European Association of Chinese Studies

The European Association of Chinese Studies (Chinese: 歐洲漢學學會/欧洲汉学学会 Ōuzhōu Hànxué Xuéhuì; EACS) is an international scholarly association representing China scholars from Europe. It was founded in 1975 and is registered in Paris. The Association is governed by a Board and its daily activities are managed by its President, Secretary-General, and Treasurer.

2014 conference censorship

An international incident occurred at the 20th biennial EACS conference, held 23–26 July 2014 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, when Hanban director Xu Lin ordered pages torn out from the official program the night before the conference, to remove any reference to Taiwan institutions. The reason for the censorship was apparently concern that the publicity for independent Taiwan institutions cast doubt on China's claim to Taiwan. The association protested in the strongest terms and reprinted all the deleted materials to distribute to all conference members.

The evening before the conference, Hanban Vice-Minister Xu Lin (许琳), who is Director-General of the Confucius Institute Headquarters (CIH), ordered that pages to which she objected be torn out of the conference abstract and program. Roger Greatrex, President of the EACS, subsequently issued a Report on the deletion of pages from conference materials and a public Letter of Protest at Hanban interference at the conference. The report detailed the timeline of events concerning Xu Lin's censorship.