The following post by Chen Zufang (陈祖芬), a well-known Chinese artist and writer, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 2:33am Hong Kong time today, May 25, 2012. Chen Zufang has just under 43,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Chen Zufang’s post includes responses from other Sina Weibo users, separated by “//” and marked by @ below:

Oh, unscrupulous and moronic leaders!! // @//@ReadingBetweenTheLines: 1.6 billion yuan spent [for these institutes] in a single year? I’m shocked. // @FengXincheng: Under the sign of “promoting Chinese internationally”, how much tax money do these Confucius Institutes spend every year? The budget in 2008 alone stood at 1.6 billion yuan. After that it was bigger and bigger every year. Over a period of 20 years, Project Hope [a government-run education charity in China] pulled together just five billion yuan. We’re spending so much money to do education overseas, but we can’t see fit to spend a bit of money on education in our own mother country?

Chen Zufang’s post is a response to an earlier post — now also deleted — by Chinese IT expert Jiang Zigang (蒋子刚), who remarked on a directive by the U.S. State Department this month stating that Confucius Institutes had to “obtain American accreditation in order to continue to accept foreign scholars and professors as teachers” working in primary and secondary schools.

A big thanks to America for tearing away the mask of the Confucius Institutes. http://t.cn/zO1sMYR

Chen Zufang’s original Chinese post follows:

无德弱智的掌勺者!!//@弦外之意-H:一年16亿?[吃惊] //@封新城: 以“汉语国际推广”为招牌的孔子学院,一年耗费多少税款? 2008年光预算就高达16亿。此后更是一年更比一年多。希望工程历经20多年,也才募集50来亿。这么大把撒钱到国外去搞教育,怎么就舍不得花点钱在自己祖国的花朵上?


NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.


David Bandurski

CMP Director

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