[2] It was originally called the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, which was established in 1987, and acquired its current name in 2020.

[1] It has numerous subdivisions, including three separate Confucius Institute divisions in charge of Asian and African, American and Oceanian, and European regions.

[1] It has numerous subdivisions, including the following:[1] Academics and journalists have criticized Hanban, particularly the Confucius Institute program that has rapidly grown worldwide since 2004.

Under her job contract, Zhao was forced to hide her belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that the Chinese government deems "dangerous".

It concluded that "academic freedom cannot have a price tag" and recommended that if universities will not publish their Confucius Institute agreements, the programs should end.

[25] On 24 June, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua responded,[26] saying that the claims made by the AAUP and others—that Confucius Institutes "function as an arm of the Chinese state and are pushing political agendas"—actually "expose not so much communist propaganda as their own intolerance of exotic cultures and biased preconceived notions to smear and isolate the CPC".

The remaining 300 participants who arrived for conference registration on 23 July did not receive the printed abstracts or programs but only a brief summarized schedule.

[41] The director of the National Central Library stated that EACS officials and members had spoken out against Xu during the opening ceremony.

[42][43] Marshall Sahlins explained that the EACS censorship highlighted Hanban's seriousness in enforcing its contractual provisions "the way they do in China which is not so much by going to court [...] but simply by fiat".

[44][45] The Christian Science Monitor said that the censorship has made more American, European, and Australian academics grow uneasy with Confucius Institutes.

It reported that when Ms. Xu met privately with foreign scholars in Shanghai, who asked specifically about the missing pages, "she denied ordering them censored.

[48] "Xu Lin not only refused to answer difficult questions, she also politicised the Confucius Institutes and reinforced the idea that they are led by dogmatists," commented Gary Rawnsley, professor of Public Diplomacy at Aberystwyth University, Wales.

[49] The Wall Street Journal reported on Xu's BBC interview, noting that "Critics have argued that China's Confucius Institutes pose a threat to academic freedom in the United States, Canada, Europe and beyond.

"[50] On 25 September 2014, the University of Chicago stated that it had suspended negotiations to renew its Confucius Institute contract because "recently published comments about UChicago in an article about the director-general of Hanban are incompatible with a continued equal partnership.

"[51] This indirectly referred to an interview Xu had with Jiefang Daily,[52][53] in which she claimed to have intimidated the university's president "with a single sentence", after 100 professors signed a petition to ban the Confucius Institute.