China's Public Diplomacy Through Education

I have previously written about China's use of culture as public diplomacy, such as the Chinese New Year celebrations in New York City. I have also discussed China's public diplomacy through foreign aid in Africa. However, there is yet another facet to China's public diplomacy strategy and that is through education.

Beginning in the 1990s, China made improving an increasing access to higher education a priority by launching the 211 Project that sought to improve 100 Chinese universities, marking it as the largest investment ever to improve Chinese higher education. The program proved successful when new student enrollment jumped from 1.3 million in 1999 to four times that in 2006 with 5.4 million students. Not only did China seek to increase enrollment among Chinese citizens, but China also prioritized increasing the attendance of foreign students to Chinese universities.

The amount of foreign students has skyrocketed since China made the initiative to improve foreign exchange programs and grants. In 1992 a mere 13,000 foreign students traveled to China for studies. This number increased to 52,200 foreign students in 2000 and an astounding 292,611 foreign students in 2011. That makes for an increase of almost 280,000 foreign students attending Chinese universities over the course of a decade. While these foreign students hail from 194 countries around the globe, 75 percent of the foreign students that travel to China to study are from Asian countries, with the majority coming from South Korea and Japan.

Attracting students from Asian countries is particularly important to China. China's rapidly growing economy and increase in military power is troubling to its smaller Asian neighbors. Having students from these neighboring countries come to study and live in China provides the opportunity to increase dialogue on the individual level. Hopefully after their time in China, these foreign students will leave with a better understanding of the Chinese people and culture. This is especially pertinent to countries that have had longstanding feuds with China, such as Japan.

In addition to increasing foreign student flow into the country, China has also made an effort in schools of other countries. For example, China has arranged for classes in Chinese language and culture to be taught in many primary schools overseas. Furthermore, the Chinese government trains and distributes hundreds of instructors to countries, such as Cambodia, Argentina, and Kenya, to teach in schools. In some of these countries, the Chinese school provides better education at a lower cost with less corruption, making it the most popular option.

Lastly, China has aggressively promoted the study of Chinese language and culture through its Confucius Institutes. Since 2004, China has set up 400 Confucius Institute schools in 108 countries. By educating the world on Chinese culture, China aims to put forth a kinder, gentler image than it has garnered in the past to support its claim of a "peaceful rise" as China's might continues to grow. Additionally, the Chinese language taught in these schools is the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. This was a strategic choice to exclude the dialects spoken throughout the rest of the country and the traditional character system that is still used in Taiwan, Macao, and Hong Kong. By teaching the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, China is able to reaffirm its policy of one, unified China overseas.

Sources: http://rt.com/op-edge/growing-chinese-soft-power-638/