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发帖数: 240 | 1 怎么样，家宝总理从这些小事儿入手？
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/905044
Cambridge University has come under pressure to reveal the identity of a
mysterious Chinese foundation that is donating £3.7 million for a new
professorship, amid fears that the pressure to raise funds may have exposed
it to backdoor diplomacy by Beijing.
The Daily Telegraph has learned that a number of Cambridge teachers object
to the substantial gift from the Chong Hua Foundation, which is set to
create a new chair of Chinese Development at a new Centre of Development
Studies.
The post would be occupied by Professor Peter Nolan, who has links to the
family of Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier.
The donation comes in the wake of the Woolf report on the £1.5 million
donation to the London School of Economics by a foundation run by Col
Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, which placed foreign contributions to cash-
strapped British universities under extra scrutiny.
The report into the scandal, which led to the resignation of Sir Howard
Davies, the school's director, said that universities needed to ensure their
"core values" were reflected in their fund-raising activities, which over
past decade have reached an unprecedented scale.
Tarak Barkawi, a senior lecturer in war studies at the Department of
Politics and International Studies, where the new post is due to be created,
said that "in the wake of the Libya LSE fiasco", Cambridge's conduct was "
reckless and simply not good enough".
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He and other colleagues are alarmed by the lack of clarity surrounding the
origins of the donation, which has been approved by the university's general
board and is likely to be confirmed by Regent House, the governing body,
next month.
Searches for the Chong Hua Foundation on a list of registered charities at
the ministry of civil affairs in Beijing, various charity umbrella groups
and China's equivalent of Companies House revealed nothing. Although the
exact Chinese characters that Chong Hua translates to are not known, there
is a strong likelihood the name means "Respect China".
The official Cambridge announcement on the donation says that the foundation
"is focused on advancing education for the benefit of the People's Republic
of China".
"Who is this Chong Hua Foundation that is giving us all this money? Where is
its website? Who sits on its board? Does it have links to the Chinese
government? These are all basic questions that need to be answered," said Mr
Barkawi.
He added: "The lack of transparency, clarity and debate regarding the links
between the Chong Hua Foundation and the regime is of very serious concern
and raises basic questions about the relationship between donors and
universities."
Tim Holt, the university's head of communications, said that the donation "
has been scrutinised formally by the executive committee of our university
council, in line with our published ethical guidelines for the acceptance of
donations".
He added: "Our investigation did not identify any link between this private
foundation and the Chinese Government."
Pressed for further details, he said that the foundation had been set up by
"wealthy individuals who wished to remain anonymous".
Prof Nolan had, he confirmed, identified the foundation as a prospective
donor.
Mr Barkawi contended: "In a dictatorship, there is no such thing as an
independent educational foundation."
Other Cambridge academics contacted by The Daily Telegraph expressed concern
China was being granted an opportunity to deploy "soft power".
A faculty member of the Department of Politics and International Studies,
who asked not to named, said: "This is happening around the world. The
Chinese are simply buying venerable institutions. It is incumbent for the
university to determine precisely the source of these funds."
Critics of Prof Nolan have questioned whether he would be likely to project
Chinese views on what Beijing calls its "core interests" such as Tibet and
the Dalai Lama, its territorial claims in the South China Sea or its bid for
resources in Africa.
In a 2005 article excerpted in the New Statesman from his book, China at the
Crossroads, Prof Nolan wrote of the challenge the West's "free market
fundamentalism" posed to Beijing. As part of a lengthy opinions given to a
House of Commons select committee last July, he described the Communist
Party of China as "a very, very capable organisation and it has got more and
more capable. It is intensely competitive, meritocratic in fundamental
senses".
An acknowledged authority on Chinese business and a frequent visitor to the
country, Prof Nolan has co-authored a book and several papers with Liu
Chunhang, son-in-law of Wen Jiabao and part of one of the powerful families
that control large swathes of the economy.
Mr Liu, 40, is currently the head of both the statistics and research
departments at the China Bank Regulatory Commission, highly influential
positions in a country where all major banks are owned by the state.
In his current role as Professor of Chinese Management at Cambridge's Judge
Business School, Prof Nolan also taught Liu as a postgraduate student and is
said to have acted as a tutor to Mr Wen's daughter, Wen Ruchun.
The Daily Telegraph tried to speak to Prof Nolan directly but was told by
the press office that he "does not talk to journalists".
On the specific question of teaching Wen Ruchun, the press office said "the
university does not retain this level of detail".
Sceptics have asked whether the foundation played any role in the selection
of Prof Nolan as the first occupant of the Chong Hua Professorship and as
the head of a new Centre of Development Studies, posts he is due to start on
March 1.
Mr Barkawi was concerned that the university had "at the very least left the
appearance" that there may have been undue influence.
The university responded: "Donors, whether they are governments or private
institutions and individuals, are not able to determine either the selection
of a candidate for an academic post."
The university has also agreed that the Chong Hua foundation can appoint a
person of its choice to the board of senior academics managing the donation.
Beijing has directed substantial resources to improving its reputation,
opening English-language newspapers and a string of Confucius Institutes
around the world.
When pushed on its human rights abuses, including the ongoing detention of
Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese authorities frequently cite
their country's status as a "developing nation" in mitigation.
Last year Stanford University declined £2.5 million from the Chinese
for a Confucius Institute because of a caveat that delicate issues like
Tibet couldn't be discussed. Cambridge said there were no such caveats
attached to the Chong Hua donation.
In a 2007 speech to the national congress of China's Communist Party,
President Hu Jintao described the network of institutes as "part of the soft
power of our country", Soft power, or gaining influence through persuasion
rather than force, is a "factor of growing significance in the competition
in overall national strength," he said.
Cambridge and other British universities have received major donations from
other autocracies in recent years. Saudi Arabia gave Cambridge and Edinburgh
£8 million each in 2008 to establish centres of Islamic studies. Iran
donated £10,000 to the University of Durham two years ago which the
head of the university's Centre for Iranian Studies admitted "comes with
strings attached". | d**j
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发帖数: 240 | |
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