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Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
In the content transfer from the original CI article, the Schimdt (2010b) reference was lost and misquoted. Although Schmidt mentions "scant evidence of meddling" at 61 US universities (not "hundreds of Institutes already established"), he also details the Tel Aviv University legal controversy. I've added the reference, revised the citation, and reduced the wordy lead.
Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the Ulara Nakagawa reference. However, I cannot find the source for this paraphrase: "Perhaps out of fear of provoking further criticism, the Institute has largely avoided controversial issues and has limited itself to language education programs." The closest seems to be the Don Starr quote, "The Chinese are going to avoid contentious areas such as human rights and democracies and those kinds of things." Please clarify. Keahapana ( talk) 23:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Since I was so aggressive in my edits of this content at Confucius Institute I though it would be most appropriate to hold off from editing this page at least for some time. Nonetheless I have a few general observations which I believe are worth discussing.
I'm not going to make these changes, at least for now. The above are, of course, just suggestions. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 06:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I can reassure you about thematic divisions by saying they will evolve over time. The sections I have proposed are certainly not perfect, maybe not even very good, but if you can think of something better I suggest you just go for it, even if it ends up seeming a little choppy. The article is not very polished as it is and since we both agree that organizing it by year isn't the way to go then just go for anything that seems better. Other editors will be there to help make it work, or change the organization further. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 00:26, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for suggesting "Protests and petitions", "Government responses", "Evaluations of Conduct", and "Speculation of Intent" divisions. They're reminiscent of the original CI article Controversies section divided between government officials, educators, and journalists. They were impractical because many CI controversies involve two or three of these thematic divisions, creating an either/or Procrustean bed where a ref is understated or duplicated. For instance, the recent New South Wales controversy involves all four: petition, government response, evaluation, and speculation.
Metal.Lunchbox is right about avoiding POV paraphrases. For the Nakagawa article, instead of footnoting the quotes, we should move them into the page text. The current restatement uses some loaded words not found in the article: "Perhaps out of fear for provoking further criticism ..." What do you think? Keahapana ( talk) 22:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the excellent Siow reference. After finding the original Asia Pacific Bulletin link and reading the article, I'm curious about this: "Han Ban’s annual budget was only US$145 million in 2009 so it would be false to state that China has been spending massively on these institutes." Why does the Hanban's official 2009 Annual Report list a CI budget of 1,228,258,000 CNY? That's about $180 million at the 2009 rate of 1 CNY = 0.1464 USD. If no one mentioned massive spending, is this a straw-man argument? Keahapana ( talk) 02:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Apologies for what will be a fairly cursory comment, but I'd like to propose a revision of this article's organization. Currently it is organized more or less chronologically, but I think it would serve the reader much better if we could arrange it thematically. For instance, we might decide to organize the major subheadings as follows (this is entirely open to debate, of course):
Thoughts? Homunculus ( duihua) 05:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh man, I really need to read previous talk discussions before starting a new topic. In any case, I'm glad to see that there's a general consensus in favor of a thematic reorganization, but since no outline was previously agreed upon, my above post may still have some merit. Homunculus ( duihua) 05:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that we should add more contexts from the references and delete quotes from non-notable sources (Who's "Falk Hartig"?). My concern derives from previous edits that misconstrued critical quotes. The history of the Confucius Institute's "Controversies" section shows repeated POV distortions through paraphrasing people who criticize CIs. Please understand that I'm not trying to be dickish. I only want to maintain the integrity of the references (full disclosure: many of which I've contributed), and avoid misusing summary to make the CI controversies seem uncontroversial. WP:QUOTE also says:
"In some instances, quotations are preferred to text. For example:
Keahapana ( talk) 20:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
The Sigur Center at the Elliot School of International Affairs is certainly reputable. I also tried emailing Ren Zhe (任哲) at Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center, but no reply. Let's see what we can learn before deleting. Keahapana ( talk) 02:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I just implemented the planned page reorganization. There's still a lot of room for improvement in this article, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I preserved the vast majority of content from the previous page, though many of the critical, non-specific quotes are now consolidated into one section. Otherwise it is organized thematically, though I suspect there is a certain inevitable amount of overlap in some of these themes. I also added in some additional research, and hope to do more of this. Some of the sections lack a cohesive narrative, so that's another thing to address. Not sure there's too much else to say at this point; I'll let the page speak for itself. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Homunculus, thanks again. Yes, the Waterloo incident is interesting and I included the Chinese literary blog because it details Yan Li's career and interviews her. The Global Times story accurately quoted Li, but that ref was justifiably deleted. Perhaps we will find a better English-language reference. The Osaka incident is noteworthy as (the first?) university cancelling their CI contract. I've tentatively put the Yan Li story under the "Other controversies", but you might have a better placement. In addition, is this MA thesis is worth including as an external link? It has numerous useful references.
Keahapana ( talk) 02:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
During my last round of edits, I was asked to try to preserve as much sourced information as possible. I tried to do this, and seeing as my reorganization has more or less been accepted, I wanted to ask if we can revisit some of the content that was carried over from the previous version. Namely, the section on "Critical perceptions of objectives." Right now it's just an indiscriminate collection of criticism and concerns, and is not bound together by cohesive prose. Moreover, some of it is pretty redundant. Does anyone want to have a stab at writing at nice(r) narrative, and possibly summarizing a couple of the critiques more concisely? Homunculus ( duihua) 04:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
An editor has recently made a series of fairly substantial edits to the page, but has neglected to provide any explanation of said edits. If possible I hope to recuse myself here and allow others to weigh the validity of these changes, but I thought I would do everyone a courtesy by providing a summary of the relevant diffs. This series of edits involved several rearrangements of the page, which can make the task of parsing through changes difficult. The edit summaries, moreover, were frequently misleading (or, at a minimum, very unhelpful). Here is my best attempt. Some of these changes are innocuous, others a little questionable, but some of them strike me as fairly obvious attempts to defend CIs and marginalize or delete critical views. I'll let others judge:
[2] (Rightly) removes speculation on CI’s motivations for avoiding topics like human rights.
[3] Paraphrases second part of quotation, removes and compresses details about the suppression of Chinese dissidents abroad as part of CI mandate.
[4] Moves location of a paragraph on China Daily’s comparison of CIs to Alliance Francaises and Goethe-Institut, rearranges the rebuttal. In the course of doing so, adds his own qualification that CIs “frequently” attach themselves to other educational institutions.
[5] Renames section headings, deletes heading ‘interference to free expression in universities,’ and moves corresponding content to another section. Renamed sections include changing “influence over academic freedom within universities” -> “Concerns over academic freedom,” which, while more concise, changes the meaning of the section title. “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party and government of China” is changed to “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party,” as though the government and party are the same thing (they are not; UFWD is Party, Ministry of Education is government). Other renamings seem like good moves, ie. Espionage -> Espionage concerns.
[7] PCPP reverts Homunculus, asks for proof that the qualifier “frequently” is not necessary.
[8] Deletes sourced content pertaining to the use of simplified characters in Confucius Institutes. (Personally I agree that a criticism of simplified characters is beside the point, but would recommend this sentence be rewritten drawing from the source, not deleted altogether.)
[9] Adds, removes some categories.
[10] Deletes two sourced paragraphs containing anecdotes involving individual CI directors. Writes in edit summary that individuals are not representative of the whole.
[11] Deletes large amount of sourced information from a paragraph concerning discrimination in hiring policies against the Falun Gong. Removes reference to Falun Gong being “persecuted in China.” Deletes sentence that “human rights lawyers and media commentators in North America suggested that the hiring practices were in contravention of anti-discrimination laws.” Deletes paragraph with relevant commentary from media commentators and legal scholars. Deletes paragraph about CI director’s response to the policy. It is worth noting that these edits are probably a violation of a topic ban currently in place against the editor. [12]
[13] Reorders paragraph on parliamentary debate in Australia, provided additional defense for CI program from CI director.
[14] Deletes paragraph from lede describing concerns and controversies. Adds paragraph defending CIs. Gives edit summary reading “Reworded title per NPOV.”
[15] Adds NPOV tag to the top of page, without any talk page discussion.
[16] Provides some alternate sources, paraphrases things and removes the quotations, removes mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, deletes citation to ABC news Australia, adds more defense of CI teaching methods.
[17] Substantial rearrangement of content. Possible that things were deleted or added amidst this, but not sure.
[18] Further rearrangements to the section on censorship, adds paragraphs to top of section that would appear to defend CI methods.
[19] Moves contents of “other controversies” into other sections of the article (I’m not sure these moves are appropriate or helpful)
[20] Removes duplicate sentence
[21] Deletes paragraph about Der Speigel reporting, paragraphrases what was previously a quotation from the Indian government, deletes the Jonathan Zimmerman quote that describes Communist Party as “cruel, tyrannical, and repressive,” chooses different Zimmerman quote.
[22] Deletes paragraph describing incident at Tel Aviv University, suggests it's enough that the event is alluded to in passing elsewhere on the page. Again, this is probably a violation os the editor’s ongoing topic ban.
[23] Moves two paragraphs into section on academic freedom.
That is all. Homunculus ( duihua) 17:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi Quigley. I think you’re missing the point here. This isn’t a question of which POV is “right.” It’s not even entirely a question of POV v. NPOV (though, in the case of his deletions of large swaths of relevant content because it reflects poorly on the CIs, it is). Many of PCPP’s edits—even those that are not obviously ideologically driven—are simply poorly thought out. Why did he delete the categories that he did? Why insist that CIs “frequently” attach themselves to educational institutions, when the sources don’t make that qualification? Why delete citations to ABC or Der Spiegel, or paraphrase quotations when the quotes themselves were perfectly fine (aside from where he paraphrases a quote to enable the removal of a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, I don’t understand this)? Why engage in massive reorganizations without discussion, or place a POV tag on the page without discussion? Look, there may be a couple redeemable edits within this, but for the most part his contributions were not very good, ideology and topic ban violations aside.
Regarding the Falun Gong content specifically, the two items PCPP deleted or redacted seem to be among the more concrete examples of undue influence in another country’s internal affairs or overt, politically driven discrimination surrounding Confucius Institutes, and both received fairly extensive coverage. The anecdote about Tel Aviv is directly related to CIs—the judge in the case determined that the University was acting out of fear of jeopardizing Chinese supports for its CI, and the case was described (rightly or not) as “the only place” in the world where fears over this kind of censorship were realized. That’s certainly notable enough to merit a short descriptive paragraph.
As an aside, Reductio ad Hitlerum does not apply here; historical parallels are never perfect, but if ever the analogy were appropriate, genocides are it. In the case of Falun Gong, you have a party-state launching a campaign to eradicate an identifiable religious group, including through the use of systematic torture resulting in thousands of deaths (I would also note that the quote whose deletion you’re defending came from a prominent Jewish political commentator). Given the liability of the Falun Gong to be marginalized (with serious real world consequences), I would suggest that BLPGROUP applies. As such, you may want to consider refraining from making inflammatory remarks. It does not help our discussion. We should put this to rest, as it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. The edits I make will simply be winding back the edits he is making that appear to be merely pro-CCP, and leaving the others. I will just open a page, then go through the diffs and muddle through. In a case like this it's PCPP that has a responsibility to explain why his contentious edits should be made. Best wishes. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 17:30, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
I believe both Homunculus and The Sound and the Fury acted in bad faith towrds me in this discussion. SF, in particular, undid most of my edits before I had a chance to response, while making accusations that I am somehow a CCP stooge. And to Homunculus, I don't need self appointed minders you hounding me over every one of my edits in China related articles, how about you address your cencerns about my changes instead of making a big deal over the fact that I changed a few categories. The previous article frankly fails WP:NPOV and WP:CRIT, which states that such criticisms must be presented in a fair and balanced manner, and not draw excessive attention to negative criticms.
In reply to Homunculus:
3) Misleading claim, as nothing in that source article suggested that suppressing overseas dissidents are part of CI mandate. One website means little.
4) The previous section is phrased in such a way to invalidate CI's defence. I simply rephrased the section so the dispute is addressed in the section intro, and both criticm and defence follows.
5) The previous sections section headings no way adheres to WP:NPOV, and headings like "interference to free expression in universities" subtly supports an anti-CI position rather than letting the reader decide.
6), 7) There are no qualifactions that CIs "always" attach themselves to educational institutions either.
8) Simplified characters were created during the 1950's and has nothing to do with CIs, simple as that. This article is not a venue to air your dirty laundry about CI.
9) The previous categories are straight copy+paste from the original article. Criticism articles such as this does not belong in the same categories, but something relevant such as "political controversies"
10) Anecdotal evidences sourced from blogs fails WP:RS, and neither of these people acted through CI.
11), 12) The source fails RS as it's sourced from the Epoch Times, a newspaper whose aim is the overthrow of the current government. I failed to find anything about this "controversy" elsewhere, nor the claims made by the individuals.
15) I can't write anything while I was in the midst of a 24-hour ban, can I?
16) Sydney Morning Herald, a mainstream Australian newspaper, is certainly a reliable source. Furthermore, the ABC source I removed is not from the main website, but The Drum, a subsidary website that anyone can contribute, and ABC states that its not responsible for its content. [27]. The author of the piece admits he writes for the Epoch Times.
21) The Speigel article is not about CI, but China's overseas influence as a whole. It made a total of one mention in regards CI, a quote that adds nothing new. The Zimmerman quote was useless and the heading is used for inflammatory purposes, and I instead added his conclusion to his piece.-- PCPP ( talk) 09:39, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
This article is cited but some are too cryptic to be of any use. It lacks a biblio. I've been wanting to verify some of the citations, and wonder what "Golden (2011)" is... -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 13:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Ohconfucius, can you explain your thinking here [34]? I thought the point of the criticism here is not that the CI wants influential people, but that an administrator at a CI is a Huawei vice-president; and the authors are leveraging off the (founded or not, I won't remark) accusations that Huawei may be used for spying. The edit summary doesn't explain why this complaint should be deleted. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 02:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry. Didn't mean to do that. You wrote "something relating to a specific CI was used to "prove" the macro view that there was industrial espionage taking place" but that is not what's happening here. The authors are expressing their general "concern" about the connection between the CIs and other state initiatives, in this case citing Huawei and this one person. I'm sure they would have had those concerns whether they found evidence of them or not, but the authors don't purport to prove that CIs are involved in industrial espionage, merely exhibiting their "concerns" about such potentialities, citing one case to bolster their view. I'm not saying I agree with them. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 15:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
I just read this article in full as well as the dispute resolution thread. I will not make personal remarks here whatsoever and deal only with content.
I have no doubt that this page is, in essence, an attack page and a POV fork based on the editors' synthesis, selective quoting, and general lack of fact-checking. But even if we ignore all of that, the most obvious problem is one of WP:UNDUE.
I have read about CIs extensively in the past, and there is no doubt that there are concerns about its nature, financing, objectives etc. But I am of the view that all of these concerns can be summed up succinctly in the main article's section on "Criticism and Controversies", in two paragraphs at max. Concerns about financing and objectives, much of which is simply speculation, can also be migrated to the main article but discussed in separate sections (rather than in "Controversies"). With that in mind, I propose that this page be deleted.
I build this case out of the sheer absurdity of some passages in this article, of which I offer a sample below:
So my proposal going forward for this article is to move and trim the bulk of the content back to the main article, where it belongs. I propose this to be done in three separate parts:
As far as I can see, this maintains all the encyclopedic content of this page, but presents it in accordance to WP:NPOV and lends due weight to the content itself. Colipon+( Talk) 15:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'm one of those recently absent editors, and have been contributing to the CI articles since 2009. Deleting this page makes no more sense than deleting Concerns and controversies over the 2008 Summer Olympics, Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Winter Olympics, or Concerns and controversies in Shanghai Expo 2010. I only have a few minutes today, and will be back to explain in more detail. First, I'd suggest that any editors unfamiliar with the CI pages' contentious background please review the article and discussion histories. The revision diffs show that a few individuals repeatedly censored content and deleted references, particularly under the original CI article Controversies section. What you call a "quotefarm" is largely owing to recurrent false summaries of well-referenced CI criticisms, which consensually resulted in relying upon direct quotations. WP:QUOTE recommends, "in some instances, quotations are preferred to text. For example: When dealing with a controversial subject …" The histories also explain the July 2011 split, and why returning to the main CI page would likely be counterproductive. Best wishes, Keahapana ( talk) 23:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the existence of other 'controversy' articles, I would firstly say that other stuff exists. The 2008 olympics was such a huge topic that it genuinely needs a whole family of articles to give it coverage; I see no reason why the Shanghai Expo criticism cannot be folded back into the 'main' Expo 2010 article. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the argument about the Falun Gong, it's not necessarily something I like or agree with. The PRC passed a law banning FLG, much in the same way that the Communist Party was banned in the USA until not so many years ago (I still remember having to declare to not being a member when applying for a US visa). It's but fact to be accepted. It's certainly fallacious to say that the FLG are responsible for making the recruitment ban aspect of controversy about them. Everything they do publicly (and behind closed political doors in the US Canada and Australia) is already geared for maligning the CPC, and they would undoubtedly milk it for all its propagandistic value. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 06:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
I have been asked to weigh in on this discussion by two of the involved editors. Several months ago I tried to clean up the Confucius Institute main article which contained little more than an incredibly long list of quotes accusing the Institutes of all matter of speculative evils. This made the article rather useless so I instead wrote brief summaries of the ideas referenced in the quote when it seemed that those ideas were at all relevant to the article. At the same time I worked to find appropriate encyclopedic information to add to the article so that it might be of use to someone. This series of edits was initially reverted. We discussed it and I thought a temporary compromise would be the creation of this article, primarily because it would allow both the inclusion of material and avoid undue weight given to controversies in the main article. The assumption then was that an attempt would be made not only to better organize the material but that further editing would be done to bring the material up to standards. I was never sure whether this would be possible but it seemed like a good thing to try.
Now the situation is very similar to where we were originally. We have an article consisting of speculation and quotes removed from context. This is simply not useful material. I don't see how this can be seen as anything other than a POVFORK and QUOTEFARM. Perhaps one day a fair encyclopedic article can be written on the topic of Controversies and Concerns over Confucius Institutes, this is not such an article.
I support deletion of this article. The Controversies section of the main article should be improved and material which is neither simply quotes or speculation should be included in the main article to the extent that it does not violate WP:UNDUE. From even a light and quick reading of this controversies article an argument emerges, that CIs are part of a sinister plot. Such is very inappropriate for wikipedia. I generally favor inclusion, but not uncritically. I hope this helps. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 20:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
The current section "5 Concerns and controversies" repeats the first two words of the article title. According to MOS:HEAD,
Perhaps the simplest solution would be to delete 5 and make subheadings 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 first-level section headings. Keahapana ( talk) 21:58, 16 February 2012 (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 |
In the content transfer from the original CI article, the Schimdt (2010b) reference was lost and misquoted. Although Schmidt mentions "scant evidence of meddling" at 61 US universities (not "hundreds of Institutes already established"), he also details the Tel Aviv University legal controversy. I've added the reference, revised the citation, and reduced the wordy lead.
Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the Ulara Nakagawa reference. However, I cannot find the source for this paraphrase: "Perhaps out of fear of provoking further criticism, the Institute has largely avoided controversial issues and has limited itself to language education programs." The closest seems to be the Don Starr quote, "The Chinese are going to avoid contentious areas such as human rights and democracies and those kinds of things." Please clarify. Keahapana ( talk) 23:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Since I was so aggressive in my edits of this content at Confucius Institute I though it would be most appropriate to hold off from editing this page at least for some time. Nonetheless I have a few general observations which I believe are worth discussing.
I'm not going to make these changes, at least for now. The above are, of course, just suggestions. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 06:31, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I can reassure you about thematic divisions by saying they will evolve over time. The sections I have proposed are certainly not perfect, maybe not even very good, but if you can think of something better I suggest you just go for it, even if it ends up seeming a little choppy. The article is not very polished as it is and since we both agree that organizing it by year isn't the way to go then just go for anything that seems better. Other editors will be there to help make it work, or change the organization further. Metal.lunchbox ( talk) 00:26, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for suggesting "Protests and petitions", "Government responses", "Evaluations of Conduct", and "Speculation of Intent" divisions. They're reminiscent of the original CI article Controversies section divided between government officials, educators, and journalists. They were impractical because many CI controversies involve two or three of these thematic divisions, creating an either/or Procrustean bed where a ref is understated or duplicated. For instance, the recent New South Wales controversy involves all four: petition, government response, evaluation, and speculation.
Metal.Lunchbox is right about avoiding POV paraphrases. For the Nakagawa article, instead of footnoting the quotes, we should move them into the page text. The current restatement uses some loaded words not found in the article: "Perhaps out of fear for provoking further criticism ..." What do you think? Keahapana ( talk) 22:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to JeremyMiller for adding the excellent Siow reference. After finding the original Asia Pacific Bulletin link and reading the article, I'm curious about this: "Han Ban’s annual budget was only US$145 million in 2009 so it would be false to state that China has been spending massively on these institutes." Why does the Hanban's official 2009 Annual Report list a CI budget of 1,228,258,000 CNY? That's about $180 million at the 2009 rate of 1 CNY = 0.1464 USD. If no one mentioned massive spending, is this a straw-man argument? Keahapana ( talk) 02:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Apologies for what will be a fairly cursory comment, but I'd like to propose a revision of this article's organization. Currently it is organized more or less chronologically, but I think it would serve the reader much better if we could arrange it thematically. For instance, we might decide to organize the major subheadings as follows (this is entirely open to debate, of course):
Thoughts? Homunculus ( duihua) 05:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh man, I really need to read previous talk discussions before starting a new topic. In any case, I'm glad to see that there's a general consensus in favor of a thematic reorganization, but since no outline was previously agreed upon, my above post may still have some merit. Homunculus ( duihua) 05:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that we should add more contexts from the references and delete quotes from non-notable sources (Who's "Falk Hartig"?). My concern derives from previous edits that misconstrued critical quotes. The history of the Confucius Institute's "Controversies" section shows repeated POV distortions through paraphrasing people who criticize CIs. Please understand that I'm not trying to be dickish. I only want to maintain the integrity of the references (full disclosure: many of which I've contributed), and avoid misusing summary to make the CI controversies seem uncontroversial. WP:QUOTE also says:
"In some instances, quotations are preferred to text. For example:
Keahapana ( talk) 20:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
The Sigur Center at the Elliot School of International Affairs is certainly reputable. I also tried emailing Ren Zhe (任哲) at Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center, but no reply. Let's see what we can learn before deleting. Keahapana ( talk) 02:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I just implemented the planned page reorganization. There's still a lot of room for improvement in this article, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I preserved the vast majority of content from the previous page, though many of the critical, non-specific quotes are now consolidated into one section. Otherwise it is organized thematically, though I suspect there is a certain inevitable amount of overlap in some of these themes. I also added in some additional research, and hope to do more of this. Some of the sections lack a cohesive narrative, so that's another thing to address. Not sure there's too much else to say at this point; I'll let the page speak for itself. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Homunculus, thanks again. Yes, the Waterloo incident is interesting and I included the Chinese literary blog because it details Yan Li's career and interviews her. The Global Times story accurately quoted Li, but that ref was justifiably deleted. Perhaps we will find a better English-language reference. The Osaka incident is noteworthy as (the first?) university cancelling their CI contract. I've tentatively put the Yan Li story under the "Other controversies", but you might have a better placement. In addition, is this MA thesis is worth including as an external link? It has numerous useful references.
Keahapana ( talk) 02:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
During my last round of edits, I was asked to try to preserve as much sourced information as possible. I tried to do this, and seeing as my reorganization has more or less been accepted, I wanted to ask if we can revisit some of the content that was carried over from the previous version. Namely, the section on "Critical perceptions of objectives." Right now it's just an indiscriminate collection of criticism and concerns, and is not bound together by cohesive prose. Moreover, some of it is pretty redundant. Does anyone want to have a stab at writing at nice(r) narrative, and possibly summarizing a couple of the critiques more concisely? Homunculus ( duihua) 04:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
An editor has recently made a series of fairly substantial edits to the page, but has neglected to provide any explanation of said edits. If possible I hope to recuse myself here and allow others to weigh the validity of these changes, but I thought I would do everyone a courtesy by providing a summary of the relevant diffs. This series of edits involved several rearrangements of the page, which can make the task of parsing through changes difficult. The edit summaries, moreover, were frequently misleading (or, at a minimum, very unhelpful). Here is my best attempt. Some of these changes are innocuous, others a little questionable, but some of them strike me as fairly obvious attempts to defend CIs and marginalize or delete critical views. I'll let others judge:
[2] (Rightly) removes speculation on CI’s motivations for avoiding topics like human rights.
[3] Paraphrases second part of quotation, removes and compresses details about the suppression of Chinese dissidents abroad as part of CI mandate.
[4] Moves location of a paragraph on China Daily’s comparison of CIs to Alliance Francaises and Goethe-Institut, rearranges the rebuttal. In the course of doing so, adds his own qualification that CIs “frequently” attach themselves to other educational institutions.
[5] Renames section headings, deletes heading ‘interference to free expression in universities,’ and moves corresponding content to another section. Renamed sections include changing “influence over academic freedom within universities” -> “Concerns over academic freedom,” which, while more concise, changes the meaning of the section title. “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party and government of China” is changed to “Relationship to Chinese Communist Party,” as though the government and party are the same thing (they are not; UFWD is Party, Ministry of Education is government). Other renamings seem like good moves, ie. Espionage -> Espionage concerns.
[7] PCPP reverts Homunculus, asks for proof that the qualifier “frequently” is not necessary.
[8] Deletes sourced content pertaining to the use of simplified characters in Confucius Institutes. (Personally I agree that a criticism of simplified characters is beside the point, but would recommend this sentence be rewritten drawing from the source, not deleted altogether.)
[9] Adds, removes some categories.
[10] Deletes two sourced paragraphs containing anecdotes involving individual CI directors. Writes in edit summary that individuals are not representative of the whole.
[11] Deletes large amount of sourced information from a paragraph concerning discrimination in hiring policies against the Falun Gong. Removes reference to Falun Gong being “persecuted in China.” Deletes sentence that “human rights lawyers and media commentators in North America suggested that the hiring practices were in contravention of anti-discrimination laws.” Deletes paragraph with relevant commentary from media commentators and legal scholars. Deletes paragraph about CI director’s response to the policy. It is worth noting that these edits are probably a violation of a topic ban currently in place against the editor. [12]
[13] Reorders paragraph on parliamentary debate in Australia, provided additional defense for CI program from CI director.
[14] Deletes paragraph from lede describing concerns and controversies. Adds paragraph defending CIs. Gives edit summary reading “Reworded title per NPOV.”
[15] Adds NPOV tag to the top of page, without any talk page discussion.
[16] Provides some alternate sources, paraphrases things and removes the quotations, removes mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, deletes citation to ABC news Australia, adds more defense of CI teaching methods.
[17] Substantial rearrangement of content. Possible that things were deleted or added amidst this, but not sure.
[18] Further rearrangements to the section on censorship, adds paragraphs to top of section that would appear to defend CI methods.
[19] Moves contents of “other controversies” into other sections of the article (I’m not sure these moves are appropriate or helpful)
[20] Removes duplicate sentence
[21] Deletes paragraph about Der Speigel reporting, paragraphrases what was previously a quotation from the Indian government, deletes the Jonathan Zimmerman quote that describes Communist Party as “cruel, tyrannical, and repressive,” chooses different Zimmerman quote.
[22] Deletes paragraph describing incident at Tel Aviv University, suggests it's enough that the event is alluded to in passing elsewhere on the page. Again, this is probably a violation os the editor’s ongoing topic ban.
[23] Moves two paragraphs into section on academic freedom.
That is all. Homunculus ( duihua) 17:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi Quigley. I think you’re missing the point here. This isn’t a question of which POV is “right.” It’s not even entirely a question of POV v. NPOV (though, in the case of his deletions of large swaths of relevant content because it reflects poorly on the CIs, it is). Many of PCPP’s edits—even those that are not obviously ideologically driven—are simply poorly thought out. Why did he delete the categories that he did? Why insist that CIs “frequently” attach themselves to educational institutions, when the sources don’t make that qualification? Why delete citations to ABC or Der Spiegel, or paraphrase quotations when the quotes themselves were perfectly fine (aside from where he paraphrases a quote to enable the removal of a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, I don’t understand this)? Why engage in massive reorganizations without discussion, or place a POV tag on the page without discussion? Look, there may be a couple redeemable edits within this, but for the most part his contributions were not very good, ideology and topic ban violations aside.
Regarding the Falun Gong content specifically, the two items PCPP deleted or redacted seem to be among the more concrete examples of undue influence in another country’s internal affairs or overt, politically driven discrimination surrounding Confucius Institutes, and both received fairly extensive coverage. The anecdote about Tel Aviv is directly related to CIs—the judge in the case determined that the University was acting out of fear of jeopardizing Chinese supports for its CI, and the case was described (rightly or not) as “the only place” in the world where fears over this kind of censorship were realized. That’s certainly notable enough to merit a short descriptive paragraph.
As an aside, Reductio ad Hitlerum does not apply here; historical parallels are never perfect, but if ever the analogy were appropriate, genocides are it. In the case of Falun Gong, you have a party-state launching a campaign to eradicate an identifiable religious group, including through the use of systematic torture resulting in thousands of deaths (I would also note that the quote whose deletion you’re defending came from a prominent Jewish political commentator). Given the liability of the Falun Gong to be marginalized (with serious real world consequences), I would suggest that BLPGROUP applies. As such, you may want to consider refraining from making inflammatory remarks. It does not help our discussion. We should put this to rest, as it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. The edits I make will simply be winding back the edits he is making that appear to be merely pro-CCP, and leaving the others. I will just open a page, then go through the diffs and muddle through. In a case like this it's PCPP that has a responsibility to explain why his contentious edits should be made. Best wishes. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 17:30, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
I believe both Homunculus and The Sound and the Fury acted in bad faith towrds me in this discussion. SF, in particular, undid most of my edits before I had a chance to response, while making accusations that I am somehow a CCP stooge. And to Homunculus, I don't need self appointed minders you hounding me over every one of my edits in China related articles, how about you address your cencerns about my changes instead of making a big deal over the fact that I changed a few categories. The previous article frankly fails WP:NPOV and WP:CRIT, which states that such criticisms must be presented in a fair and balanced manner, and not draw excessive attention to negative criticms.
In reply to Homunculus:
3) Misleading claim, as nothing in that source article suggested that suppressing overseas dissidents are part of CI mandate. One website means little.
4) The previous section is phrased in such a way to invalidate CI's defence. I simply rephrased the section so the dispute is addressed in the section intro, and both criticm and defence follows.
5) The previous sections section headings no way adheres to WP:NPOV, and headings like "interference to free expression in universities" subtly supports an anti-CI position rather than letting the reader decide.
6), 7) There are no qualifactions that CIs "always" attach themselves to educational institutions either.
8) Simplified characters were created during the 1950's and has nothing to do with CIs, simple as that. This article is not a venue to air your dirty laundry about CI.
9) The previous categories are straight copy+paste from the original article. Criticism articles such as this does not belong in the same categories, but something relevant such as "political controversies"
10) Anecdotal evidences sourced from blogs fails WP:RS, and neither of these people acted through CI.
11), 12) The source fails RS as it's sourced from the Epoch Times, a newspaper whose aim is the overthrow of the current government. I failed to find anything about this "controversy" elsewhere, nor the claims made by the individuals.
15) I can't write anything while I was in the midst of a 24-hour ban, can I?
16) Sydney Morning Herald, a mainstream Australian newspaper, is certainly a reliable source. Furthermore, the ABC source I removed is not from the main website, but The Drum, a subsidary website that anyone can contribute, and ABC states that its not responsible for its content. [27]. The author of the piece admits he writes for the Epoch Times.
21) The Speigel article is not about CI, but China's overseas influence as a whole. It made a total of one mention in regards CI, a quote that adds nothing new. The Zimmerman quote was useless and the heading is used for inflammatory purposes, and I instead added his conclusion to his piece.-- PCPP ( talk) 09:39, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
This article is cited but some are too cryptic to be of any use. It lacks a biblio. I've been wanting to verify some of the citations, and wonder what "Golden (2011)" is... -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 13:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Ohconfucius, can you explain your thinking here [34]? I thought the point of the criticism here is not that the CI wants influential people, but that an administrator at a CI is a Huawei vice-president; and the authors are leveraging off the (founded or not, I won't remark) accusations that Huawei may be used for spying. The edit summary doesn't explain why this complaint should be deleted. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 02:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry. Didn't mean to do that. You wrote "something relating to a specific CI was used to "prove" the macro view that there was industrial espionage taking place" but that is not what's happening here. The authors are expressing their general "concern" about the connection between the CIs and other state initiatives, in this case citing Huawei and this one person. I'm sure they would have had those concerns whether they found evidence of them or not, but the authors don't purport to prove that CIs are involved in industrial espionage, merely exhibiting their "concerns" about such potentialities, citing one case to bolster their view. I'm not saying I agree with them. The Sound and the Fury ( talk) 15:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
I just read this article in full as well as the dispute resolution thread. I will not make personal remarks here whatsoever and deal only with content.
I have no doubt that this page is, in essence, an attack page and a POV fork based on the editors' synthesis, selective quoting, and general lack of fact-checking. But even if we ignore all of that, the most obvious problem is one of WP:UNDUE.
I have read about CIs extensively in the past, and there is no doubt that there are concerns about its nature, financing, objectives etc. But I am of the view that all of these concerns can be summed up succinctly in the main article's section on "Criticism and Controversies", in two paragraphs at max. Concerns about financing and objectives, much of which is simply speculation, can also be migrated to the main article but discussed in separate sections (rather than in "Controversies"). With that in mind, I propose that this page be deleted.
I build this case out of the sheer absurdity of some passages in this article, of which I offer a sample below:
So my proposal going forward for this article is to move and trim the bulk of the content back to the main article, where it belongs. I propose this to be done in three separate parts:
As far as I can see, this maintains all the encyclopedic content of this page, but presents it in accordance to WP:NPOV and lends due weight to the content itself. Colipon+( Talk) 15:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'm one of those recently absent editors, and have been contributing to the CI articles since 2009. Deleting this page makes no more sense than deleting Concerns and controversies over the 2008 Summer Olympics, Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Concerns and controversies over the 2010 Winter Olympics, or Concerns and controversies in Shanghai Expo 2010. I only have a few minutes today, and will be back to explain in more detail. First, I'd suggest that any editors unfamiliar with the CI pages' contentious background please review the article and discussion histories. The revision diffs show that a few individuals repeatedly censored content and deleted references, particularly under the original CI article Controversies section. What you call a "quotefarm" is largely owing to recurrent false summaries of well-referenced CI criticisms, which consensually resulted in relying upon direct quotations. WP:QUOTE recommends, "in some instances, quotations are preferred to text. For example: When dealing with a controversial subject …" The histories also explain the July 2011 split, and why returning to the main CI page would likely be counterproductive. Best wishes, Keahapana ( talk) 23:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the existence of other 'controversy' articles, I would firstly say that other stuff exists. The 2008 olympics was such a huge topic that it genuinely needs a whole family of articles to give it coverage; I see no reason why the Shanghai Expo criticism cannot be folded back into the 'main' Expo 2010 article. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the argument about the Falun Gong, it's not necessarily something I like or agree with. The PRC passed a law banning FLG, much in the same way that the Communist Party was banned in the USA until not so many years ago (I still remember having to declare to not being a member when applying for a US visa). It's but fact to be accepted. It's certainly fallacious to say that the FLG are responsible for making the recruitment ban aspect of controversy about them. Everything they do publicly (and behind closed political doors in the US Canada and Australia) is already geared for maligning the CPC, and they would undoubtedly milk it for all its propagandistic value. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 06:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
I have been asked to weigh in on this discussion by two of the involved editors. Several months ago I tried to clean up the Confucius Institute main article which contained little more than an incredibly long list of quotes accusing the Institutes of all matter of speculative evils. This made the article rather useless so I instead wrote brief summaries of the ideas referenced in the quote when it seemed that those ideas were at all relevant to the article. At the same time I worked to find appropriate encyclopedic information to add to the article so that it might be of use to someone. This series of edits was initially reverted. We discussed it and I thought a temporary compromise would be the creation of this article, primarily because it would allow both the inclusion of material and avoid undue weight given to controversies in the main article. The assumption then was that an attempt would be made not only to better organize the material but that further editing would be done to bring the material up to standards. I was never sure whether this would be possible but it seemed like a good thing to try.
Now the situation is very similar to where we were originally. We have an article consisting of speculation and quotes removed from context. This is simply not useful material. I don't see how this can be seen as anything other than a POVFORK and QUOTEFARM. Perhaps one day a fair encyclopedic article can be written on the topic of Controversies and Concerns over Confucius Institutes, this is not such an article.
I support deletion of this article. The Controversies section of the main article should be improved and material which is neither simply quotes or speculation should be included in the main article to the extent that it does not violate WP:UNDUE. From even a light and quick reading of this controversies article an argument emerges, that CIs are part of a sinister plot. Such is very inappropriate for wikipedia. I generally favor inclusion, but not uncritically. I hope this helps. - Metal lunchbox ( talk) 20:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
The current section "5 Concerns and controversies" repeats the first two words of the article title. According to MOS:HEAD,
Perhaps the simplest solution would be to delete 5 and make subheadings 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 first-level section headings. Keahapana ( talk) 21:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)