I was browsing the web and I happened to come across multiple articles, but one in particular, that mentions the closing of Confucius Institutes at various colleges and universities. I didn’t feel it to be related to my previous post on Confucius and thought it was so interesting that it was deserving of its own blog post.
Apparently, there are various universities throughout the United States that have a Confucius Institute run by the Chinese government. I am not 100% sure how this works and plan on doing further research on it. Some of the colleges, such as the Arizona State University have closed the Institute due to some people claiming they “view the centers as Chinese government propaganda.” I found this really interesting, especially thinking about how positively portrayed Confucianism is portrayed, at least here in America. Why did they start these institutes in the first place if they are believed to be propaganda? I think this is an interesting thread of news stories that seem to have been developing for the past few weeks and I plan on keeping updated on them as well as furthering my research.