Chinesepod-founder and Chinabiz Speaker Ken Carroll writes on his weblog about a new and interesting venture, a cooperation with the Confucius institute. He has helped them to develop their virtual presence.
The Confucius institute is the - well-funded - international cultural window of the central government, say, the British Council or Alliance Francaise for China. Ken Carroll:
People are already asking if the political motivation behind the CIs is to infiltrate western universites with Chinese propaganda. In almost every article you read about the CIs, you get the ‘concerned’ people, so let me share a secret with you: no-one from the han ban has ever asked us to spy for them! Nor have they talked about propaganda, soft power, hard power, electric power, or anything else that might be construed as a political motivation. No hint of ploitics ever came up in any conversation we have had with them. In fact, they more or less handed the entire project to us because they didn’t have the capability internally. (I’m not sure how they’re supposed to infiltrate the free world if they cannot do their own web strategy.) I’m kind of small government guy by persuasion because I believe all goverments are obtuse. From what I’ve seen of han ban it will be a long time before they develop the capability that these chaps (another obtuse government entity) seem to fear in them.
No comments:
Post a Comment