China’s influence increasingly threatens the academic world in Brazil. In recent years, the country’s main higher education institutions, such as the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), have established partnerships with Chinese institutions at an ever-increasing rate. Experts warn of the risks of this growing soft power that Beijing uses to promote the Chinese model.
“China’s influence on Brazilian universities has never been greater,” journalist Gabriel de Arruda Castro, editor of Brazilian daily Gazeta do Povo, told Diálogo. “Obviously, this opens the door to the presence of representatives of an authoritarian regime, which is not the case when Brazil establishes academic partnerships with countries like Germany or France.”
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Although agreements between Brazilian and foreign universities are common, Castro points out that these countries respect the independence and academic autonomy of their teaching centers. Chinese universities, on the other hand, are subject to the strict control of the Beijing government. “From the point of view of the Chinese regime, it doesn’t make any sense to fund any project that might be critical of the Chinese model,” says Castro.
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Part of the Chinese influence in Brazilian universities is exerted through partnerships with the Confucius Institute, an entity linked to the Chinese Ministry of Education, whose official mission is to spread Chinese culture and language.
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On August 13, 2020, the U.S. State Department designated the Confucius Institute as a “foreign mission” of China, noting that it promotes “Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign” in classrooms.
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In 2023, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) called the Confucius Institute a tool of political influence. “China’s activities and forms of cooperation threaten to undermine academic freedom in the field of education and research,” the BfV said in its annual report, German news agency Deutsche Welle reported.
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“Obviously, the official view of the regime is not challenged in these cases. The promotion of Chinese culture is therefore mixed with the promotion of the Chinese regime,” says Castro. “In my research, I didn’t find any perspective critical of China.”
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He believes there may be a risk of espionage by China in these initiatives. “Perhaps because it is not perceived as a direct adversary of China, Brazil has a little less of this aspect [of espionage]. But perhaps there is ‘soft espionage’ here: knowing where Brazil stands in certain areas of knowledge, in order to later use this as a strategic advantage in a possible competition in some area or to offer solutions,” he says.
“This is more or less what it [China] does in Africa by other means. In other words: meeting local demand pragmatically at first, but making these countries increasingly dependent on China,” Castro added.
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For further info, here's Gazeta do Povo's article, from 14/Jan/2023, that this one refers to... or rather copypastes without linking - the overall discourse and claims are the same.
Okay. Can I be honest here? This is piles of propaganda coming from multiple sides, and anyone claiming to know the truth is probably just assuming. It's a bloody mess of interests.
And since I do not know the veracity of the claims themselves, I'll instead focus on who is saying what, and the likely reason why.
The original is from a conservative newspaper from my city, Curitiba. It used to serve our local audience (Paraná state) but, around 2015 or so, the overall focus shifted: instead of being Paraná's newspaper it became Brazil's right wing newspaper. The motivation was simply "selling subscriptions for outsiders".
That article's claim about Confucius Institute promoting a hidden agenda ultimately backtracks to FBI and CIA (note: this article is linked as source in the other one that I've linked.) I'll leave as an exercise for the readers to guess how trustable the USA government is when it comes to China, and vice versa, given that both countries are fighting a cold war.
Now let's talk about Diálogo Américas. It's directly tied with USA's military - its own words
Given the backstory of relationships between the government of USA and other governments of the Americas, this can be safely rephrased as "we're military, devoted to enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine."
Ah, and most likely China is doing its thing too in this regard. How much, we do not know. It might be worth checking what those partnerships with universities are about; there's a lot of room for propaganda in something like social studies, but if it's something like semiconductors or the likes the claim is probably bollocks.
Are you noticing what's happening here?
It's like a telephone game done for the sake of the context-tomy.