Giorgi Soselia

Opinion – The Status of China's Confucius Institutes in American

Universities
“Opinion – The Status of China's Confucius Institutes in American Universities” is an article
by Craig Meyers that speaks about Confucius Institutes (CI) role in People’s republic China’s
foreign policy. The author considers that Confucius Institute is a tool of China’s soft power
and analyzes American universities’ actions against it.
The Confucius Institutes have great experience of collaboration with different universities
worldwide. American universities are among them. But during the pandemic, there were
visible that U.S. universities broke up their ties with CI because it was considered as a
Chinese soft power. The explanations of universities about their decision weren’t clear and
caused more questions about why they stopped collaboration.
The author puts question – “Is the demise of CIs is a U.S. victory over Chinese propaganda,
or merely a strategic retreat by the Chinese after accomplishing their goal?” The Chinese
government isn’t prioritizing the Confucius institutes and that fact gives chance to the
author to presume that China has already used CI’s potential successfully.
According to the researches, CI had a positive effect on the Chinese economy and support
increasing investment from the countries where IC had its presence.
There are tries of analyzing what is CI and what are its goals and reasons of exitence. The
author compares CI to Germany’s Goethe Institutes, France’s Alliances Frances and the UK’s
British Council but there is a difference. CI has different strategies and counters already
compared weapons of western cultural expansion. The author cites Liu that clearly describes
CI’s role in Chinese foreign policy – “To ‘enhance understanding’ is, therefore, the other task
set for the CI with the hope of also constructing global legitimacy. As one scholar noted, ‘the
founding of the CI is, by and large, an image management project . . . to promote the
greatness of Chinese culture while counterattacking public opinion that maintains the China
threat”
Fighting for cultural supremacy is a modern type of controversy between countries. The
author mentions Huntington’s clashes of civilization and speaks about conflicts of the new
era have ideological dimension.
All in all U.S. universities offensive policy against CI had a political basis. There is competition
between China and the U.S. and every field of their relations are a frontline where the
countries try to prove their supremacy and show their strength. U.S. government can’t let
China continue its cultural propaganda by CI and it became the reason for American
universities’ massive refusal to continue collaboration with CI.