At their height, there were about five hundred Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes in almost every country in the world, and more than two hundred in the United States. Most of them were partnerships with a local university, providing language and culture instructor(s) from China free of charge. Based on fieldwork, Jennifer Ann Hubbert's China in the World provides an evenhanded presentation of the activities and controversies surrounding these institutes in the United States. It avoids the media alarmism that sees them as threats to academic freedom or spy outfits. Nor is it an apologist for China's human rights problems, and it does not erase the Confucius Institutes’ shortcomings.
One observant point the book makes is that in purveying the standard cultural symbols (Chinese tea ceremony, calligraphy, dumplings and cuisine, quotations from Confucius, traditional festivals), the institutes promote an “official culture” of China. These bland versions of Chinese culture are preferred over showcasing a Chinese culture that has dazzled the world: Nobel Prize–winning dissident literature, avant-garde art and cinema, and so on. While I agree about the problem of blandness, the book also does not address the great diversity among Confucius Institutes. Hubbert's main fieldwork seems to have mainly been conducted at high schools, whereas most institutes are at universities. If institute directors stick to language teaching and safe cultural activities, then their outfits will indeed produce bland official culture. However, for those directors pursuing a more academic research track, funding can be used to invite world-class scholars to give lectures and to hold international academic conferences. The Confucius Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, for example, sponsored screenings of fabulous Chinese art and historical films at annual Asia-Pacific Film Festivals.
A valuable discussion is why some American schools accept Confucius Institutes. Many schools serve poor inner-city or rural midwestern students, and the institutes help relieve harsh neoliberal budgetary constraints. When their own federal, state, or local government fails to support the education of its citizens, schools reach out to a foreign government for relief. The institutes expose lower-income American students to knowledge of the outside world and prepare them for global citizenship. Some students even visit China on institute study tours. Hubbert also examines student motivations. In studying an exotic and difficult language, students are constructing a self-identity that their peers have deemed “cool” and breaking out from their limited corner of the United States. They also hope for career success in the precarity of a difficult job market and risk society.
One cannot argue with the central thesis of the book: despite the Chinese government's intention to mount a “soft power” offensive, it is not possible to predict or assume any top-down effectiveness of soft power. One must examine the shifting interplay of local culture, economic motivations, and the political imperatives of host societies. Chapter 4 shows how the Chinese organizers’ arrangement of visits to impressive modern urban landmarks in China (luxury shopping malls, world-class architecture and museums) backfired with the American high school students it was designed to impress. The students were bored and suspicious of being manipulated, and instead craved the “authentic” experience of sampling exotic foods at street markets. The book also shows some unintentional effects of sending Chinese teachers to the United States: when they see positive elements of American society and education, they engage in Chinese self-critique, thus contributing, ironically, to American soft power. Some Chinese teachers even tire of Chinese textbook limitations and adopt textbooks published in the United States.
Overall, this book provides an excellent description of Confucius Institutes and different points of view of Chinese officialdom, American students and faculty, and Chinese instructors. I do have one critique: the term “soft power” (which comes from political science, a field not usually known for its reflexivity) is never critically examined in the book. Soft power is like the term “ideology,” which, according to Clifford Geertz, is always ascribed to others but not to one's own society. All nation-states rely on soft power. The difference is in the ways it is produced, deployed, and received. The United States may be the most successful producer of soft power, but its neoliberalism does not assign this role to the state. The market mechanism produces a dynamic culture industry, which sometimes engages in cultural self-critique, further adding to its global appeal. The American state does generate some soft power, such as its foreign embassy cultural activities and its Fulbright Fellowships for international scholars. China is still a state-led developing society that is more adept at producing “hardware.” China could learn from South Korea, whose state investment in culture industries helped produce such global successes as K-pop and the 2019 film Parasite. If the Chinese state allows more freedom for creative expression, then it need not rely on its bland and ultimately ineffective soft power, for the creativity of the Chinese people is evident.
Hubbert places the Confucius Institutes in a larger global context: China's rapid rise to global power has engendered anxiety and suspicion, so China mounts soft power to reassure the world that it is peace loving. Since this book was published, the Office of Hanban, which oversees all Confucius Institutes, was dissolved in 2020 and reconstituted as a new civil entity. Hostility toward China in the United States has also escalated since the publication of this book, and China's response has hardened. The increasing geopolitical and economic rivalry between the two most powerful nation-states in the world is of great concern. Instead of rivalry and war, the world needs these two powers to work together to deal with climate change, COVID-19, and global poverty. By training American students in Chinese language, culture, and history, Confucius Institutes have been contributing to this cooperation.
