Swedish university severs ties with Confucius Institute

Sweden’s Stockholm University will end its partnership with the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute, the school said.

The agreement between the Confucius Institute and Stockholm University, which was signed in 2005, expired at the end of 2014 and will not be renewed. The Confucius Institute at Stockholm University will close on 30 June 2015. confucius_institute

“The situation is different today compared with ten years ago. At that time the institute created an opening for increased contact with China, which was important to us. Today we have a completely different level of academic exchange with China, which makes this collaboration redundant.
Generally speaking, establishing institutes that are funded by another nation, within the framework of a university, is rather a questionable practice,” said Vice-Chancellor Astrid Söderbergh Widding, in a comment to the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

Educational institutions in the US and Canada made similar moves last year, citing concerns about foreign interference in academic freedom.

Read more: Stockholm University

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *