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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Why would you expect the Confucius Institute to provide information on the negatives of Chinese government? It's a Chinese culture organization, and it's directly affiliated with the government of China.

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Voice of America, and other media provided by the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau provide a balanced perspective on the U.S. If there are anti-government situations going on, they cover it. Just take a look at the headlines about Trump on voanews.com vs. the headlines about Xi on xinhuanet.com.

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Oh, wow, point taken.

I always forget about VOA because the government doesn't promote it inside the United States. BBC and even NHK have a much higher profile than Voice of America does in America.

I always forget about VOA because the government doesn't promote it inside the United States.

Openness and fairness are also political weapons. You know your side has lost, if it reaches a state of "evaporative cooling" such that it's incapable of using such weapons.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...

VOA isn't a complete shill for the Executive, but it's still a propaganda arm of the US Government.

I guess that's a valid point, but it's worth asking whether transparency is really a core value of Chinese political culture, the way it ostensibly is to ours. That doesn't make Chinese culture necessarily better or worse, ceteris paribus, but it would definitely influence the kinds of things a government-sponsored cultural agency would demonstrate.

I think my point is just: we might be asking for a lot from something as straightforward as a Chinese cultural agency.

Other, similar organizations from other countries often at least try to maintain the illusion of some degree of objectivity. If you take advanced French classes at the French Institute, there is a good chance that contemporary issues affecting France will be discussed in class.

Indeed, when I took German at the Goethe-Institut there was a fair amount of class-time reference to social problems in Germany (although perhaps with an optimistic spin, something like "Germany is great because Germans acknowledge important social problems and work to solve them¹"). I haven't experienced the Confucius Institute for comparison.

¹ It seemed like nearly every course had a dialogue on the theme "Was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('What do you do for the environment?').

I don't think he presumed it would? The subtext (as I read it) is that his émigré Taiwanese instructor was prejudiced against the mainland government to the point of rarely mentioning any positives. The balance provided by the Confucius Institute was in providing the pro-government viewpoint, not more of the negative. Or am I misreading your question?

I didn't get the impression DanAndersen expected them to; he wrote "of course"...

> the reading materials provided of course didn't go into any potential negatives of the Beijing government

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