Director of Slovak Confucius Institute Allegedly Threatens Independent Scholar
Ľuboslav Štora, the former director of the Confucius Institute (CI) in Slovakia’s Bratislava, drew attention for sending intimidating messages in emails to Matej Šimalčík, one of the key independent experts on China in Central and East European countries.
Štora had served as the head of the Slovak branch of communist China’s tech giant ZTE before he worked for the CI, which was founded in 2007 on basis of an agreement between China’s Tianjin University and the Slovak University of Technology.
Šimalčík is the executive director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). In 2020, he and Adam Kalivoda published an investigative report titled China’s inroads into Slovak universities: Protecting academic freedoms from authoritarian malign interference (pdf). They warned Slovak academic institutions about the risk of cooperating with Chinese entities, given “the nature of
2021/04/29 17:35 Flyer for online seminar (Political Capital photo) Flyer for online seminar (Political Capital photo) TAIPEI (Taiwan News) Scholars from Taiwan and several Central European countries at an online seminar on Wednesday (April 28) and shared their experiences of countering China’s dissemination of false information. Co-organized by Taiwan’s Institute for National Policy Research and Hungarian think tank Political Capital, the meeting was titled “Chinese Disinformation in Europe, Taiwan and the World: Challenges and Perspectives.” It aimed to provide the audience with insights into the nature of pro-Beijing disinformation campaigns, discuss the impact these campaigns have on Taiwan and Europe, and find ways affected nations can counter Chinese disinformation.
The Slovak director of the Chinese Confucius Institute in Bratislava, Ľuboslav Štora, sent threatening mail to Matej Šimalčík, one of the key experts on China in CEE countries and the executive director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). It reads: “Are you sleeping well? You should be under a lot of stress when you’re walking down the street…”
The director, the former head of the Slovak branch of ZTE, sent the threat shortly after a CEIAS survey exposing the Chinese presence at Slovak universities had been published.
There are three Confucius Institutes in Slovakia, the one in Bratislava was founded upon the agreement with the Slovak University of Technology (STU), and also has the largest number of projects and cooperation with China and Chinese companies.
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Scientists in Brno are developing miniature robots – no bigger than a virus and so invisible to the naked eye – capable of performing surgery. Due to their size, the so-called nanorobots can reach all but inaccessible places in the human body.
“Nano” is a Greek prefix meaning “one-billionth”, and nanotechnology refers to devices that are a few billionths of a metre in size. The Central European Institute of Technology, or CEITEC, is where life sciences and nanotechnologies meet.
CEITIC was founded by a group of Brno-based universities and national research institutes specializing in everything from physics to veterinary medicine. Among the ongoing projects there is one developing nanorobots capable of facilitating eye surgery and other delicate operations, attacking cancer cells or for deep-cleaning of dental canals.