Confucius Institutes are not about Confucius

There is a bit of a dust up over Confucius Institutes, those Chinese-government sponsored organizations that promote Chinese language teaching in US (and locations all over the world). But before we get to the details of this kerfuffle, a word about Confucius Institutes.

They are not about Confucius.  Rather, the PRC government has chosen to use the name of Confucius as a trademark of sorts for a global soft power branding project.  The Institutes, most of which in the US are hosted by colleges or universities, focus on language learning, with a variety of other cultural activities: Lunar New Year parties: calligraphy; a little Peking Opera; etc.  As far as I can tell - and I have been in conversation with many US academics who have CIs on their campuses (my college does not have one) - there is no systematic effort to engage with Confucian thought in any serious manner. 

Indeed, I find no direct reference to Confucius the man and thinker on their English language web page; though there is a little video on Hai Rui, an upright bureaucrat from the Ming Dynasty (no mention is made of the fact that his story was central to the initiation of the Cultural Revolution in 1966).  The Confucian-killer Qin Shihuangdi seems to get more attention there than Confucius himself.  Bottom line: CIs are not the place to go if you want to learn about Confucianism.

And there are ironies here. The Chinese Communist Party, born of the anti-Confucian radicalism of the May 4th period and vehemently anti-Confucian up through the 1970s, is now reaching for The Master as a happy, avuncular image to adorn a most un-Confucian authoritarian-capitalist modernity.  Kam Louie, in a great piece, "Confucius the Chameleon: Dubious envoy for Brand China (pdf!), gets at some of the problems here:

There is an implicit belief among most people that because Confucianism has long dominated Chinese culture and because Confucius is a Chinese name, we should adopt it to represent China. But that’s like proposing changing the Voice of America to the Voice of Jesus. Most Americans may identify themselves as Christians, but America is much more interesting and diverse than one dominant religion or one individual. In the same way, an institute that purports to promote Chinese culture should not do so in the name of one person, especially if that name or person has generated bitter controversies in the recent past.

And you know there are Christian conservative in the US who would be very happy to change the name of the VOA to the "Voice of Jesus."  Louie continues:

...the confusion surrounding the debates on how to salvage tradition in a new China have been compounded by incoherent interpretations of Confucius’s teachings in recent years. All the indicators suggest that domestically, the advocacy of Confucianism will in practice lead to  the promotion of very conservative and inconsistent values. Internationally, if such values are to be paraded as the best of “Chinese” essences, China’s contribution to world culture will be a confused and regressive one.

He may be right: there is a conservative bias in Confucianism that will limit its applicability in an open, dynamic, globalized postmodern context.  And he is certainly right in suggesting that the explicit purpose of the current CCP-sponsored Confucian revival in the PRC is designed for conservative political purposes: to maintain the legitimacy and power of one-party authoritarianism.  But, for all of that, I still think there is something interesting and valuable in applying Confucian ideas to contemporary questions.  

In any event, to get back to the recent controversy...

About a week ago the US government issued a policy directive indicating that the visas for some Chinese nationals working at Confucius Institutes in the US might be invalid.  The directive is specific and narrowly drawn: the issue involves Chinese nationals whose visa is sponsored by a college and university who then go on to teach in elementary or high schools.  It is not an assault on CIs generally.  Rather, it is an action to implement existing visa limitations that attached to foreign nationals at college and universities. The State Department has since clarified its stance: 

Regulations related to J-1 visas, which are given to people participating in work- and study-based exchange programs, make it clear that foreign professors, academics, and students at the university level are prohibited from teaching in public or private schools at the precollege level, the State Department official said. Those visa holders will have to leave the United States by the end of June and must reapply for the correct visa to return to this country.

It would seem, then, that some sort of other arrangement needs to be made for the elementary and high school teaching functions of CIs.  The underlying problem is that CIs have tended to be embedded in colleges and universities (unlike other organizations like Germany's Goethe Institutes or France's Alliance Française, which are not connected to higher education institutions). At most, a rather minor inconvenience that will likely be tidied up in short order.

You wouldn't know that from this op-ed in the Global Times english edition: "Why is Washington so Scared of Confucius?":

The issue shows that the US' cultural confidence is not as strong as we thought. The promotion of Chinese language and culture by Confucius Institutes makes some Americans uneasy. Only culturally weak countries have such sensitivity.

That seems like a bit of a jump from a rather technical consular issue to a sweeping condemnation of US cultural weakness.  The US is not afraid of Confucius; rather, the US generally doesn't care very much about Confucius.

There is, however, a long-standing critique of CIs in the US, but is not so much a matter of cultural anxiety as it is a political question.  CIs are CCP-sponsored institutions and their mission is to support the soft power of the PRC. The money that flows from the PRC to finance CIs has certain strings attached to it. You will not find an open debate about current political issues in Tibet or Xinjiang being sponsored by CIs.  We all know that. The worry is that the political agenda expands further to limit academic freedom.  US colleges and universities are very defensive about academic freedom.  We don't like political limitations on academic inquiry.  And CIs naturally raise those questions.  We should ask those questions and work to ensure that CIs do not violate academic freedom.  That's how we roll.  And our approach has been very successful in academic and intellectual terms, as tens of thousands of PRC students (including the daughter of President-to-be, Xi Jinping), who travel to the US for college and graduate school, know well.

The People's Daily apparently got a bit stroppy over this:

“This absurd measure reflects illogical thinking and an immature mentality,” said an editorial by state-run People’s Daily. “Finding scapegoats, witch hunting and shifting focuses are not the right ways to do things.”

Ironies abound here. At present the PRC is carrying out a policy to crack down on illegal foreigners in China, people whose visas are expired or inappropriate.  Heated rhetoric about "throwing out the foreign trash" has been circulated by prominent media figures.  Foreigners in China are under general suspicion.  So, it seems an odd time for the People's Daily to be complainig about "finding scapegoats" and "witch hunting."

Perhaps we should all just chill out and listen to Confucius, Analects 5.12:

Zi Gong said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Ci, you have not attained to that."

子貢曰：「我不欲人之加諸我也，吾亦欲無加諸人。」子曰：「賜也，非爾所及也。」

Comments

[Matthew F Cooper]

I dunno... the CI at the University of Pittsburgh managed to net us an incredibly enviable collection of East Asian resource materials, including Taiwan-published difangzhi from all around China, philosophical texts (including Confucian ones), histories and literature, so the CIs certainly aren't all bad. I'm not really too clear on the recent visa controversy; hasn't hit Pitt yet, as far as I'm aware - we get bomb threats instead...

But yes, the Confucius Institutes' mission is more than a bit iffy - Confucius-as-CCP-mascot is problematic, as you point out, in more ways than one. The thing is, there are (at least) three ideologies currently in tension playing out in Chinese politics, as Yang Fenggang points out. It is possible that the MLM establishment in the CCP will attempt to ally themselves with the growing 'Confucianity' movement, though this would likely result in something similar to rubiao fali (rubiao maoli 儒表毛裡?). It is also a (highly remote) possibility that the Confucianists will ally with the liberals against the CCP on the basis of something similar to the Boston Confucians. Most likely (in my view, given the CCP's authoritarian-capitalist leanings and their recent stirrings against anything smacking of leftism, whether of the Chen Guangcheng or the Bo Xilai variety), but least desirable, is that the liberals will ally with the CCP to isolate and marginalise the Confucians.

One last thing, though - I am not in favour of wholesale academic freedom. I think there are certain boundaries of human dignity which research should not cross. We do have IRBs, for example, and outside that I think the academy is well within its rights to put the kibosh on something like eugenics or scientific racism. Such research would not be grounds for civil intellectual discourse anyway.

[Stefan]

I regularly cooperate with a Confucius Institute in Northern Germany and had contacts with other CIs in different parts of this country, so I can say that what is said in this article about the American CIs is also true for the German ones: they are not about Confucius or propaganda for the Chinese government, but about language learning and cultural activities.
I recently read "Political Confucianism" (Zhengzhi ruxue) by Jiang Qing and I was baffled by its strong claim to define Confucianism as the essence of Chinese culture and identity - so I also totally agree with what you wrote in this and other posts about the necessity to open up to a dynamic and postmodern global world. Interestingly, Jiang Qing did not condemn Western ideas in general, he even took great care to bolster up his arguments by referring to Western thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Rousseau or (tellingly) Edmund Burke. Maybe his point was more about conserving the "classical Chinese perspective" on its own tradition instead of looking at it using Western concepts and theories (if there is such thing). I wonder if you have read any of his works?

[skc]

I agree, calling them Confucius Institutes is purely a marketing gambit. I mean, what says uniquely Chinese, but doesn't have any baggage? I wonder if "Mao Institutes" made the shortlist.

The Global TImes, as usual, is mis-/under-/un-informed. A J-1 work visa is not a carte blanche work visa, but is specifically tied to one employer and one job. So if these CI's are mostly attached to universities, and those host universities are the visa-sponsors, then the visa holders have no legal grounds for going to teach in public schools.

I wouldn't think these CI's would be overtly subversive. They're teaching Chinese, and some cultural aspects. I doubt they're teaching the singing of red songs, Bo-style. On the other hand, these CI's are financially enriching their host universities, so if some tenured professor gets a bit academically lippy about the CCP, i wonder if that might trigger a fire-side chat with the chancellor...

[melektaus]

I have lots of disagreements here with your interpretation of Chinese philosophy. I do not see Confucianism as fundamentally “conservative”. Far from it. It is actually quite radical and progressive for the time. Certainly far more so, politically, culturally, morally, than Plato's Republic and compared to many other of the most influential western political philosophical tracts. Of course, you can find elements that can be construed as conservative in almost any major political work but I do not see major essential elements that can be construed as conservative in much of the Analects and in Mencius.

I agree that the Confucius Institute has little to nothing to do with the sage and that his name is likely being exploited by the PRC.

But I'm not sure what academic freedom has to do with this. CIs are not US government funded general educational institutions, as far as I know, designed to teach political controversies. They are funded by the PRC and privately and they have a narrow goal: to teach Chinese language and basic Chinese customs. They can teach whatever they want and not teach whatever they want just like privately funded religious schools in the US can teach anything they want and not teach anything they want and it has no relevance to academic freedom. CIs are not meant to teach Chinese political affairs. That is not their job, it's not their expertise, it's not what they are paid to do. A Chinese person would not go to Disney English classes and expect to learn about the injustices of extra legal drone strikes, Iraqi invasion and occupation, government sanctioned torture (if they did they would be sadly disappointed and it would have nothing to do with “academic freedom”).

Also, many Americans, I would argue, are irrationally fearful of these CIs. Many Americans seem to think that these CIs are a furtive attempt to sneak in communist propaganda or godless, contemptible Chinese culture but there is no evidence that they have taught anything other than Chinese language and basic cultural norms so the fear seems to be paranoid if not outright sinophobic. Just look at this rather amusing video which seems to support this claim.

http://shanghaiist.com/2010/06/09/daily_show_takes_on_confucius_insti.php

Yes, much of the American public does not know anything about Confucius but where there is ignorance, often irrational fear follows.

Your suggestion that these institutes are somehow sneaking in CCP propaganda seems, I don't know, in serious need of "chilling out."

"Michael Nylan, professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, says CIs have become less heavy-handed in their demands, and have learned from "early missteps," such as insisting that universities adopt a policy that Taiwan is part of China. Nylan took an informal survey of faculty and administrators at fifteen universities with Confucius Institutes; "two respondents reported that institutes had exerted pressure to block guest speakers," but both events went ahead anyway.[29]

...

In response to claims that the curriculum at CIs is determined by political consideration, the CI director for the Chicago Public Schools said that "Confucius Institutes have total autonomy in their course materials and teachers."[44]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

As for the self-righteous, insolent (over)reactions directed at Yang Rui's blog post from some American pundits, I leave this bit of Confucian wisdom:

Analects 15:15: To demand much personally and not overmuch from others will keep ill will at a distance.

Analects 15:21: Exemplary persons make demands on themselves. Petty persons make demands on others. [both Ames translations]