The recruitment process of Chinese staff for Confucius Institutes (CIs) in the UK poses a “fundamental systematic risk” to their hosting universities, a China researcher said.
Sam Dunning, investigative journalist and director of charity UK-China Transparency (UKCT), said British universities now “have to deal with” the CIs in light of recently published evidence and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act that was passed into law last month.
Speaking to NTD‘s “British Thought Leaders” programme about the works of UKCT, Dunning said one of the charity’s research found that Chinese universities were discriminating candidates when hiring teachers for their British partners, and that the teachers were recruited on the basis of their ability of “surveilling on, informing on, and possibly intimidating and threatening their peers.”…