Confucius Institute HQ regrets US university's decision to close branch

The Confucius Institute Headquarters said on Saturday it deeply regrets a decision by the University of Maryland in the United States to stop hosting its Confucius Institute.

"We are strongly against politicizing normal bilateral cooperation in education and hope all sides can view Confucius Institutes objectively," the Confucius Institute Headquarters said in a statement, adding it would take necessary measures to safeguard its rights and interests.

In 2004, the University of Maryland became the first university in the US to host a Confucius Institute.

In 2018, the US Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, which included a provision preventing organizations that hosted a Confucius Institute from participating in certain federally funded programs, the president of the university, Wallace Loh, said in a statement on Friday.

"After evaluating the impact of this legislation on the University of Maryland, it became evident that we can no longer host Confucius Institute at Maryland," he said.

In order to minimize the impact on the schools and communities that depended on the teachers provided by Confucius Institute at Maryland, the university will continue to support ongoing classes through the end of this academic year, he said.

The university has also been working with Confucius Institute Headquarters and independent local organizations in the Maryland and Washington area to potentially transition the Confucius Institute and its activities so there would be continuity of educational offerings for schools after it has separated from the university, he said.

Since its founding, Confucius Institute at Maryland had engaged in educational outreach by providing teachers of Chinese language and culture to kindergartens, primary schools and high schools in Maryland and Washington, as well as offering language classes to the general public, Loh said.

Over the years, such classes had provided thousands of K-12 students with the opportunity to learn the language and culture of what is today the world's second-largest economy, he said.

"The US-China relationship is of global and strategic importance. Amid the rising geopolitical, economic and cultural tensions, the university will remain steadfast in its commitment to engage responsibly with academic institutions in China, and elsewhere in the world, in order to help manage-if not solve-the vexing challenges of our age," Loh added.

There were 550 Confucius Institutes and 1,172 Confucius classrooms in 162 countries and regions as of December, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The HSK exams, a test of Chinese language proficiency organized by the Confucius Institute Headquarters, were taken 6.8 million times in 2018, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Education.

The Confucius Institute Headquarters had added 60 new HSK exam centers, and there were 1,147 in 137 countries and regions by the end of 2018, the ministry said.