Universities rewrite Confucius Institute contracts amid foreign influence scrutiny

Two of Australia's top universities have renegotiated their contracts to host China-funded culture and language centres in an effort to safeguard their teaching autonomy and ward off the Morrison government's foreign influence crackdown.

The University of Melbourne and University of Queensland have rewritten their agreements amid heightened government scrutiny of the Confucius Institute soft-power facilities and concerns about undue foreign influence on Australian campuses.

Two of Australia's top universities have revised their Confucius Institute agreements to protect their autonomy. Credit: Simon Schluter

Melbourne's revised agreement — seen by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald — includes fresh language clarifying the primacy of the university's autonomy and "academic and intellectual freedom, including in respect of its research, teaching and operations".

Under the new terms, the Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing acknowledges Melbourne's "right to determine the content of the curriculum and the manner of instruction for all programs administered by the institute". While the original agreement stated "the institute must take into consideration any assessment by the headquarters on the teaching quality at the institute", the revised version does not contain this clause.

UQ's updated agreement states the development of the institute's content "will be solely under the University of Queensland's ambit and control", and the university is "committed to maintaining its autonomy" over all content, teaching standards, quality assurance, admissions, exams, marketing, staffing and academic and intellectual freedom in connection with the institute.

Previously, UQ's agreement was one of five nationally that said the university "must accept the assessment of the [Confucius Institute] headquarters on the teaching quality". This has been removed in the updated document.

All 13 Australian universities that host the facilities have so far declined to register them under the federal government's foreign influence transparency scheme and Melbourne and UQ have sought to distance their centres from the scheme in their revised agreements.

Both contracts now state the institutes' operations are "not intended to include activities that are registrable under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018".

The original agreements of the Confucius Institutes in Australia were revealed by the Herald and the Age last year, around the time the UQ and Melbourne arrangements came up for their five-year renewal.

The government has since ramped up scrutiny of the facilities. A new unit in the Attorney-General's Department is set to focus on Confucius Institutes, among other organisations, as part of a "second round" enforcement of the foreign influence transparency scheme.

Confucius Institutes are joint ventures between the host university, a Chinese partner university and the Communist Party-controlled Beijing headquarters, which supplies funding, staff and resources. The institutes are a key plank in China's global soft-power effort, providing teaching on culture and language and in some cases holding public events on political, social and economic issues.

Seeking closer ties with China, universities worldwide have embraced the institutes but critics are concerned about censorship of sensitive political issues and centres operating as platforms for undue influence on campus and in the wider community.

Swinburne University emeritus professor and China expert John Fitzgerald said it was important universities were clarifying their institutional autonomy and the role of Confucius Institutes. "It suggests the foreign influence transparency scheme is working," he said.

"Universities will need to prepare guidelines to assist Confucius Institute staff in the performance of their duties under these new agreements. Clearly they will need to rule out policy advocacy, for example, around the Belt and Road Initiative, which a number of Confucius Institutes have been doing in the past."

Attorney-General Christian Porter last week said individuals employed at universities could be captured by the foreign influence transparency scheme if "trying to affect democratic outcomes or influence government". Universities needed to be "very live themselves" to who was seeking to influence their activities, he said.