1) the Chinese learning material distributed by the PRC is the absolute worst. I am not talking about insidious infiltration here, I am talking about boring, clunky and totally interest-killing in all respects. Here’s looking at you, 济南大学 textbooks.
2) the outlandish levels of suspicion directed at CI programs ended up being an own-goal by the West. They got shut down without any replacement funding so, now we are training very few Chinese-speakers when PRC is supposedly our biggest rival.
3) my kids also go to a school that had a good Chinese program originally funded by CI but isn’t any more. The school is now struggling w funding but also with enrollment since the admins don’t really understand bilingual education or how to promote it, and a few parents in the district who wouldn’t know a Chinese character if it bit them are showing up at school board meetings “worrying” about a) bathrooms b) “Communist” teaching material.
4) My high school Spanish teacher was obsessed with Julio Inglesias. We listened to him in class, learned lyrics to his songs, his posters were on the wall. I emerged with OK Spanish and haven’t given one thought to Julio in the 30 years since. Any CI attempts at indoctrination could have been just as easily shaken off.
5) it was very dumb of (a very few) CIs to attempt to get involved in issues like the Dalai Lama visiting a college campus. But also college administrators could and should have just told them no, end of story.
UK gov recently released a report stating that too many people who work ok China don't speak Chinese or understand the culture well enough. Now all the people who loved and worked there in the 80s and 90s are retiring, there's no pool of eager candidates waiting to replace them.
The propaganda against China because of fears over its rise and "communism" definitely has a huge role to play in this. I guess they forgot that understanding your enemy is sort of a key point in overcoming them too 🤷🏽♀️
A brutally frank and important article. As you point out, you can't buy soft power with money. The Chinese government needs to realize that soft power is a bottom-up phenomenon, not top-down. I know some American professors who used to collaborate with CIs in the US, while CIs still existed. From what I learned, it seems the CI budgets were boundless. The professors would ask for, say, 50 textbooks, and would receive 150. As big as their budget was, they were quite stingy in paying their teachers, and thus had a high turnover rate. I participated in some CI events in Ann Arbor, University of Michigan. Most of them were embarassingly propagandistic, cloyingly shallow, and inevitably presenting the usual calligraphy, paper cutting, and classical poetry memorizing. I met a couple of young men who worked for Hanban in Beijing. They told me about some computer/AI multmedia teaching tools they were developing. I expressed an interest in seeing this technology, and they promised to invite me to the Hanban HQ near Deshengmen for a demonstration. Time went by, and they never got back to me. When I contacted one of them to ask when I could visit the building, they told me the organization didn't want to give demonstrations of technology that was still in development. I haven't heard from them since. They obviously don't need more money. They need more creativity.
100% agree. The biggest problem with China's cultural tsars is often their tone-deafness when it comes to how other people consume media and absorb references. I discussed this more in the podcast, but for so many reasons China is just lacking that universal language that gets people who don't speak a lick of Japanese to watch hours of anime. The underlying agenda is either too pervasive or the surface narrative to shallow and boring.
The first way that most people learn about Korean culture is through skincare, kpop and dramas. Hanboks and Hangul come way later, when you're fully invested in the culture already. If the CIs could weaponise this knowledge they'd be unstoppable, but I doubt they'd figure out how unless they let new, passionate blood take the reigns.
The Chinese language programs in a couple of local elementary schools (midwest US) were affiliated with CI until a couple years ago. They haven’t shut down, just aren’t affiliated anymore, so at least some of the work continues without CI.
Not bad, not amazing. Not really growing or shrinking. They had trouble finding a substitute when one teacher took maternity leave. Apparently the students score all right on the STAMP test.
I've had a suspicion that most of the CI places in desirable locations were reserved for the children / close relatives of party members. The CI at Arizona State was shutdown after Congress outlawed the program, plus the Pentagon refused to give it a waiver, but before it was shuttered it did a pretty decent job on both history/culture as well as language. I compared them quite favorably to the LA and NYC "graduates" I met over the years.
In part that was because Arizona State already had a Chinese Language program run by an old China hand before (and after the CI), but I think it was also because it's location was not as desirable so it was easier for the existing program to reject teaching candidates who were there for family reasons instead of career as these applicants had less guanxi. It reminds me of the influence of the CIA on who got selected for Fulbright Scholarships.
One day I may get another chance to test this hypothesis. If there was a CI program in Saudi Arabia (or Afghanistan), then I suspect they'd have a good program with decent teachers.
That's an interesting theory, I definitely got the feeling that the positions at CIs were highly selective in one way or another when I was there. I think I just didn't have the mindset to look into it any deeper at the time.
According to the CI website, there are apparently 2 in Saudi Arabia and 1 in Afghanistan! Hard to get any details on them, but one of the SA ones appears to have been opened recently in 2023, so this might be part of the resurgence effort. Almost definitely targets the children of wealthier/elite families, so I imagine the scrutiny on who gets a teaching position there is even more stringent.
Maybe you are already aware, but I’d like to mention this UK academic who has done some public video short essays on China, and recently on soft power. https://www.janehaywardchina.co.uk/
Nice piece! I studied Chinese at a CI myself and was selected to attend the CI Conference in Beijing in 2010 along with other students from all over the world. Our role was to perform on the opening gala of the conference, which was aired on CCTV 1 I believe. Extremely interesting and surreal experience, basically locked in a hotel for rehearsals for two weeks. The night before the performance Liu Yandong came herself to review and approve the whole thing. Probably because the performance was televised and attended by Li Changchun.
Really enjoyed this piece. Here's some additional thoughts:
— Always thought that if people really want to worry about Chinese influence at universities, they should look at CSSAs instead of CIs. They are far more active and influential. My sense studying at a few CIs was that for the most part they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. As for indoctrination, politics never really came up in classes and I didn’t have any classmates turn into raging tankies. Incidentally, the model for CIs comes from an old American program that originally had US cultural centres on Chinese university campuses.
— CIs don't really do anything to give students exposure to culture. Take a CI I attended in London. There was so much they could have done that would have been good for soft power building and students’ language learning: a class trip to Haidilao for hotpot (there are two branches in London). KTV sessions. Movie nights. Have students volunteer with Chinese-language tour groups to practice their language skills and meet people from the country. Organise penpals in China for them. Instead, we got calligraphy and Tang Dynasty poetry. I’m not trying to knock these things but if your competitors have anime and K-dramas, nobody will get excited over hearing the story of Qu Yuan for the fifty thousandth time.
— Chinese is generally still very badly taught even outside of CIs. Reading off of a powerpoint is not teaching. Once you reach a certain level (say HSK 5 ish) most teachers just don’t have enough experience teaching higher levels to be effective. Writing skills like composing essays and emails seem to be completely ignored. Have met several people with BAs in Chinese language that couldn't string a sentence together. And as yourself and others in the comments mention, the HSK textbooks are boring in the extreme.
— More generally regarding learning Chinese in the UK, I have at least anecdotally found in-person Chinese classes at language schools to be far more expensive than other languages (CIs are often the only affordable option). It’s also less accessible outside of the big cities. In the past, I struggled to find group classes above HSK 3 level as well, including at CIs. Most places just don’t run them because there’s not enough demand.
This all just makes learning Chinese a real uphill struggle even before you start tackling the language itself. If anything, I imagine a lot of students complete their courses at CIs less interested in China than when they started.
Folking have too much expectations of CI during PRC low-income developing phase. Dearth of cultural exports that appeal to youth was always genpop soft power non starter. Dirty poor peasants aren't sexy. CI mostly fine to bridge diasphora Chinese kids with their roots by funding some chinese language programs to give parents options to dump/force their kids into poorly learning Chinese on weekends. Otherwise it's just there as excuse for track 2 / 2.5 exchanges by the limited people who are already committed / inclined.
Bottom up / organic couldn't have happened until new gen of affluent PRC cohorts starts producing culture foreign youths wants to consume. Duolingo/language learning is going to be downstream of how many kids in various fandoms like Hoyoverse start using Chinese dub instead of Japanese or English dub. And more crassly how much PRC culture products thirst trap foreign coomers. This one of areas IMO PRC ironically going to do alright in. Porn/obscenity laws means "Chinese" is not going to be top pornhub category tag (like Japanese, and distant Korean). PRC television/media also limited by regulations. But attempts to circumvent obscenity laws by Chinese culture creators produce a bunch of more tame but still implicitly alluring mainstream content (web romance novels / titty gatcha games) for casual horny consumption. That's really going to be the foot in door converting new gen of foreign youth to other chinese products, from cosmetics to tech to design.
Unfortunate on all levels:
1) the Chinese learning material distributed by the PRC is the absolute worst. I am not talking about insidious infiltration here, I am talking about boring, clunky and totally interest-killing in all respects. Here’s looking at you, 济南大学 textbooks.
2) the outlandish levels of suspicion directed at CI programs ended up being an own-goal by the West. They got shut down without any replacement funding so, now we are training very few Chinese-speakers when PRC is supposedly our biggest rival.
3) my kids also go to a school that had a good Chinese program originally funded by CI but isn’t any more. The school is now struggling w funding but also with enrollment since the admins don’t really understand bilingual education or how to promote it, and a few parents in the district who wouldn’t know a Chinese character if it bit them are showing up at school board meetings “worrying” about a) bathrooms b) “Communist” teaching material.
4) My high school Spanish teacher was obsessed with Julio Inglesias. We listened to him in class, learned lyrics to his songs, his posters were on the wall. I emerged with OK Spanish and haven’t given one thought to Julio in the 30 years since. Any CI attempts at indoctrination could have been just as easily shaken off.
5) it was very dumb of (a very few) CIs to attempt to get involved in issues like the Dalai Lama visiting a college campus. But also college administrators could and should have just told them no, end of story.
I hate the 济南大学 books omg 😭
UK gov recently released a report stating that too many people who work ok China don't speak Chinese or understand the culture well enough. Now all the people who loved and worked there in the 80s and 90s are retiring, there's no pool of eager candidates waiting to replace them.
The propaganda against China because of fears over its rise and "communism" definitely has a huge role to play in this. I guess they forgot that understanding your enemy is sort of a key point in overcoming them too 🤷🏽♀️
A brutally frank and important article. As you point out, you can't buy soft power with money. The Chinese government needs to realize that soft power is a bottom-up phenomenon, not top-down. I know some American professors who used to collaborate with CIs in the US, while CIs still existed. From what I learned, it seems the CI budgets were boundless. The professors would ask for, say, 50 textbooks, and would receive 150. As big as their budget was, they were quite stingy in paying their teachers, and thus had a high turnover rate. I participated in some CI events in Ann Arbor, University of Michigan. Most of them were embarassingly propagandistic, cloyingly shallow, and inevitably presenting the usual calligraphy, paper cutting, and classical poetry memorizing. I met a couple of young men who worked for Hanban in Beijing. They told me about some computer/AI multmedia teaching tools they were developing. I expressed an interest in seeing this technology, and they promised to invite me to the Hanban HQ near Deshengmen for a demonstration. Time went by, and they never got back to me. When I contacted one of them to ask when I could visit the building, they told me the organization didn't want to give demonstrations of technology that was still in development. I haven't heard from them since. They obviously don't need more money. They need more creativity.
100% agree. The biggest problem with China's cultural tsars is often their tone-deafness when it comes to how other people consume media and absorb references. I discussed this more in the podcast, but for so many reasons China is just lacking that universal language that gets people who don't speak a lick of Japanese to watch hours of anime. The underlying agenda is either too pervasive or the surface narrative to shallow and boring.
The first way that most people learn about Korean culture is through skincare, kpop and dramas. Hanboks and Hangul come way later, when you're fully invested in the culture already. If the CIs could weaponise this knowledge they'd be unstoppable, but I doubt they'd figure out how unless they let new, passionate blood take the reigns.
The Chinese language programs in a couple of local elementary schools (midwest US) were affiliated with CI until a couple years ago. They haven’t shut down, just aren’t affiliated anymore, so at least some of the work continues without CI.
How are they doing?
Not bad, not amazing. Not really growing or shrinking. They had trouble finding a substitute when one teacher took maternity leave. Apparently the students score all right on the STAMP test.
I've had a suspicion that most of the CI places in desirable locations were reserved for the children / close relatives of party members. The CI at Arizona State was shutdown after Congress outlawed the program, plus the Pentagon refused to give it a waiver, but before it was shuttered it did a pretty decent job on both history/culture as well as language. I compared them quite favorably to the LA and NYC "graduates" I met over the years.
In part that was because Arizona State already had a Chinese Language program run by an old China hand before (and after the CI), but I think it was also because it's location was not as desirable so it was easier for the existing program to reject teaching candidates who were there for family reasons instead of career as these applicants had less guanxi. It reminds me of the influence of the CIA on who got selected for Fulbright Scholarships.
One day I may get another chance to test this hypothesis. If there was a CI program in Saudi Arabia (or Afghanistan), then I suspect they'd have a good program with decent teachers.
That's an interesting theory, I definitely got the feeling that the positions at CIs were highly selective in one way or another when I was there. I think I just didn't have the mindset to look into it any deeper at the time.
According to the CI website, there are apparently 2 in Saudi Arabia and 1 in Afghanistan! Hard to get any details on them, but one of the SA ones appears to have been opened recently in 2023, so this might be part of the resurgence effort. Almost definitely targets the children of wealthier/elite families, so I imagine the scrutiny on who gets a teaching position there is even more stringent.
Maybe you are already aware, but I’d like to mention this UK academic who has done some public video short essays on China, and recently on soft power. https://www.janehaywardchina.co.uk/
Nice piece! I studied Chinese at a CI myself and was selected to attend the CI Conference in Beijing in 2010 along with other students from all over the world. Our role was to perform on the opening gala of the conference, which was aired on CCTV 1 I believe. Extremely interesting and surreal experience, basically locked in a hotel for rehearsals for two weeks. The night before the performance Liu Yandong came herself to review and approve the whole thing. Probably because the performance was televised and attended by Li Changchun.
Very typical CI/Chinese state culture experience, thank you for sharing, love it!
Really enjoyed this piece. Here's some additional thoughts:
— Always thought that if people really want to worry about Chinese influence at universities, they should look at CSSAs instead of CIs. They are far more active and influential. My sense studying at a few CIs was that for the most part they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. As for indoctrination, politics never really came up in classes and I didn’t have any classmates turn into raging tankies. Incidentally, the model for CIs comes from an old American program that originally had US cultural centres on Chinese university campuses.
— CIs don't really do anything to give students exposure to culture. Take a CI I attended in London. There was so much they could have done that would have been good for soft power building and students’ language learning: a class trip to Haidilao for hotpot (there are two branches in London). KTV sessions. Movie nights. Have students volunteer with Chinese-language tour groups to practice their language skills and meet people from the country. Organise penpals in China for them. Instead, we got calligraphy and Tang Dynasty poetry. I’m not trying to knock these things but if your competitors have anime and K-dramas, nobody will get excited over hearing the story of Qu Yuan for the fifty thousandth time.
— Chinese is generally still very badly taught even outside of CIs. Reading off of a powerpoint is not teaching. Once you reach a certain level (say HSK 5 ish) most teachers just don’t have enough experience teaching higher levels to be effective. Writing skills like composing essays and emails seem to be completely ignored. Have met several people with BAs in Chinese language that couldn't string a sentence together. And as yourself and others in the comments mention, the HSK textbooks are boring in the extreme.
— More generally regarding learning Chinese in the UK, I have at least anecdotally found in-person Chinese classes at language schools to be far more expensive than other languages (CIs are often the only affordable option). It’s also less accessible outside of the big cities. In the past, I struggled to find group classes above HSK 3 level as well, including at CIs. Most places just don’t run them because there’s not enough demand.
This all just makes learning Chinese a real uphill struggle even before you start tackling the language itself. If anything, I imagine a lot of students complete their courses at CIs less interested in China than when they started.
Folking have too much expectations of CI during PRC low-income developing phase. Dearth of cultural exports that appeal to youth was always genpop soft power non starter. Dirty poor peasants aren't sexy. CI mostly fine to bridge diasphora Chinese kids with their roots by funding some chinese language programs to give parents options to dump/force their kids into poorly learning Chinese on weekends. Otherwise it's just there as excuse for track 2 / 2.5 exchanges by the limited people who are already committed / inclined.
Bottom up / organic couldn't have happened until new gen of affluent PRC cohorts starts producing culture foreign youths wants to consume. Duolingo/language learning is going to be downstream of how many kids in various fandoms like Hoyoverse start using Chinese dub instead of Japanese or English dub. And more crassly how much PRC culture products thirst trap foreign coomers. This one of areas IMO PRC ironically going to do alright in. Porn/obscenity laws means "Chinese" is not going to be top pornhub category tag (like Japanese, and distant Korean). PRC television/media also limited by regulations. But attempts to circumvent obscenity laws by Chinese culture creators produce a bunch of more tame but still implicitly alluring mainstream content (web romance novels / titty gatcha games) for casual horny consumption. That's really going to be the foot in door converting new gen of foreign youth to other chinese products, from cosmetics to tech to design.
Dour, humorless dictatorships will alwys flop at soft power