Xu Lin (born September 1954) is a Chinese vice-minister-level official serving on the State Council. She has held the post of Chief Executive and Director of the Confucius Institutes worldwide since 2004.Asia Society, , "Madam Xu Lin." She is Director General of the Hanban, or Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.
Xu Lin was born in Shanxi province. She is a graduate of Fudan University in Shanghai with a degree in Chemistry and has a master's degree in Economics from Beijing Normal University.Confucius Institute, , "Xu Lin", 11 December 2011. As a young woman during the Cultural Revolution, she was a worker at the Changzhi Bicycle Factory () in Shanxi.Confucius Institute, , "Xu Lin," 4 December 2013. According to her resume,Hanban website , "Leadership: Curriculum Vitae of Xu Lin", 2014 she then worked as a lecturer in the Chemistry Department at Shanxi University, staff at the Higher Education Bureau of Shanxi, and choreographer at the Central Educational Film Studio. Subsequently, she worked in the Finance Department of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. During this time she also held the post of Assistant Mayor of Xuchang, Henan province (October 1991-September 1993) and then Director of the Foreign Loans Office of the Ministry of Education. In 2000 Xu Lin became the Education Counsellor at the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver, Canada. She returned to China in 2004 and took her current post as head of Hanban, or the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.
She has received honorary degrees from the University of Arizona,Rebecca Ruiz-McGill, UA News, , "Four to receive honorary degrees", 1 May 2008. the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar,Confucius Institute at the University of Antananarivo, via Hanban News, , "Madam Xu Lin is awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the Confucius Institute at Antananarivo University", 17 July 2014. the University of Edinburgh,University of Edinburgh website, , "Honorary graduates", 2009-2010 annual review. Middle Tennessee State University,MTSUNews.com, , 16 April 2014 Western Kentucky University,WKUNews, , "WKU President presents honorary doctorate to Madame Xu Lin", 26 July 2011. J.F. Oberlin University in Japan,J.F. Oberlin University website, , "J. F. Oberlin honorary doctoral degree conferred on Ms. Xu Lin", 28 April 2013. Chulalongkorn University in Thailand,Chula International Communication Center, , "HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Will Preside over the Opening Ceremony", June 2012. Belarusian State University in Minsk, Belarus,Jiangsu [China] Department of Education website JiangsuEducation, , "Joint Conference of the Confucius Institutes in Europe 2013 launched in Minsk", 13 September 2013 and Veliko Tarnovo University in Bulgaria.BulgariaChina website, , "Dr. Xu Lin is the new doctor honoris causa of the university in Veliko Tarnovo",
Xu Lin serves as a member of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.Eighth Confucius Institute Conference Information, , "Xu Lin," 4 December 2013.
Braga incident
Xu Lin instigated an international incident on 23 July 2014 when she ordered pages of a program of the European Association of Chinese Studies (EACS) conference at the University of Minho torn out in order to remove any reference to Taiwanese institutions.Shih Hsiu-chuan, EACS to protest Hanban's academic meddling: source, Taipei Times, 31 July 2014.Peter Cai, , Business Spectator, 6 August 2014. "China fails the soft-power test". "China hurts Taiwan's feelings at academic conference in Portugal", "Pakistan Defence" website, 4 August 2014The Wall Street Journal", " "Beijing's Propaganda Lessons: Confucius Institute officials are agents of Chinese censorship.", 7 August 2014.China's obstruction at conference hurts cross-strait ties: Taiwan, Focus Taiwan News Channel, 28 July 2014. The reason for the censorship was apparently concern that the publicity for independent Taiwan institutions would cast doubt on China's claim to Taiwan. Roger Greatrex, President of the EACS, subsequently issued a report on the deletion of pages from conference materials and a wrote public letter of protest against Hanban's interference. The report detailed the timeline of events concerning Xu Lin's censorship.Roger Greatrex, Report: The Deletion of Pages from EACS Conference materials in Braga (July 2014) , European Association for Chinese Studies, 1 August 2014.
The night before the conference began, Xu ordered that pages in the program to which she objected be torn out of the conference abstract and program. Specifically, she objected to the listing of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, a Taiwanese organization, which had been a sponsor of the conference for two decades. Sun Lam, conference co-organizer at the University of Minho and director of the Confucius Institute there,European Association for Chinese Studies conference 2014 website, , "The organisers", July 2014. had also applied for funding from the Confucius China Studies Program (CCSP), which is administered by the Confucius Institute, and had received €28,040.
The money from the CCSP included the €7,000 cost for printing 400 copies of the conference abstracts; it did not include the cost of printing the conference program, which was paid for by EACS members. The CCSP international conference funding application states, "The conference is regulated by the laws and decrees of both China and the host country, and will not carry out any activities which are deemed to be adverse to the social order." Dr. Lam submitted a draft copy of the program to the CCSP for approval on 4 July 2014, and was told that it looked "splendid" (piàoliang 漂亮).
Conference registration began on 22 July 2014, and about 100 participants received complete copies of the abstracts and program, which comprised 89 pages plus cover and front matter, printed double-sided on 48 pages. However, after Xu Lin arrived that evening, she "issued a mandatory request that mention of the CCSP sponsorship be removed from the Conference Abstracts", and ordered her entourage from Confucius Institute Headquarters to remove all conference materials and take them to the apartment of a local Confucius Institute employee. When the remaining 300 participants arrived for conference registration on 23 July, they did not receive the printed abstracts or programs but only a brief summarized schedule. After last-minute negotiations between Xu Lin and conference organizers to ensure conference members received the program, a compromise was made to allow the removal of one abstract page that mentioned the CCSP support of the conference.
On the morning of 24 July, the remaining 300 conference participants received their materials, which were now missing four printed pages: the frontispiece mentioning CCSP sponsorship in the conference abstract, and three pages from the conference program. These expurgated pages contained information regarding: Hanban's Confucius China Studies Program, and recommended restaurants in Braga (15/16) the book exhibition and library donation organized by the Taiwan National Central Library as well as other publishers exhibiting books, and Dr. Sun Lam and Ambassador Joao de Deus Ramos, the keynote speaker (19/20, not removed from some copies) self-presentation by the Taiwanese Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which has sponsored EACS conference for over twenty years, and conference activities (59/60).
When Roger Greatrex, president of the EACS, learned of this censorship, he ordered that 500 copies of the original program immediately be printed and distributed to participants.20th Biennial Conference EACS Program , original uncensored version. He later wrote, "The seizure of the materials in such an unauthorized manner, after the conference had already begun, was extremely injudicious, and has promoted a negative view of the Confucius Institute Headquarters". The EACS letter of protest said this had been "the first occasion in the history of the EACS that its conference materials have been censored." It concluded, "Such interference in the internal organization of the international conference of an independent and democratically organized non-profitable academic organization is totally unacceptable."Roger Greatrex, Letter of Protest at Interference in EACS Conference in Portugal, July 2014 , European Association for Chinese Studies, 1 August 2014.
Tseng Shu-hsien (), director-general of the National Central Library, stated that EACS officials and members had spoken out against Xu during the opening ceremony.European Association for Chinese Studies Offers Formal Apologies to Us, National Policy Foundation, 29 July 2014.Shih Hsiu-chuan, Foundation angry over EACS brochures, Taipei Times, 29 July 2014.
The Inside Higher Ed quoted Marshall Sahlins, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and a leading critic of the Confucius Institutes, who said that this incident highlighted the Confucius Institutes provision that programming they fund must abide by Chinese laws, including those restricting speech; "Moreover they're going to enforce them the way they do in China, which is not so much by going to court... but simply by fiat."Elizabeth Redden , "Inside Higher Ed", "Censorship at China Studies Meeting", 6 August 2014. Taiwan's cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council issued a reproach over the censorship incident, saying, "The mainland should deal with Taiwan's participation in activities on international occasions pragmatically. If there is no respect for each other, the development of cross-strait relations will be seriously hurt.", "The China Post", "China's Obstruction at Conference Hurts Ties", 29 July 2014.
Marshall Sahlins said the EACS censorship brings to light the CI's seriousness in enforcing its contractual provisions, and moreover, "they're going to enforce them the way they do in China which is not so much by going to court ... but simply by fiat".Elizabeth Redden, Confucius Controversies, Inside Higher Ed, 24 July 2014.Elizabeth Redden, Accounts of Confucius Institute-ordered censorship at Chinese studies conference, Inside Higher Ed, 6 August 2014.
The Wall Street Journal suggests that this EACS report about the Confucius Institute's "bullying approach to academic freedom" should be a summer reading program for the president of every American university that hosts a CI.Beijing's Propaganda Lessons, Confucius Institute officials are agents of Chinese censorship, Wall Street Journal, 7 August 2014. The Asahi Shimbun said international scholars were in a "snit" over Xu Lin's attempted censorship,Satoshi Ukai, China roils international scholars with attempt to 'censor' Taiwanese ads , The Asahi Shimbun, 19 August 2014. and The Christian Science Monitor reported that the censorship has made more academics in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia grow uneasy with Confucius Institutes.Robert Marquand, Academic flap turns up heat on China's Confucius Institutes, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 August 2014.
University of Chicago CI closure On 25 September 2014, the University of Chicago stated that it had suspended negotiations to renew its CI contract because "recently published comments about UChicago in an article about the director-general of Hanban are incompatible with a continued equal partnership."Statement on the Confucius Institute at the University of Chicago 25 September 2014 This apparently referred to Xu Lin's interview with the Jiefang Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party in Shanghai, published on 19 September 2014,文化的困境, 在于不知不觉 , Jiefang Daily, 19 September 2014 in which Xu Lin, director of the Hanban, was reported to have intimidated the president of the University of Chicago "with a single sentence" after 100 professors signed a petition to ban the Confucius Institute.