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. 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. 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, 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. 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." 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. 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." 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." 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". 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.
The Asahi Shimbun said international scholars were in a "snit" over Xu Lin's attempted censorship, 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. ==University of Chicago CI closure==