CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES
Confucius Institutes are non-profit institute, named after ancient China's influential philosopher Confucius. Funded by China’s government, they were established by China ostensibly as tools to help non-native speakers to learn Chinese. Today, they serve as centers of Chinese language and culture education and research but have also been accused of being vehicles of Chinese propaganda. They have mostly been set up at universities and other educational institutions.
Elizabeth Redden wrote in Inside Higher Ed: The infusion of Chinese government funding into international universities has enabled significant expansions in language teaching, cultural programming, and China-related conferences and symposia, but it has also raised fears regarding academic freedom and independence of teaching and research. Critics have questioned why colleges would provide their imprimatur to institutes that have been described by Li Changchun, China’s propaganda chief, as "an important part of China’s overseas propaganda setup." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
The Confucius Institutes provides teachers, textbooks, and operating funds. They are run in cooperation with Chinese partner universities and overseen by Hanban, a Chinese Ministry of Education subsidiary. Typically, host universities receive a yearly appropriation from Hanban -- in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 -- and Hanban also pays the salaries and travel costs for visiting Chinese instructors who staff the institutes. Hanban creates its own teaching materials.
Kung Tsui-chang is a businessman in Taiwan who is the 79th-generation direct descendant of Confucius. He inherited the title of Sacrificial Official to Confucius from his grandfather, Kung Te-cheng, who died in 2008. When asked by the New York Times if he had any relationship with the Confucius Institutes and what he thought of them, he said: I have no relationship or contact with the Confucius Institutes. I don’t know much about the situation, so I can’t comment.” [Source: Austin Ramzy, New York Times, November 14, 2014]
Spreading China Abroad
China is arguably now more involved in international affairs than it has been at any other time in history. In recent years it has upgraded its diplomatic corps and brought in new blood; boosted foreign aid to levels that match the United States in some countries; increased overseas investment; and even founded is own version of the Peace Corps.
In 2005, Beijing announced it would send 20,000 teachers to most ASEAN countries to teach Mandarin by 2010. The move was part of an fort to boot economic development between China and other countries in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia. Studying Chinese has become very popular in Southeast Asia in recent years.
China is employing “soft diplomacy” and “soft power” through aid, investment, retraining personnel and otherwise throwing a lot of money around. China has over 300 Confucius Institutes modeled somewhat on German Goethe Institutes in more than 90 countries, including places like Uzbekistan and Kenya; as of 2007.
China is worried about its international reputation especially with the international media unrelenting its reportage of unsafe toys, tainted food, collapsed bridges, mining disasters, choking smog, slave-like working conditions and cancer towns. The Chinese government has hired the public relations experts Edelman and Ogilvy and Washington lobbyist Patton Boggs to help improve its image.
The Chinese government is making an effort to spread their language around the globe. It is currently creating a network of cultural centers, called Confucius Institutes, that are similar to British Councils or Goethe Institutes and whose aim is to help teach the Chinese language and spread Chinese culture.
Rise of Confucius Institutes
In early 2004, there were no Confucius Institutes. At their peak in 2012, around the time Xi Jinping became leader of China, there were over 800 Confucius Institute schools in 94 countries, up from 0 in 2004. As of 2019, there were 530 Confucius Institutes in dozens of countries on six continents.
The first Confucius Institute in the United States was founded in 2004 at the University of Maryland at College Park. The expansion after that was rapid: Columbia and Stanford Universities soon had Confucius Institutes, as did the Universities of Chicago and Michigan. Among the public universities that had Confucius Institutes were the Universities of Alaska at Anchorage, Delaware, Hawaii at Manoa, Kansas, Massachusetts at Boston, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Texas at Dallas, Toledo, and Utah, as well as Middle Tennessee, Portland, Kennesaw, San Francisco, and Wayne State Universities. The State University of New York at Binghamton had a Confucius Institute dedicated to promoting Chinese opera. Some of the institutes are at universities with extensive programs and academic strength in Chinese studies, while others are not.
Daniel Golden and Oliver Staley wrote in Bloomberg, “Miami University of Ohio established a Confucius Institute in 2007. The Hanban supplied $100,000 in start-up funds, 3,000 volumes of books, audio-visual and multimedia materials, and one or two language instructors for whom it pays salaries and expenses, according to a contract obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request. The Hanban has provided a total of $924,785 for the institute through April 2011, according to Robin Parker, the university’s general counsel. Chinese undergraduate enrollment at Miami soared to 434 in August 2010 from 16 in August 2006, said David Keitges, director of international education. Non-Ohio residents pay $38,917 a year in tuition, fees, and room and board, versus $23,745 for residents, according to Miami’s website. [Source: Daniel Golden and Oliver Staley, Bloomberg August 10, 2011]
As of June 2011, there were 322 Confucius Institutes on foreign university campuses and 369 Confucius Classrooms in elementary and high schools. In December 2008, there were 249 Confucius Institutes and 56 Confucius classrooms in 78 countries. These institutes had held 6,000 classes with more than 120,000 registered learners and organized 2,000 cultural activities with 1.2 million people attending, according to China’s Education Minister Zhou Ji. [Source: People's Daily, December 10, 2008]
Decline of Confucius Institutes
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) counted a total of 18 Confucius Institutes in the United States in 2022. This included four scheduled to close: the University of Akron (June 30, 2022), Southern Utah University (June 30, 2022), Bryant University (date unclear), and Alabama A&M University (date unclear). It also includes one, St. Cloud State University, that is "paused" while the university conducts a review. [Source: National Association of Scholars, June 21, 2022]
In 2022 NAS counted a total of 104 Confucius Institutes that have closed or are in the process of closing, along with the stated reason for the closure. Of these, at least 28 have replaced their Confucius Institute with a similar program, and at least 58 have maintained close relationships with their former Confucius Institute partner. NAS’s 2017 report, “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education”, found that Confucius Institutes undermine academic integrity and import censorship.
Penn State University and University of Chicago cut their ties with the Confucius Institute program in September 2014. A few months later Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden, scrapped its Confucius Institute. In place since 2005, the Confucius Institute there was one of the first installed anywhere, and the first in Europe. The move to close the institute came after intermittent criticism of the university in the Swedish media that included one piece entitled “Confucius’ False Smile”. The University of Michigan said in 2018 that it would not renew its agreement with the Confucius Institute when the partnership expired in 2019. “This transition is driven by a desire to more broadly include the work of exploring and studying Chinese visual and performing arts within U-M’s regular academic and cultural units,” said James Holloway, vice provost for global engagement and interdisciplinary academic affairs. San Francisco State University, the University of Oregon and Western Kentucky University were among the 15 universities that closed their Confucius in the 15 months between February 2018 and April 2019.
In August 2020, the U.S. State Department designated Confucius Institutes as diplomatic missions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the Trump administration had made the decision in order to “seek fair and reciprocal treatment” from the Chinese government on creating open access to educational resources, adding China “has taken advantage of America’s openness to undertake large-scale and well-funded propaganda efforts and influence operations in this country.” The move was part of a flurry of actions against China around that time. [Source: Edward Wong New York Times, August 13, 2020]
According to NAS: Confucius Institutes began closing in the wake of state and federal policies that targeted Confucius Institutes for their risks to U.S. national security. But in June 2022, NAS found that many once-defunct Confucius Institutes had reopened under new names. As detailed in “After Confucius Institutes: China’s Enduring Influence on American Higher Education”, many colleges and universities had replaced their Confucius Institute with a substantially similar program, or maintained closed relationships with Chinese institutions that had partnered in the Confucius Institute. These rebranding efforts match those of the Chinese government, which has reorganized Confucius Institutes under a new organization, the Chinese International Education Foundation.
Views About Confucius Institutes
D.D. Guttenplan wrote in the New York Times: “To proponents, the institutes offer a chance for greater engagement with one of the oldest civilizations in the world — and the fastest-rising power of the new millennium. For cash-strapped university administrators, the institutes can seem like a godsend, bringing not just Beijing-trained and -financed language teachers and textbooks but also money for a director’s salary and a program of public events. “When you set up a Confucius Institute you get a ready-made partner,” said Nick Byrne, executive director of the Confucius Institute at the London School of Economics, which is paired with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Tsinghua sends Chinese language teachers to London; the institute also funds a number of scholarships at Tsinghua for British graduate students. [Source: D.D. Guttenplan, New York Times, March 2012]
Lionel M. Jensen, an associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures and a fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, wrote critically of the Confucius Institutes in his book, China In and "Beyond the Headlines "(Rowman and Littlefield, 2012): "[S]o far there have not been any events in which the academic freedom of the host university was explicitly threatened by authorities of Hanban. Most directors have gone on record in this regard to affirm the independence of their institutes. This, though, does not mean that U.S. Confucius Institute directors do not take special care in arranging programming that is uncontroversial in the eyes of their benefactor. By this I mean that their mindfulness of the funding source has affected consideration of what is appropriate programming. At its worst, this amounts to a persistent self-censorship, a practice common to the political survival experience of Chinese citizens today." In an interview Jensen said his concerns about Confucius Institutes stem from the fact that, unlike other cultural institutes charged with promoting the study of language and culture of their countries, such as the Alliance Française, British Council, and the Goethe-Institut, Confucius Institutes are distinct for being located within institutions of higher education. "That in itself is astonishing," he said.
Jensen also has concerns about the quality of culture and language education offered through the Confucius Institutes. As he writes, the diversity of China’s cultures has been reduced by Hanban to a "uniform, quaint commodity," characterized by Chinese opera and dance performances: "The term most appropriate for CI programming is 'culturetainment.' The concept gets at the abridgment of Chinese civilization in the name of digestible forms of cultural appeal that can be readily shipped overseas. To that extent, it is possible the Chinese-language education provided by CI will fall short of standard proficiency."
Some scholars describe the fears regarding Confucius Institutes as, in their experiences, unfounded. "We’ve not ever had the experience of anybody telling us, 'Oh, don’t talk about that,' or, 'This is a sensitive topic, avoid that,' and our position all along has been the minute that anybody does, we’re done," said Ken Hammond, a professor of history and co-director of the Confucius Institute at New Mexico State University — which has hosted speakers who have addressed such topics as the history of Tibet and the Nationalist evacuation to Taiwan in 1949. "I wouldn’t carry on a program where those constraints were placed upon me. That’s not what I do. That’s not why I got into this." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
Concerns About Confucius Institutes
"If we had a U.S. government agency that was stating that it was a tool for U.S. government propaganda, my colleagues would be up in arms about having a center like that on campus," said Anne-Marie Brady, associate professor of political science at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Brady, the editor of the recent volume, China’s Thought Management (Routledge, 2011), said the space for criticism and inquiry at overseas Confucius Institutes is similar to that which Chinese citizens navigate: "They’ve got a lot of space, but the same kind of space that people have in China, which is that there are always no-go zones, and the no-go zones are obvious: Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong. And academia does not have no-go zones." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
Objections to particular Confucius Institutes have emerged. For example, in 2010, 174 University of Chicago faculty members signed a letter that, among other things, objected to the establishment of a Confucius Institute in absence of Faculty Senate approval. The letter described the institute as "an academically and politically ambiguous initiative sponsored by the government of the People’s Republic of China," and asserted that, "Proceeding without due care to ensure the institute’s academic integrity, [the administration] has risked having the university’s reputation legitimate the spread of such Confucius Institutes in this country and beyond."
This past spring, the faculty union at the University of Manitoba raised objections to a proposed Confucius Institute for academic freedom reasons. "Materials and instructors for CIs are selected and controlled by a branch of the government of the People's Republic of China," said Cameron Morrill, president of the University of Manitoba Faculty Association. "It is inappropriate to allow any government, either foreign or domestic, control over a university classroom regardless of how much money they offer." The Canadian press also recently called attention to a provision in Hanban’s hiring practices that discriminates against teaching candidates with a "record of participation in Falun Gong and other illegal organizations." The bylaws of the Confucius Institutes stipulate that "they shall not contravene concerning the laws and regulations of China."
“There is a whole list of proscribed topics,” June Teufel Dreyer, who teaches Chinese government and foreign policy at the University of Miami, told the New York Times. “You’re told not to discuss the Dalai Lama — or to invite the Dalai Lama to campus. Tibet, Taiwan, China’s military buildup, factional fights inside the Chinese leadership — these are all off limits.” [Source: Mark McDonald, New York Times, September 10, 2012]
Sonia Zhao, a Hanban teacher at McMaster University, was told she could not hold her position because of her affiliation with Falun Gong. She was also instructed not to answer questions about Tibet and other sensitive topics. As she disclosed during the McMaster affair, “During the training … they do tell us: Don’t talk about this. If the student insists, you just try to change the topic, or say something the Chinese Communist Party would prefer.” Among many similar instances, consider the exemplary case of Portland State University, whose institute director, Meiru Liu, in reply to a critical press report, said in 2011 that her CI had sponsored lectures on Tibet, “with emphasis on the beautiful scenery, customs and tourist interest.” “We try not to organize and host lectures on certain issues related to Falun Gong, dissidents and 1989 Tiananmen Square protests,” she continued, because “these are not topics the Confucius Institutes headquarters would like to see organized by the institutes.” The provost of North Carolina State, Warwick Arden, commented in connection with the cancellation of a scheduled visit of the Dalai Lama, a Confucius Institute provides an opportunity “for subtle pressure and conflict.” [Source: Inside Higher Education, July 26, 2018]
Confucius Institutes as Soft Power Tools
Elizabeth Redden wrote in Inside Higher Ed: Scholars have characterized the Confucius Institutes as instruments of soft power, defined by the Harvard University political scientist Joseph Nye as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies." As James F. Paradise, a newly minted political science Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles who has published an article on Confucius Institutes and soft power explained, "The Chinese government has a broader agenda, which is to project a benign image of China in the international community, and a convenient way to do this is to establish these Confucius Institutes." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
"It’s not a bad thing to expose students to Chinese culture, but is it leading to an intrusion into American academic affairs?" Paradise asked. "I don’t know if I would put it in such crude terms. I think the exercise of influence happens in a much subtler way. This is an example of public diplomacy, which the U.S. has used for years. During the Cold War, there were American centers around the world."
However, Brady, of the University of Canterbury, returned to the point that the Confucius Institutes are located within universities — and even subsidized by them, in the form of matching funds and overhead costs. "What they’re promoting is a positive and benign image of Chinese society and Chinese political systems, and they are promoting Chinese language," she said. "They believe that if more people learn Chinese, they’ll have more positive feelings toward China. There’s nothing wrong with that. These are all similar activities as to what the British Council [for example] does, but the difference is that they’re in universities and universities help to subsidize them, and why would we do that?"
Confucius Classrooms in American High Schools and Elementary Schools
JRB of North Carolina wrote in September 2011, “The same PRC government agency that sponsors Confucius Institutes is also putting "Confucius Classrooms" into North Carolina high schools. My wife is Taiwanese, and my daughter took Chinese in a Confucius Classroom. The first day in class the teacher asked all the students with obvious Asian heritage to say where their families were from. When my daughter said her mother was from Taiwan, the teacher said, "Taiwan is part of China." Months later, during some free minutes in class, my daughter was looking at a map, which showed Taiwan and all of the South China Sea as belonging to China (naturally, since all of the teaching materials come from China). The teacher approached, bent down, and whispered in her ear: "Taiwan is part of China."
American universities like Confucius Institutes and American high schools like Confucius classrooms because China partially subsidizes them and because the PRC pays for junkets wherein administrators come to China on tours, stay in five-star hotels and get generously wined and dined.
The Confucius Institute is "just like" the Goethe Institute (GI) or the Alliance Francaise (FI)? Give me a break! The Confucius Institute isn't anything like those organizations because China is an authoritarian one-party state, whereas Germany and France are liberal democracies. And education sponsored by those different types of governments reflects those differences. What's more, the GI and AF only sponsor weekend and after-school classes, unlike Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms which are embedded in American universities and high schools.
By the way, there were locals with good qualifications who were not even given an interview for that Chinese teaching job, because Confucius Classroom teachers must come from China on J-1 visas. Teaching Chinese is great, but first hire from the large pool of qualified locals (many of whom were born in China but came to study in American universities and now understand liberal, democratic values). It is frightening how the PRC government is exerting influence over American schools and universities with dollars and control over access. We should be better and stronger than that!
Most Confucius Institutes Focus on Language Teaching
Elizabeth Redden wrote in Inside Higher Ed: The majority of Confucius Institutes focus primarily on language teaching and public outreach and programming. At New Mexico State, for example, the Confucius Institute is involved with outreach to local K-12 schools. The institute serves as a hub for 15 Chinese instructors — all of whom are funded by Hanban — who are teaching at nearby elementary, middle and high schools. The institute has also hosted conferences on the China-Mexico relationship and China in Africa. "New Mexico’s a poor state," said Hammond. "There’s not a lot of spare cash sloshing around here but we?ve been able to do things academically in terms of programming and involvement with the public schools that we never would have been able to do without this." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
At North Carolina State University, the Confucius Institute offers non-credit language and cooking classes for local residents, as well as a one-credit Chinese conversation course, intended to supplement the foreign language department’s offerings. The institute oversees three language teaching outposts, "Confucius Classrooms," at Central Carolina Community College, Saint Augustine’s College, and Enloe High School, in Raleigh. Additionally, the Confucius Institute organized a professional association for North Carolina Chinese teachers and has worked with the College of Education at North Carolina State to develop a licensure program for teaching Chinese.
In a way, it’s a one-stop China shop. "We?re known as a mini China center here in the region, so if corporations want somebody to talk to about doing business in China, they contact us," said Bailian Li, vice provost for international affairs and director of the Confucius Institute. "If the public school wants to have an Asia day or a Chinese culture day, they contact us, so we send a teacher or a student to do show and tell."
Confucius Institutes as Sources of Funding
Elizabeth Redden wrote in Inside Higher Ed: The language teaching and outreach model is most common, but as more prestigious universities have signed on with Hanban, research-oriented Confucius Institutes have also developed. Stanford University, which established its Confucius Institute in 2009, received a $4 million gift from Hanban — matched by Stanford — to fund an endowed professorship in Sinology, graduate student fellowships, and collaborative programming with Peking University. Richard Saller, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, said that during discussions of the gift a Hanban official expressed concern that the endowed professor might discuss "politically sensitive things, such as Tibet." "This is something that comes up in other discussions with other donors of endowed chairs, and I said what I always say, which is we don’t restrict the freedom of speech of our faculty, and that was the end of the discussion. I?ve had domestic donors walk away because of that, and in this case Hanban did not walk away. Given my experience, I don’t see any kind of insidious or subversive tone to this," Saller said. "I think there is a genuine interest in trying to reach the best American universities." He added that when he was provost at the University of Chicago the French government established the France Chicago Center with a million dollar gift. "The consulate in Chicago was far more involved in trying to influence the nature of the programming for the purposes the French wanted to see, than Hanban has been for our program." [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
Confucius Institute directors counter that Hanban provides them with the funding necessary to pursue programming of significant educational value. The University of Oregon has a Confucius Institute that sponsors events and symposia about China in a transnational context. Recent events include a lecture by a professor emeritus at Harvard on Deng Xiaoping, a folk music concert featuring musicians from the Central Music Conservancy, in Beijing, a panel discussion on Chinese foodways, and a symposium on China’s role in regulating the global information economy. Hanban does not set the agenda: The institute puts out a call for proposals for projects each year, and the proposals are vetted by a board of faculty and administrators. "Especially since there’s some suspicion of China and Chinese funding we want to make sure that everything we do is desired locally," said Bryna Goodman, the director of Oregon’s Confucius Institute, a professor of history and director of Asian Studies. She said that the Confucius Institute sends an annual budget request to Hanban outlining the proposed projects; not once, she said, have Hanban officials raised any questions regarding the content of the programming proposed. [Source: Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2012]
Goodman said that the funding from China provides a good counter-balance to other funding sources for China studies, including Taiwanese sources — such as the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange -- and U.S. government sources. "In terms of academic freedom, I would say the more sources you have the better, because you can go to different units to fund different things," she said. "I would like a university that had enough independent funding so that everything could be independently funded, but that’s not how universities work."
The influx of Confucius Institute dollars comes at a time when U.S. government funding. specifically National Resource Center funding for area and language studies, has been slashed by 47 percent. Paul Jacov Smith, a professor of history and East Asian studies at Haverford College, said he worries that some of the fears surrounding the Confucius Institutes mask frustrations about the U.S.’s own disinvestment in language and culture study. "While I do worry about the strings that often seem attached to CI funding, I think some of the more general concern is generated by the frustration that we in the U.S. feel as our ability to fund our own academic projects is eroded by the economic downturn," he said. "Our national power and prestige are under pressure right now, and I worry that could fuel unproductive resentments against China."
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Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Yomiuri Shimbun, The Guardian, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated August 2022