In a projection of soft power, more Confucius Institutes will be set up
By Sim Chi Yin 13 March 2009
BEIJING: Despite a worldwide ‘learn Mandarin’ craze, the language is not quite rolling off people’s tongues - just yet.
China hopes to change that and stamp its ‘soft power’ all over the world by increasing the number of Confucius Institutes from 314 to 500 by next year, senior education officials said yesterday.
As it is, the network of such schools which teach Mandarin, train language teachers and run Chinese cultural programmes has grown much more quickly than Beijing intended when it started the enterprise in 2005 with modest plans to set up 100 schools in three years, said Madam Xu Lin, director-general of Chinese Language Council International, a government body which coordinates the teaching of Mandarin overseas.
The 314 outfits are spread across 81 countries - including two in Singapore - and cost Beijing some 500 million yuan (S$112 million) to co-fund so far, Madam Xu said on the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary session.
Named after the ancient Chinese sage who stressed the importance of education, Confucius Institutes are set up with and co-funded equally by foreign universities or schools. The bulk of them are in Europe and another 150 organisations from 40 countries have pending requests.
While China holds up the schools purely as the equivalent of the British Council or Germany’s Goethe Institute, the rapid expansion of the Confucius Institutes has been dogged by lingering suspicion that they may have a more political flavour.
Teaching more foreigners Chinese language and culture may well help the world understand China ‘objectively’ in the long run, officials acknowledged yesterday, but Vice-Education Minister Zhang Xinsheng told reporters the Confucius schools exist simply to meet a surge in global demand for Mandarin classes.
He said: ‘People around the world want to learn Mandarin of their own accord because they think well of China’s future. It’s not as if we are forcibly exporting a language or culture.’
China’s rise as a global economic power has sparked a ‘China fever’ and a ‘Mandarin fever’, with some 40 million people around the world learning the language now, said Madam Xu.
Demand for Mandarin courses overseas is soaring, leaving China struggling to train enough teachers to teach the language in a variety of tongues, she said.
China’s efforts seemed to have spurred neighbouring Japan to announce its intention to increase the number of official Japanese-language education facilities overseas from 10 to about 100 in three years. Kyodo news agency said the move was ‘to counter the spread of Chinese language and culture’.
The British Council has outfits in 110 countries, the French Alliance Fran�aise has offices in 129 countries while there are 147 Goethe Institutes in 83 countries.
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China expands language network abroad
In a projection of soft power, more Confucius Institutes will be set up
By Sim Chi Yin
13 March 2009
BEIJING: Despite a worldwide ‘learn Mandarin’ craze, the language is not quite rolling off people’s tongues - just yet.
China hopes to change that and stamp its ‘soft power’ all over the world by increasing the number of Confucius Institutes from 314 to 500 by next year, senior education officials said yesterday.
As it is, the network of such schools which teach Mandarin, train language teachers and run Chinese cultural programmes has grown much more quickly than Beijing intended when it started the enterprise in 2005 with modest plans to set up 100 schools in three years, said Madam Xu Lin, director-general of Chinese Language Council International, a government body which coordinates the teaching of Mandarin overseas.
The 314 outfits are spread across 81 countries - including two in Singapore - and cost Beijing some 500 million yuan (S$112 million) to co-fund so far, Madam Xu said on the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary session.
Named after the ancient Chinese sage who stressed the importance of education, Confucius Institutes are set up with and co-funded equally by foreign universities or schools. The bulk of them are in Europe and another 150 organisations from 40 countries have pending requests.
While China holds up the schools purely as the equivalent of the British Council or Germany’s Goethe Institute, the rapid expansion of the Confucius Institutes has been dogged by lingering suspicion that they may have a more political flavour.
Teaching more foreigners Chinese language and culture may well help the world understand China ‘objectively’ in the long run, officials acknowledged yesterday, but Vice-Education Minister Zhang Xinsheng told reporters the Confucius schools exist simply to meet a surge in global demand for Mandarin classes.
He said: ‘People around the world want to learn Mandarin of their own accord because they think well of China’s future. It’s not as if we are forcibly exporting a language or culture.’
China’s rise as a global economic power has sparked a ‘China fever’ and a ‘Mandarin fever’, with some 40 million people around the world learning the language now, said Madam Xu.
Demand for Mandarin courses overseas is soaring, leaving China struggling to train enough teachers to teach the language in a variety of tongues, she said.
China’s efforts seemed to have spurred neighbouring Japan to announce its intention to increase the number of official Japanese-language education facilities overseas from 10 to about 100 in three years. Kyodo news agency said the move was ‘to counter the spread of Chinese language and culture’.
The British Council has outfits in 110 countries, the French Alliance Fran�aise has offices in 129 countries while there are 147 Goethe Institutes in 83 countries.
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