Language Management and Its Impact

The Policies and Practices of Confucius Institutes

Linda Mingfang Li

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367584153
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351064040
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a comprehensive account of language management and planning at Confucius Institutes in the UK, implementing an ethnographic approach grounded in language management theory. As a global language promotion organization, Confucius Institutes have previously been discussed in the literature with respect to socio-political issues, but this volume will shed particular light on their role in shaping and informing Chinese language policy, at both the institutional and individual classroom level. The book focuses specifically on Confucius Institutes in the UK, demonstrating how language teaching practice in these organizations is informed and shaped not only by organizational paradigms but local language needs and institutional attitudes of host institutions. In turn, Li highlights these organizations' unique position in a multilingual region such as the UK can offer new insights into language management by illustrating their roles as platforms for both individuals and institutions to become involved in the making and implementation of language policy. This volume will be of particular interest to students and researchers in language policy and planning, language education, applied linguistics, and Chinese linguistics.

1 Introduction

Background

Confucius Institute, the Rise of China, and Growing Interest in Chinese Language

The development of Confucius Institute has been astonishingly fast over the last ten years. It has grown from just over two dozen in 2005 to 525 Confucius Institutes and about 1,113 Confucius Classrooms in 146 countries by the end of 2016, with some 1.7 million people learning Chinese and 12.72 million attending relevant events in these institutes.¹

Confucius Institute is often compared with some long-established national language promotion organisations, such as Alliance Franҫaise of France, British Council of the UK, Cervantes Institutes of Spain, Goethe-Institut of Germany (Mo, 2009; Zhang and Wang, 2006; Liu and Jiang, 2011), the Japan Foundation, and the Korean Foundation (Tianzhong, 2011; Liu, X. P., 2011). Many such organisations are observed to have stepped up their efforts either by increasing their resources input or by modifying their operation models to compete with the expansion of Confucius Institute. For the former, examples include the Japan Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Taiwan (Taiwan Shuyuan), both of which have allocated more funds to increase their presences and profiles overseas (Zhang, 2008; Hisa, 2013). For the latter, Alliance Franҫaise and Goethe-Institut are reported to have recently formed partnerships with local universities in China. All this is done with the intent to increase their presence in these countries, as these local universities serve either as their exam centres or learning and teaching centres (Wu, Y., 2009)—a format clearly absent from the traditional approach of their development but characteristic of Confucius Institute in its growth in the last ten years. The impact of Confucius Institute is clear, which is accompanied naturally with a lot of studies on the institute in recent years.

There are a few strands in the study of Confucius Institute. The rapid development of Confucius Institute has been regarded by some as a reflection of the rapid economic development that China has achieved with its double digit economic growth for the last three decades, or of the increasingly important role that China is now playing in international economy and trade as well as international politics (Liu, 2013). Other studies have examined Confucius Institute in terms of its instrumental functions for the Chinese government which uses Confucius Institute as a cost-efficient means to build up the soft power of the country (Chen, 2008; Wu, Y., 2009; Gong, 2013) or to enhance the country’s foreign diplomacy in line with the country’s increasing importance on the world stage (Wu, Y., 2009; Zhang, 2007). There is also research that has focused on the operational model of Confucius Institute and discussed both the advantages and disadvantages of the joint venture format of the institute (Zhou and Qiao, 2008; Wu, Y. H., 2009; Zhang and Wang, 2006). Very little research, however, has studied Confucius Institute from the perspective of language policy and language planning (LPP), even though language learning and teaching is a primary activity of the institute.

The Confucius Institute initiative, in a way, can be regarded as a continuation of China’s language policy since the 1950s, focusing on popularising and teaching Putonghua (common speech) and simplified Chinese characters to all its citizens of all the ethnic groups as well as to those who came to study Chinese in China. Teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages in China, often referred to as Duiwai Hanyu Jiaoxue in Chinese with a misnomer translation of “teaching Chinese as a foreign language” (TCFL) in English, only started to gather real momentum and became a university degree programme in the early 1980s, which coincided with the start of the economic take-off of the country. The Confucius Institute initiative in the early 21st century that aimed to deliver Chinese language teaching overseas is very much the result of the demand for Chinese language from abroad and the intention of China to take Chinese language learning and teaching to more people abroad. The purpose is not only to increase the understanding of China and Chinese language by those who are unable to go and learn in China, but also to enhance the positive image and profile of China via more cultural and educational exchanges. As mentioned earlier, the learning and teaching of Putonghua and simplified Chinese characters have permeated the entire half century of teaching Chinese to the speakers of other languages, including the ethnic Chinese whose first language is not Chinese. This change of “location” may appear to be only the place where the learning and teaching of Chinese takes place, however it requires some fundamental changes in almost all aspects of the teaching of the language to be localised so that it can fit in with the local needs and requirements as well as the local environment in terms of local language education policy and practices.

As a process, the localisation did not become an explicit policy of Hanban (Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) until recently when Mme Liu Yandong, chair of the council of Hanban, specifically pointed out in her keynote speech at the Tenth Confucius Institute Conference in Shanghai that localisation of Confucius Institutes was one of the three major challenges and tasks in the next phase of the development of Confucius Institute. In other words, it took Hanban the entire decade to make the gradual change of its policy from the initial “popularisation model” (that aimed to standardise all the teaching materials, teaching methods, and assessments in all Confucius Institutes based upon the proven experience and expertise in Duiwai Hanyu Jiaoxue accumulated in China) to the current localisation model that takes into consideration the local circumstances and requests as well as the power of the local forces, not only the institutional partners but also students and teachers.

As a matter of fact, the gradual change in Hanban’s policy is, to a large extent, the result of the interactions in the past years between Hanban and Chinese and local partner universities, as well as the students and teachers in the Confucius Institutes. This very process epitomises not only the development in the study of LPP but also the actual change of China’s language policy from initially completely internal to a later international one, from its early date to use language planning and policy from the top down as a solution to fix some perceived problems to the current bottom-up model. In view of the joint venture model Confucius Institute adopted and the equality conscious British environment in which Confucius Institutes operated in the UK, this study of Confucius Institute in the light of the framework of language management theory would throw new light on the working of Confucius Institutes and contribute to the increasing body of knowledge of this joint venture.

What has made the world take note of China is clearly the unprecedented rapid economic development since the 1980s. From mere RMB 367 billion in 1978 to over RMB 74 trillion in 2016, China’s GDP grew over 200 times as much because of an average of close to double digit growth (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2017).² China’s GDP is now only second to the US, overtaking Italy and France in 2005, UK in 2006, Germany in 2007, and Japan in 2010. Some individuals anticipated that China’ GDP could surpass the US around 2027 (Ahmed and O’Neill, 2011).

China’s role in the world economy gaining increasing momentum in its importance can also be witnessed in the country’s currency and investment. China’s currency, the renminbi, was traded offshore and accepted as an SDR currency by the IMF in 2015, taking effect from 1 January 2016. In addition, several country’s central banks have included the renminbi as a reserve currency. Meanwhile, one can also witness the growing direct investment that China has made overseas since the beginning of the century. Chinese investment overseas started shortly after the country opened its doors, but up to the early 1990s most investment was in the form of contractual work and export of labour. This changed to investment in manufacturing from the early 1990s till the beginning of this century; since then more and more mergers and acquisitions happened. The amount China invested overseas also grew very fast, from about USD 2 billion in 2000 to over USD 7 billion in the following year when China joined the WTO. It is expected that the amount of China’s global stock of outbound foreign direct investment, which includes investing in corporate, acquisitions, and start-ups, will grow from USD 744 billon to as much as USD 2 trillion by 2020 (Financial Times, 2015).³ It is easy to see that the rate of growth is much faster than that of the GDP, signifying the desire, ambition, and purchase power of Chinese enterprises.

The third change is no other than the growing number of Chinese tourists and students going abroad every year. Talking about the potential impacts that the Chinese tourists could have on the local economy and how her organisation was preparing for attracting more Chinese tourists, VisitBritain chief executive Sally Balcombe said:

Every 22 additional Chinese visitors we attract supports an additional job in tourism. We want to ensure that we continue to compete effectively in this, the world’s biggest outbound market, and ensure that we deliver growth and jobs across the nations and regions of Britain.⁴

If one looks at the number of Chinese students going to study overseas since the beginning of the century, the increase was also equally impressive, from about 50,000 in 2001 to some 544,500 in 2016, of which over 498,000 funded themselves and over one-eighth of the total came to study in the UK.⁵

Similarly, one can also observe that the Chinese language is gaining both in its popularity and in its economic value. It is reported that there are over 100 million people learning and/or using Chinese language outside China, of whom 40 million are Chinese born and living overseas⁶ or heritage Chinese learners and users. In a study in 2014, Zhang, G. X. (2014) provided three facts illustrating the increasing use of the Chinese language on the internet and significant financial implications that the use of the language had. The first was the increase in the sheer number of the Chinese language internet users. In the decade between 2001 and 2011, Chinese users grew from 46 million, or 8.8% of the total internet users, to a staggering 510 million, nearly a quarter (24.2%) of the total. In the same period, the number of English users grew from 227 million to 565 million, but its percentage sharply dropped from 44% in 2001 to 26.8% in 2011 with a prediction that Chinese would overtake English as the largest language user group very soon.⁷ The second was the increased importance of Chinese in terms of its potential commercial value and economic opportunity.⁸ Chinese was among the 13 languages that can realise 90% of global online economic opportunity. And the phenomenal online sales of Alibaba in the last couple of consecutive years on 11 November and the value achieved were testimonials of the increasing economic value that the Chinese language has brought with in terms of online sales.

Moreover, an increasing number of national governments seem to give more attention to the teaching of Chinese, especially in all major English-speaking countries like Australia, Canada, the US, the UK, and recently Ireland. The Australian government made East Asia its priority in the 1990s; a white paper titled “Australia in the Asian Century” published in 2012 reaffirms the importance of learning Asian languages, including Chinese in the age of a rising Asia.⁹ In the US, the establishment of the National Security Education Programme (NSEP) shortly after 11 September 2001 soon saw the launch of such language programmes as the Flagship project and Star-Talk, both of which include Chinese.¹⁰ In the UK, the government promised to double the number of Chinese language learners by 2020, following the policy decision made a few years ago to include Chinese as one of the strategically important languages to promote in its education system (Tinsley and Board, 2014). On 4 December 2017, Irish Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton launched the government’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017–2026. The plan sets out a roadmap to put Ireland in the top ten countries in Europe for the teaching and learning of foreign languages, through several measures targeted at improving proficiency, diversity, and immersion. There are 100 actions in the strategy, including the introduction of Mandarin Chinese as a Leaving Certificate subject¹¹ in 2022.

All the above provides the background for the Chinese government to challenge the current world order and push for a new order with the increasing economic and political influence of the country. This is also clear in some of the recent proposals and strategies that the Chinese government has made: the establishment of the Asian Development Bank, the unrolling of the Belt Road Initiative, and the pledge that the Chinese president made at the recent UN General Assembly and Paris Conference to support development in Africa and the fight against the world climate change.

Chinese Language Teaching and Development of Confucius Institute

The teaching of Chinese to speakers of other languages started in a modest way and organised manner in the mid-1950s, usually to groups of homogenous learners from a few countries in a couple of universities in China. A handful of teachers were also sent out to teach Chinese in some countries. However, the development was slow and static over the next 20 years, even regressive in the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. This period was marked with two characteristics. One was that the teaching was in Putonghua and the simplified Chinese characters, as it was the language policy for all Chinese in the country; the other was that very limited attention was given to research into how to teach Chinese as a foreign language.

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed a huge step forward in TCFL overseas. By the end of 2011, while there were about 235,000 overseas students studying in China, the figure often quoted for the number of people learning Chinese overseas stood at 40 million, with some media even running as high as 100 million!¹²

As early as 1995, a joint document was sent from the State Education Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Office of the Overseas Chinese Affairs of the State Council to all the Chinese diplomatic services abroad, requiring them to step up and strengthen their work concerning TCFL.¹³ This was the first time that TCFL was put on the agenda of the Chinese diplomatic services. Later it became a constant feature in diplomatic activities overseas with an increasing number of Chinese ambassadors attending events organised by local Confucius Institutes. In order to engage TCFL academics and professionals from abroad and encourage them to join the efforts of the TCFL language s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• List of figures
• List of tables
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Language Promotion Organisations and Confucius Institutes in the UK
• 3 Studies on Confucius Institute and Language Management
• 4 Chinese Language Management at the Institution Level
• 5 Language Management at Confucius Institute Level
• 6 Language Management at Confucius Institute Classroom Level
• 7 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index