Confucius Institute

• Name — Confucius Institute • Type — Cultural promotion organization • Location — 15 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing • Region Served — Worldwide • Focus — Chinese culture, Chinese language • Method — Education and advocacy • Owner — Chinese International Education Foundation (2020–present) Hanban (before 2020)

• S — 孔子学院 • T — 孔子學院 • P — Kǒngzǐ Xuéyuàn • J — hung2 zi2 hok6 jyun2 • Order — st • Illustration — Confucius Institute at Carthage University in Tunis, Tunisia • Illustration — A Confucius Institute at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada Confucius Institutes (CI) are public educational and cultural promotion programs of China. The stated aim of the program is to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges. The program is funded and arranged by the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF), a government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) under the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. The Confucius Institute program was formerly under Hanban, another organization under the Ministry of Education. The Confucius Institute program began in 2004 overseen by individual universities. In 2020, the Chinese International Education Foundation was registered and granted exclusive use of Confucius Institute's trademark, and began to operate Confucius Institutes under a brand licensing model. The institutes operate in co-operation with local affiliate colleges and universities around the world, and financing is shared between Hanban and the host institutions. The related Confucius Classroom program partners with local secondary schools or school districts to provide teachers and instructional materials. Officials from China have compared Confucius Institutes to language and culture promotion organizations such as Britain's British Council, France's Alliance Française, and Spain's Instituto Cervantes. Research from the Freeman Spogli Institute and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research suggested that Confucius Institute employees have minimal training in politics, face little day-to-day monitoring while teaching abroad and are not screened for political beliefs. They do, however, tend to disseminate political perspectives in keeping with the official political views of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and often prefer not to talk about Chinese political issues at all. Confucius Institutes have been accused of being used as a form of "soft power" by the Chinese government, which spends approximately $10 billion a year on CIs and related programs to exercise these initiatives. CCP general secretary Xi Jinping in 2013 stated that the intentions are to "give a good Chinese narrative". There have been concerns about potential censorship regarding certain content, including discussions on individual freedoms and democracy, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Taiwan independence, human rights in Tibet, Falun Gong, and persecution of Uyghurs in China. Controversies involving CIs in the United States have led to scrutiny from public officials and legislative action, with Congress restricting federal funding to schools with institutes in 2018 and nearly all of the institutes since closing.

The first Confucius Institute opened in 2004 in Seoul, South Korea, after establishing a pilot institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in June 2004. The CI in South Korea is no longer active. The second Confucius Institute was opened on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park, also in November 2004. In 2006, the goal of 1,000 Confucius Institutes by 2020 was being discussed. Hundreds more have opened since in dozens of countries around the world. All countries in the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European (China-CEE) host at least one Confucius Institute, and some (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and Romania) host multiple of them. In 2001, the first Confucius Institute in Africa opened as a collaboration between University of Nairobi in Kenya and Tianjin Normal University in China. In April 2007, the first research-based Confucius Institute opened in Waseda University in Japan. In partnership with Peking University, the program promotes research activities of graduate students studying Chinese. In 2007, China's Ministry of Education estimated that 100 million people overseas would be learning Chinese by 2010. In 2010, the highest concentration of institutes was in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. From 2006 to 2019, the Chinese government spent more than $150 million on institutes in the U.S. The number of institutes in the U.S. peaked in 2018, at around 100, with the total around the world being about 550. As of 2019, there were 530 Confucius Institutes in dozens of countries on six continents. In 2022, the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi was attacked in a suicide bombing. At the end of 2023, there were 498 Confucius Institutes and 773 Confucius Classrooms established over 160 countries and regions.

The Confucius Institute is named after the noted Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BC). Throughout the 20th century, CCP leaders criticized and denounced Confucius as the personification of China's "feudal" traditions, with anti-Confucianism ranging from the 1912 New Culture Movement to the 1973 Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign during the Cultural Revolution. However, in recent decades, interest in pre-modern Chinese culture has grown in the country, and Confucius in particular has seen a resurgence in popularity. Outside of China, Confucius is a generally recognizable symbol of Chinese culture, removed from the negative associations of other prominent Chinese figures such as chairman Mao Zedong. "Confucius Institute" is a trademarked brand name, which according to a spokesman for the organisation, "Those who enjoy more brand names will enjoy higher popularity, reputation, more social influence, and will therefore be able to generate more support from local communities." A 2011 crackdown protected "Confucius Institute" from preregistration infringement in Costa Rica. A China Post article reported in 2014 that "Certainly, China would have made little headway if it had named these Mao Institutes, or even Deng Xiaoping Institutes. But by borrowing the name Confucius, it created a brand that was instantly recognized as a symbol of Chinese culture, radically different from the image of the Communist Party."

• Illustration — British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Li Changchun at a signing ceremony in London, 17 April 2012, for the agreement between Confucius Institute of China and Bangor University on the establishment of Confucius Institute at Bangor University, United Kingdom. The agreement was signed by John Hughes, vice-chancellor of Bangor University, and Xu Lin, director of the Confucius Institute. The stated purpose of Confucius Institutes (CIs) is to promote and teach Chinese culture and language around the world. The director of the CI program, Xu Lin, stated that CIs were started to cater to the sudden uptick in interest of the Chinese language around the world. They also provide Chinese language teaching staff from mainland China. As of 2011, there were 200 such teachers working in the United States. In the Middle East 14 institute, and the main purpose for the local population to participate in the institute activities are learning Chinese to find a job in the local market or to find a job in the growing Chinese market. Confucius Institutes are also intended by China as cultural diplomacy to use language and culture to promote China's image overseas and create a positive international environment for China. People's Daily has described Confucius Institutes as a form of public diplomacy.

Confucius Institutes were previously under Hanban, a non-profit government organization affiliated with the Ministry of Education and operated by a committee of party-state officials. The Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing establishes the guidelines which the separate Confucius Institutes worldwide follows. The headquarters is governed by a council with fifteen members, ten of whom are directors of overseas institutes. The institutes themselves are individually managed under the leadership of their own board of directors, which should include members of the host institution. The current chair of the Confucius Institute Headquarters council is Liu Yandong, a Chinese vice premier and member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party who formerly headed the United Front Work Department. Other leaders of the council are similarly drawn from the CCP and central government agencies, such as the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, and the State Council Information Office (also known as the Office of Overseas Propaganda). The council sets the agenda for the Confucius Institutes and makes changes to the bylaws while other tasks and ongoing management of the Confucius Institute Headquarters are handled by the professional executive leadership headed by the director-general. The Chinese Government shares the burden of funding Confucius Institutes with host universities, and takes a hands-off approach to management. The institutes function independently within the guidelines established by Hanban and the Confucius Institute Headquarters. Each institute is responsible for drawing up and managing their own budget, which is subject to approval by the headquarters. The Confucius Institute Headquarters provides various restrictions on how their funds may be used, including earmarking funds for specific purposes. Institutes in the United States were generally provided with $100,000 annually from Hanban, with the local university required to match funding. In addition to their local-partner university, Confucius Institutes operate in co-operation with a Chinese partner university. The Chinese partner university supplies teaching materials, a co-director/dean, and instructors. Many institutes are governed by a board which is composed of several members from the Chinese partner school, with the remaining members affiliated with the local-partner university. Most of the Confucius Institutes in Central Asian countries are partnered with universities in Xinjiang. At most institutes, the director is appointed by the local partner university. In July 2020, Hanban announced its renaming to Center for Language Education and Cooperation, stating that The Confucius Institute was fully handed over to Chinese International Education Foundation, a self-described "non-governmental private organization".

The curriculum of Confucius Institutes is based on the institute's role as a language center. All Confucius Institutes teach Chinese language and culture, with their offerings varying across branches. For instance, one branch might focus on business Chinese while another emphasizes everyday Chinese language skills. Courses on culture may also range from cooking to Tai Chi to calligraphy. In addition to courses (which are sometimes taught for-credit and sometimes not-for-credit), Confucius Institutes typically host extracurricular activities included Chinese New Year Festivals, Mid-Autumn Festivals, tea ceremonies, art exhibitions, musical performances, film screenings, guest lectures, and conferences. School officials, researchers, and other people interviewed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) offered mixed experiences in their autonomy over the curriculum. According to the GAO report, "officials from multiple case study schools noted that U.S. school faculty members make all decisions regarding conference themes, guest speakers, and topics for events at their institute." Further, some schools were able to host conferences and programs that are critical of the CCP. At other schools, officials have raised concerns that the Confucius Institute espouses a sanitized view of Chinese society that avoids contentious topics like human rights abuses and Tibet, and they also express concerns regarding whether the Hanban would sponsor events that discuss views contrary to those of the CCP. At one school, the Confucius Institute Chinese director allegedly removed literature material about Taiwan. At another school, a Hanban representative attempted to exclude information on Taiwan from the program provided to attendees at a conference.

While Chinese authorities have been cautious not to have CIs act as direct promoters of the party's political viewpoints, a few critics suggest that the Confucius Institutes function in this way. Officials say that one important goal of the institutes is to influence other countries' understanding of China. Peng Ming-min, a Taiwan independence activist and politician, claims that colleges and universities where a Confucius Institute is established have to sign a contract in which they declare their support for Beijing's "One China" policy. As a result, both Taiwan and Tibet become taboos at the institutes. The CI's soft power goals are seen as an attempt by the PRC to modernize away from Soviet-influenced propaganda of the Maoist era. Other initiatives include Chinese contemporary art exhibitions, television programs, concerts by popular singers, translations of Chinese literature, and the expansion of state-run news channels such as Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television. Academic and economist Jun Xiang was postulating causal mechanisms within individual cases for a relatively large number of cases in a large-N analysis to examine the Confucius Institute and demonstrate that it is designed to promote China's educational, economic, and political interests altogether.

The Hanban website stated that Chinese language instructors should be "aged between 22 to 60, physical and mental healthy, no record of participation in Falun Gong and other illegal organizations, and no criminal record." Human rights lawyer Clive Ansley has argued that the part of the hiring policy that discriminates against Falun Gong believers is in contravention of anti-discrimination laws and human rights codes. Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Yeshiva University, called this policy "unethical and illegal in the free world". In 2013, McMaster University in Canada closed its Confucius Institute due to hiring issues over Falun Gong. Sonia Zhang, a former Confucius Institute teacher at McMaster University who quit after one year and since become a whistleblower, said she "had to sign a contract that excluded Falun Gong practitioners and was trained to give Beijing's line if asked by students about Tibet and other sensitive topics".