This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Confucius Institute – established by the Chinese government to promote the Chinese language, culture, and a positive image of China globally. Confucius Institutes rapidly expanded to more than 500 centers across 160 countries in little over a decade, becoming a central component of China’s international language and culture promotion (ILCP) strategy.
Yet their development has not been unchallenged. Over the past decade, Confucius Institutes have faced setbacks, most notably in the United States, where at least 100 have closed. These closures led to a major overhaul of the management structure of Confucius Institutes in June 2020, when the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF) was established as the effective brand holder, while the former headquarters was dissolved and replaced by the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC). These changes marked a shift toward decentralization.
The initial rapid growth of Confucius Institutes was attributable to the favorable geopolitical environment toward China during the early years of the initiative. Under President Hu Jintao, China adopted a diplomatic philosophy of “tao guang yang hui” (hiding capabilities and keeping a low profile), emphasizing soft power as a means for its peaceful rise.
Confucius Institutes were intended as a bridge to reinforce friendship and cooperation between China and the world, with the project benefiting from substantial financial and human resources provided by the Chinese government. Its joint venture model – which involved partnerships between Chinese universities and host universities – allowed Confucius Institutes to be integrated within local academic institutions, utilizing their existing facilities and resources while attracting substantial funding from China. This model facilitated the rapid establishment of Confucius Institutes, particularly in Western countries, where China sought to improve relations and foster cooperation despite differing political ideologies.
Internationally, the rise of China and its growing influence created a demand for knowledge about China and the Chinese language. This was particularly evident in the United States in the early 2000s, when the two countries enjoyed relatively good relations. The rapid expansion of Confucius Institutes was widely seen as a reflection of China’s growing soft power during this period, with the initiative providing an avenue for promoting Chinese culture and language and offering institutions a chance to partner with Chinese universities.
Partly because of this dramatic expansion, however, Confucius Institutes faced increasing scrutiny and criticism, particularly in the U.S. Some critics argued that the project served as a tool for Chinese propaganda, raising concerns over academic freedom and the potential for political influence. This occurred as China’s rise had begun to shift the power balance between China and the West, resulting in an increasingly hardline approach toward China in Washington.
Under the Obama administration (2009-2017), the U.S. strategic “pivot” to Asia aimed at balancing against or containing China, and marked the beginning of a more critical stance toward Confucius Institutes. In 2012, for example, a U.S. Department of State directive led to the temporary expulsion of Chinese teachers in Confucius Institutes over visa issues, signaling growing unease within the administration about Confucius Institutes in U.S. universities.
Under the Trump administration (2017-2021), this scrutiny dramatically intensified, resulting in a wave of Confucius Institute closures across the United States. The mechanism that the Trump administration used to shut down Confucius Institutes was principally the threat of withdrawal of federal funding from universities. For example, a Confucius Institute’s former oversight committee member at one U.S. university explained to the authors how the passing of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2019 forced U.S. universities to make a choice between substantial federal funding and China’s smaller Confucius Institute funding.
The committee member explained that in order to receive U.S. federal funding, “the University would need a waiver to prove that no federal funding would support Chinese language instruction, but this was challenging because funding is often fungible.” The committee member added, “Government grants typically cover the overhead of entire university. Separating the funding to ensure that none of it benefited the CI [Confucius Institute] posed difficulties.”
The committee member further explained how “there was no established process for waivers, which could take years to resolve. Consequently, [funding agencies] decided to stop accepting grant applications from any institutions with a CI until new procedures were established.”
The outcome was often the closure of the Confucius Institute. The committee member stated, “…Considering the University’s significant stake in such grants, compared with the much smaller Chinese funding for the CI, this price was deemed too high. Therefore, the committee agreed to close down the CI. Even though the focus seemed limited to the language itself, the objective was to ultimately shut down the CIs.”
Under the Biden administration, similar policies on Confucius Institutes have continued to be enforced, including under the NDAA (2021), the Innovation and Competition Act (2021), and the Confucius Act (2021). Clearly, for higher education institutions in the United States that hosted a Confucius Institute, closing the institute was often an easier solution than lengthy rule-checking or applying for waivers. Following on from the U.S. lead, countries such as Australia, Germany, India, Japan, and the U.K. have all launched reviews or imposed pressure on Confucius Institutes. Meanwhile, Confucius Institutes in the developing world, India aside, have continued to develop robustly during the period of China’s rise.
In response to the growing challenge to Confucius Institutes, particularly in the United States, China has undertaken a major overhaul of its ILCP strategy since mid-2020, signaling a shift toward decentralization in three aspects.
Administratively, the CIEF, the CLEC, and other similar initiatives such as ChinesePlus and the China Center for International People-to-People Exchange (CCIPE), have been established to share the former responsibilities of the Confucius Institute headquarters.
Politically, there has been an effort to disassociate the new management system of the Confucius Institute from the Chinese central government, resulting in the diminished official political status of the new ILCP initiatives. Financially, compared to the centralized fiscal role assigned to the former Confucius Institute headquarters in China’s previous ILCP strategy, at least five decentralized sources of funding for revamped Confucius Institutes can be identified: the CIEF, a Chinese partner, a local partner, the CLEC, and income from individual Confucius Institutes.
The outcome of this new strategy, however, remains uncertain. It has, so far, not significantly altered critics’ perception of Confucius Institutes. It has also caused confusion and resistance within the Confucius Institute administrative system, while additionally complicating funding arrangements and casting doubts on the funding capability of the CIEF.
While decentralization may have reduced the scrutiny and criticism previously directed at Confucius Institutes, it has not fully resolved the broader issues of trust and suspicion that have emerged between China and the West, particularly in the United States.
The evolving story of Confucius Institutes from a positive global symbol of China’s soft power to a contested initiative highlights the challenges of promoting cultural diplomacy in a complex, ever-changing, and sometimes hostile international environment. The future success of the Confucius Institute and China’s revised ILCP strategy will depend on broader geopolitical dynamics and the ability of China to rebuild trust and cooperation with the United States.
In this sense, the decades-long involvement with China by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz – since he taught in China in the late 1980s – raises the possibility that the outlook could still alter somewhat. A victory for the Harris-Walz campaign in the U.S. election in November might begin to change the China narrative in ways that could help in the rebuilding of the United States’ more than 100 lost Confucius Institutes.
