While China’s economic and political clout continues to expand, the reach of the country’s Confucius Institute appears to be waning. Most recently, Stockholm University in Sweden has decided not to renew its contract with China’s state-funded Confucius Institute, becoming the latest western university to end its relationship with the state-backed language and cultural study centre.

According to a report in The Paper, the university announced last month that it would not renew its cooperation agreement with the Chinese Language Office under the state’s Chinese Language Council. The centre, which was opened in 2005, and was the first of its kind in Europe, will close at the end of June.

While the newspaper noted that the University reached its decision because “the cooperation agreement seemed redundant, since we and China have established different levels of communication”, critics have hinted otherwise. In recent years, the Confucius Institute has been mired in a number of controversies, ranging from accusations of academic interference to espionage on the part of the Chinese government.

Some critics of the Institute pointed out that it was funded directly by the Chinese government, who oversaw the selection of the teaching staff and the development of the curriculum. Last year, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), publicly campaigned for American universities to terminate or renegotiate their cooperation agreements with the institute for, among other things, operating as a “soft-power” branch of the Chinese government.

Similar criticism has plagued the Confucius Institute in the USA, Israel, Australia, Portugal, and Vietnam, and has even been referred to as a “Trojan horse and propaganda machine,” as we reported earlier.

Photos: AFP