Interesting article in the National Post about Mac's Confucius Institute (and CIs in general):

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/wor...936/story.html

Thoughts?

Interesting article. I don't know nearly enough about the subject to form a solid opinion, though. It could very well be possible that this activity is suspicious, but there's always a veil of secrecy and lack of knowledge that blurs the line between them being true and reputable organizations or threats to national security.

Never hearing about him before, though, I tried looking up some info on Michel Juneau-Katsuya to see if he was just some random spewing out political accusations but all I could find were mentions of his former senior position with CSIS, some other national security articles, and a book he's written.

Hm. I know Stephen Colbert had a go at this in his threat-down a while back.

Where's the CI, exactly? It's not on campus, is it?

Originally Posted by britb

Hm. I know Stephen Colbert had a go at this in his threat-down a while back.

Where's the CI, exactly? It's not on campus, is it?

It is on campus, yes.

It's not a building or anything like that: at best I think right now it might have a tiny office.

Also, omg this is why I loathe the National Post. Talk about fear mongering.

lol my friends and I have always joked that the Confucious Institute was actually just a front for espionage...but now I guess it isn't as funny haha.

From my understanding, they are definitely part of the PRC government's (well, at least this generation and the next) policy of engaging the rest of the world to increase soft power. I think using such institutes to spy would be such a bad tactical decision. One can get a lot more information a lot cheaper. I mean, as long as everyone is aware that the "Chinese culture" that CIs feed us are airbrushed at times, why wouldn't we just keep taking their money? Sure, it will likely create a chain of dependency, but such dependency will much more like how the world is dependent on the United States. Barring total social or economic collapse, the rest of the world will have to engage with China, no matter what one's opinion of their current and/or past governments' record on human rights, social control/engineering, etc., at some point in the future - an inevitable fact. Thus the article's author's association of being dependent with essentially the prime evils is likely alarmist rhetoric, or else he lives in daily fear of our country's relationship with the United States (which some of us do...).

So I think that Confucious Institutes probably don't do more than they say they do, but are definitely part of a larger, over-arching, probably 30-50 year long strategy of the current PRC government. And no matter where on the spectrum of "commie chinamen are evil - Emperor Hu is never wrong" you stand, it's probably a good idea to exercise caution and think critically about the actions of CI - like of any other cultural/language institute.

McMaster as a Chinese spy outpost? AWESOME!

The Chinese have already won; its only a matter of time until they just buy Canada anyways.

Originally Posted by lorend

Also, omg this is why I loathe the National Post. Talk about fear mongering.

Actually there was recently an article in a Chinese newspaper (Ming Pao) about the same thing too. They were talking about how the director of CSIS, Richard Fadden, brought it up in a CBC interview with Peter Mansbridge, so it might not just be Mr. Juneau-Katsuya single-handedly theorizing.

EDIT: Oh. I just realized they mentioned the interview in the National Post article...

Originally Posted by rcrw88

The Chinese have already won; its only a matter of time until they just buy Canada anyways.

Nah, they wouldn't buy Canada since it would be too expensive... They would buy the US instead since the US owes them so much money XD

Originally Posted by rcrw88

The Chinese have already won; its only a matter of time until they just buy Canada anyways.

I think the joke's on china, they keep making stuff for us cheap... and if they really start to act up > tariffs go up and they have 300 million unemployed overnight. (if our politicians have guts that is.)


and CI being used to improve softpower? of course, the chinese government is only ever looking out for the the chinese government. if they cared about anyone they wouldn't be building a country on the backs of hundreds of millions of overworked fellow countrymen/women