Analysis
Politics
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8 April 2025
26 April 2021
China builds up its influence in the academic world and seeks to suppress free and critical debate on its regime, says Slovak Researcher Matej Šimalčík, who received a threatening email from the Director of the Confucius Institute in Slovakia. Experts and critical politicians from the region are under increasing pressure from China’s actions and institutional influence.
“Are you sleeping well? You should be in very big stress, when you are walking through the street…” When Slovak expert on China Matej Šimalčík, together with his colleagues from the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS), received an email with these words. They were less surprised by its content than its author.
The aggressive email came from the Slovak Director of the Chinese Confucius Institute in Bratislava (KIB) Ľuboslav Štora.
He responded to a recent survey on Chinese presence in Slovak universities on which Šimalčík as Director of CEIAS had worked.