalize Taiwan than anything the Mainland does abroad. Just because this was uttered in a newspaper once doesn't make it relevant. After removing the quotes the section still explained that the CIs use the standard simplified characters. The Sahlins quote is equally trivial. Students can easily learn the traditional characters, read texts which have been converted to simplified or use automated conversion, such as used on the Chinese language wikipedia. No one is being "denied access" to anything just by teaching them Chinese using simplified characters. This was reverted and I'd like to better understand why we need the quotes, and how they help the reader better understand the curriculum of Confucius Institutes. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 05:20, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I might also note that there is no rule at CIs against teaching traditional characters which seems to be what these quotes are implying. In fact, many CIs teach traditional characters in a variety of settings, especially Chinese calligraphy classes. The quotes give an unhelpful and distorted interpretation of a very mundane policy. This is not-noteworthy conspiracy-theorizing and should be removed completely. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 05:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
"'Confucius Institute' is a trademarked brand name. A CI chairperson explained, 'Those who enjoy more brand names will enjoy higher popularity, reputation, more social influence, and will therefore be able to generate more support from local communities.'"
I deleted the above quote for a variety of reasons I thought would be pretty uncontroversial, but that was reverted, so lets discuss and see if there's a consensus somewhere. Basically, this unnamed person is saying that brand names are good, totally meaningless. Beyond that, what is this anonymous quote adding to the article. The English is awkward, lacks context, and doesn't seem to be saying anything useful. The article calls it an explanation, but what about the preceding statement does it explain exactly? The quote's not totally evil, but why include it at all when we could say something clear and meaningful in WP voice instead?
Previous quote deletions have been objected to because they are attached to a ref, that's not a valid argument for inclusion. This is part of my conspiracy to increase the proportion of the article that is factual and reduce the proportion of the article consisting of uncritical repetition of something someone said one time. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 12:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
While there appears to be consensus on the Hanban talk page that the section regarding the "braga incident" is undue and too long, I can understand if someone doesn't not personally want to do the work of shortening and summarizing that section. To then take that problematic content and copy it into this article serves only to duplicate the problem. I should note that the editor Keapanna is aware of this issue as the editor has participated in the discusssions. I will revert and I hope that we can avoid making half of this article about one thing that the director of the CI headquarters did one time. It is certainly and without doubt not the most interesting or important thing about the Confucius institutes. There is plenty of coverage in reliable sources which does not relate to this "braga incident". There is a summary of the event in the article and it should stay, but we don't need a long and detailed account of the event with multiple repetition and a list of quotes taken out of context dominating the article. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 03:07, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I only asked you to explain because this statement is not quite self-explanatory. It is ambiguous because to make do commonly means "to manage with a (esp. inferior or expedient) substitute" or "take a means to an end (not necessarily a principled or ethical one)", which is not what we want for Wikipedia. Consider for example, this "make do with a single sentence" context. I apologize if my trying to understand appears to be litigating. Yes, I don't want to waste time arguing either, and agree with you that we should focus on the matter at hand, condensing the Braga and UChicago content, making it more readable and interesting. Thanks for doing a good job copyediting the Hanfeng content on Hanban. Would you like to try doing more of the same for this content? If you'll start, I'll cooperate with any reasonable reductions, and try to further condense the coverage. We could begin here or on Hanban, whichever page you like, and copy the content afterwards. Keahapana ( talk) 23:51, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
This may be of interest.
Keahapana ( talk) 23:52, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm adding a section here, although I'm not sure if the structure is appropriate, but I don't know how to ask my questions the other way. I've noticed the removal of many mention of the instances of propaganda within Confucius Institutes. There seems to be enough backing from academics and universities, that we should not cleanse the Wikipedia page from these mentions. Specifically, why is Propaganda not included within the "Focus" section of the header? Who gets to decide whether that should have been removed? lessconfusedthanbefore ( talk) 13:07, 6 June 2017 (EST)
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I have reverted a series of recent deletions. Diff can be found here.
I am far from an expert on this topic, but significant content deletion accompanied by edit summaries such as "Removing unrelated and biased nonsense","biased rubbish", "entire section is a political rant completely unrelated to the topic", and "biased and pointless portion" raise some concerns. I cannot judge if the original text is appropriate or not, but I think these deletions should be raised on the talk page first. - Eron Talk 08:06, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
The editors of this Wikipedia page on the topic “Confucius Institute” willfully act to allow mischaracterizing and disparaging the Confucius Institute. Several recent edits intended to correct the situation to make it reflect the definition of what the Confucius Institutes actually are have been made (see page history), but the editors systematically replace these edits with prior contents that is overtly biased against the Confucius Institutes and discuss a side topic that should go under “Opposition to Confucius Institutes” on a different page. Multiple suggestions to migrate critical contents onto a different page have been ignored; a clique of dishonest editors maliciously refuse to collaborate.
The editors maliciously rely on technical definitions such as “quoted contents is not opinions” but, in fact, anyone can quote anybody to support any view, obviously including a biased one. Or they retort that "consensus must be gained". But what kind of consensus is possible with biased China haters ? The issues is that the page is biased and disparages the Confucius Institutes, it does not describe what they are, it describes what a few people with warped world vision think they are, or worse, would like anyone to become convinced of. Only a very tiny fraction of Confucius Institutes run into problems because they are set among predominantly non-mainland Chinese communities that, basically, more or less hate China. The editors disguise their opposition to CI under the rubric “neutral discussion” but the page is hardly neutral, it is completely biased.
The page, as it is, is mischaracterizing the Confucius Institutes and the editors are willfully engaged in perpetuating this mischaracterization. To them, Confucius Institute is synonymous to controversy. But this notion is false . Confucius Institute is one thing, the tiny fraction of militants who oppose CI is quite another. Editors of the Confucius Institute page should be dismissed for willful collusion to maintain bias and they should be replaced with new impartial ones. Critical contents should be segregated as suggested and migrated to a different page such as ”Opposition to Confucius Institutes”. Please see the page history and click on one of the edited version around 8 February 2018 to see what the page should really look like.
Understand this: No one wants to quell free speech. That is not the issue. People opposed to CI have the right to their opinion, even though it is blatantly wrong. But it is quite dishonest for them, and the editors who support them (they are perhaps one and the same?), to use the CI page on Wikipedia to promote their opposition, blow a side issue way out of proportion, and mischaracterize what CI are. They can discuss their childish conspiracy theory against CI on another page all they want; no problem. But they should not attempt to redefine CI to mean Opposition to CI.
Thank you.
An American, speaking for many many others who are not Chinese but are very familiar with CI.
PS Come on guys, face it, CI is out to convert our youth to Communism? Are you kidding me? Do you have any notion of how silly this is? The Red Scare went out of style decades and decades ago already. Please grow up and get informed!
71.86.118.179 ( talk) 02:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Frankly I believe this is one of the poorer articles I've seen on WP, a jumbled mess that confuses facts with opinions and speculation. Meanwhile, the syllabus section noted that CI "teaches in simplified characters", and that's it. Not every section has to be about controversies, there is already a dedicated article for it, and I believe the ones that should be highlighted are those which resulted in actual consequences eg termination of CI contracts, not speculation from every angle.
I think this article should be rewritten in the style of similar articles eg British Council, including:
"Organization promoting Chinese language and culture around the world” doesn't work for a number of reasons, first it doesn't mention that its a Chinese Government organ, second it doesnt include the influence/soft power/propaganda aspect of Confucius Institutes which are arguably a higher priority than their promotional and educational work, third I believe the only language they promote is Mandarin so the claim that they promote Chinese language is overly broad as they only appear to promote a single Chinese language. Some have objected to "Chinese government education, advocacy, and propaganda organization with a global focus” and I would be interested to have those editors expand on their presumably policy based arguments. I hope we can come to a consensus that makes this article stronger. Horse Eye Jack ( talk) 17:50, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I applaud Simonm223 for suggesting the alternate short description, and I would remind Horse Eye Jack to stop unproductive grasping at irrelevant straws such as who awarded barnstars to whom. CaradhrasAiguo ( leave language) 16:24, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
There are dozens of books and articles that describe CIs in terms of "propaganda". For instance, Google Books. Keahapana ( talk) 23:09, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
The History section's first paragraph reads as follows (with bold face added by myself to point to the problem):
The CI in South Korea is no longer active. The second Confucius Institute was opened on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park, also in November 2004. Hundreds more have opened since in dozens of countries around the world, with the highest concentration of Institutes in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
The first sentence of that paragraph would appear to conflict with the last 14 words of the paragraph. I can guess (but only guess) what is meant here. Un sch ool 23:42, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
A GAO report from last year that summarizes a year long investigation into Confucius Institutes in the U.S. largely discredits many of the accusations levied against institutes in America. Much of this page seems to regurgitating debunked talking points, some of which are over a decade old and unsubstantiated. I see that the report has recently started to be cited, but the page is still wildly inaccurate. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-401T
-- Repugnantduck ( talk) 19:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
The citations you requested are now present. GrandmasterLiuHu ( talk) 13:59, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
There's a statement "however many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities" with a source https://as.tufts.edu/confuciusinstitute/about however the source does not state that many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities. The closest thing it has is that Tufts university and Hanban have signed a new agreement in 2019 without providing any more details. It does have agreement text in Chinese which is of course a primary source requiring interpretation not to mention understanding Chinese. So whats the proper procedure on English Wikipedia when the given source does not have a statement supposedly taken from it? Shall I add {{fact}} or just delete the statement in question? -- Nomad ( talk) 12:10, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
GrandmasterLiuHu has begun an edit war to insert synthesis about "intimidation" into this article. The sources [1] [2] [3] that he or she has cited to support this insertion make no mention of the subject of this article. This claim needs to be removed until reliable sources that link it to this subject can be provided. ElKevbo ( talk) 13:46, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
References
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The sources are reliable, peer reviewed, are clearly related to the subject of ethics and surveillance, and each of them individually explicitly discusses how exactly this kind of mass surveillance directly leads to unavoidable intimidation. (Therefore, it is not a synthesis, as each citation stands on it's own. The source doesn't need to make mention "Of the article" because the source applies generally to all mass surveillance. You should try actually reading the sources presented, rather than skimming them. I will not allow you to cover up racist authoritarianism and the suffering of my people.
GrandmasterLiuHu ( talk) 13:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I deleted the sentence "however, many programs have renegotiated their contracts to protect the academic freedom of host universities" because the citation provided only links to Tufts University's 2019 re-negotiated agreement and nothing else. If other editors can find reliable sources that support this view, please feel free to add it back. Normchou 💬 15:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Per WP:V, I also deleted "However, this claim is in dispute. Michael Nylan, professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, stated that CIs have become less heavy-handed in their demands, and have learnt from "early missteps", such as insisting that universities adopt a policy that Taiwan is part of China. Nylan's survey of faculty and administrators at fifteen universities with Confucius Institutes revealed two reports that institutes had exerted pressure to block guest speakers, but both events went ahead anyway." The citation provided was "Golden (2011)" without any title or link to the source. Normchou 💬 15:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
This would seem to indicate there is a CI within the UC system. Charles Juvon ( talk) 15:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
Pompeo admitted he tells lies. How is he credible for wikipedia??? Video. (Clip) or full length... The Longer clip from Texas A&M. Secretary Pompeo Participates in Q&A Discussion at Texas A&M University At around 28:00 minutes in. CaribDigita ( talk) 17:22, 9 February 2022 (UTC)