Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. viii, 234 pp. US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7820-7.
Though representatives of the Confucius Institute insist that its purposes are language education and the promotion of cultural exchange between the Chinese people and other peoples, the impression persists that the institute promotes a political agenda. Thus, criticism of it has included allegations of suppressing academic freedom and, through the delivery of lessons, indoctrinating students with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda. It is for this reason that some Western universities have shuttered branches of the Confucius Institute on their campuses—owing in part to pressure from student organizations—or have refused to renew contracts with Hanban, the institute’s parent organization and part of the Chinese Ministry of Education.
In order to assess the various claims and counterclaims, policy makers and members of the general public need to understand how the Confucius Institute operates and, in particular, any impact that it may be having on college curricula. While previous studies focused mainly on the institute’s public diplomacy, Jennifer Hubbert has adopted an ethnographic approach, analyzing in detail the content taught in the institute’s courses and, more importantly, conducting interviews and observations to assess the actual effect of its teaching on students and their parents, especially with respect to material that is perceived by outsiders as CCP propaganda.
Hubbert’s focus, then, is on the role of the Confucius Institute in the Chinese government’s attempts to increase its influence within the international community. Her conclusion is that the institute’s actions “reflect China’s efforts to rewrite the rules of engagement in the characterizations, processes, and practices of globalization and modernity. Through exporting teachers and language institutions, teaching the world rather than being taught, and highlighting its cultural practices and histories, the CCP attempts to reposition China as the subject rather than the object of globalization and to suggest itself as a model of a different form of modernity” (156).
Moreover, in emphasizing that the Confucius Institute serves as a state policy tool, Hubbert draws attention to the role of its teachers as agents of the state as well as to the reciprocal effect of the students and parents who are its targets on the state strategy that this tool is meant to facilitate. When the Confucius Institute operates in open societies, she argues, the avoidance of political topics by its teachers can strengthen students’ and parents’ established impressions of the Chinese political system. Likewise, the manner in which Hanban presents the fruits of Chinese modernization often fails to motivate students; rather, students’ exposure to ordinary Chinese people and the traditions on which Chinese society is built tend to instill positive feelings about China. Of course, as Hubbert also points out, this sort of appeal may not be Hanban’s main concern, as the Confucius Institute is also, in a sense, a conduit for the Chinese government’s domestic propaganda, one aim of which is to promote national pride by showing foreigners’ positive reactions to China’s modernization.
If it is true that exchanges between countries and cultures ultimately need to be achieved through human interaction, then Hubbert takes a rather optimistic view of the teachers employed by the Confucius Institute. She reveals the conflicting views held by these teachers, their students, and the students’ parents regarding how “modernity” should be defined and by whom, while also emphasizing that the teachers, acting as representatives of state policy, through their words and actions—and especially when they are critical of the official curriculum—often encourage students and parents to abandon stereotypical impressions of China and recognize that Chinese society is not monolithic and that there are many aspects to modernity and globalization. However, it is precisely because teachers represent a variable within the operations of the Confucius Institute and have the potential to impact the implementation of the Chinese government’s strategy that the latter is able to maintain tight control over the former. In the end, the government, by controlling the curriculum and teaching materials, compels teachers to deliver content that serves to further its strategy.
In an open society characterized by the unregulated flow of information and academic freedom, a government’s political propaganda tends to have little influence on students when it is delivered in the context of a course or learning institution. From this perspective, the concern that the Confucius Institute may be “brainwashing” students seems misplaced. Thus it is observed in the book that students and parents in the United States tend to see learning Chinese as simply a means to increase one’s competitiveness in higher education and the job market. Nevertheless, as critics have pointed out over the years, efforts by a foreign government entity such as the Confucius Institute to impose rules that restrict academic freedom on coursework conducted in an open society raise questions about limits on academic freedom more generally and about the proper response to challenges to liberal democratic principles in academia. Research into the Confucius Institute, then, can be seen as part of a larger effort to establish a consensus regarding academic freedom.
Luwei Rose Luqiu
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong