Confucius institutes

September 17, 2025

I really must respond to this article, as one of the two former academic directors of the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne, which we established in partnership with Nanjing University in the early 2000s. Nanjing University, by the way, was and is a highly reputable institution, judged at the time to be a fitting partner for the University of Melbourne.

The CI was set up separately from the Chinese program in the Asia Institute, precisely in order to waylay any suggestions of interference. This did not stop some UoM academics from other departments from making unfounded allegations. The Ministry of Education office in Beijing expressed to me their support for Chinese language teaching across the spectrum of middle schools and Saturday schools in Melbourne, including support for continuing teaching in full-form characters if the teachers came from overseas. They were playing an absolutely straight game, in support of language education.

In my experience, there were sordid machinations, but they came from the UoM side, and involved pea-and-thimble tricks with the budget that had been allocated by the Hanban in Beijing.

David Holm, Professor of Chinese, University of Melbourne, 1995-2010