Confucius Institute was behind the pressure: Foreign Policy contributor
Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/10
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In the latest example of a Chinese campaign directed against
A statue of Confucius near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 2011. (By Associated Press)
mentions of Taiwan, the name of the island was removed from the biography of a “Foreign Policy” contributor speaking at Savannah State University in the United States, the journal reported Wednesday.
Bullying from Beijing has led to Taiwanese offices overseas forced to change their names, foreign airlines having to stop listing Taiwan as a separate country, and even graffiti with the Chinese characters for Taiwan on a map having to be covered up.
In the journal, Foreign Policy contributor Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian wrote how “Taiwan was scrubbed from my biography” as she was to give a keynote speech and accept an award at the college in the state of Georgia.
She said the co-director of the university’s Confucius Institute was the one who had insisted on the removal before programs for the address were printed. She had threatened to boycott the event as she claimed the inclusion of the term “Taiwan” challenged Chinese sovereignty, Allen-Ebrahimian wrote in Foreign Policy.
[FULL STORY]
