Recently the Chinese Confucius Institute shot into prominence. Probably for the wrong reasons. What was seen as a symbol of Chinese soft power is being increasingly viewed as a matter of concern. Specifically, two incidents stand out. In July 2014, Xu Lin, the Director General and Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute (CI) Headquarters ordered her staff to tear down pages about Taiwanese academic institutions from the published conference document for a Chinese Studies conference in Portugal. She thought the materials were ‘contrary to Chinese regulations’. Her attitude was described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘bullying approach to academic freedom’. In a second development, since September, the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania both have closed their CI. Issues of ‘narrow curriculum and academic freedom’ have been raised. A former director of the Penn State Confucius Institute, Eric Hayot, is reported to have said that university administrators were frustrated by the ‘refusal to support research projects, including those on the environment, science and politics.
In June, the American Association of University Professors urged universities to sever ties with Confucius Institutes. In Canada too, the Toronto School Board cancelled its cooperation with CI fearing that the programme gave undue influence to China in Canadian education. It is not a secret that the CIs do not allow many topics including Taiwan, Tibet, Human Rights and Falun Gong.
CIs are the ‘non-profit’ arm of Chinese government with stated aim of promoting Chinese language and culture, supporting local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitating cultural exchanges. Somewhat similar to the British Council, France’s Alliance Française and Germany’s Goethe-Institut and our own Indian Council for Cultural Relations, except that unlike these, CIs function inside established universities, colleges and schools world over.
The dramatic growth of CIs reflect an ambitious China’s rush to expand its influence along with its growing economic clout. From its start in 2004, today there are over 480 CIs. They are part of the communist establishment, influence the academia and use funding to leverage it. By one estimate 100 million students are learning Chinese worldwide and there is a plan to establish 1000 CIs by 2020.
Contrast this with ICCR, our own soft power arm. It came into being in April 9, 1950 as a natural desire to connect with the world after independence. Unlike CI which has deliberately taken the ‘Confucius’ brand (Confucius’s teachings were banned by Mao and are still looked down upon by the establishment), ICCR, as an autonomous organisation benefitted from the scholarship and wisdom of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India’s first education minister.
Unlike CI, ICCR is autonomous and connects India’s culture with the outside world in a give and take manner. In 64 years of existence it has only 37 overseas centres. Its mission statement beautifully surmises India’s liberal non inflicting soft power vision, ‘to promote a communion of cultures and a creative dialogue among nations.’ Its emphasis on striving ‘to articulate and demonstrate the diversity and richness’ of India highlights our age old spirit of accommodation. The ICCR offers scholarships to overseas students from over 70 countries, publishes books, sponsors arts and crafts exhibitions abroad and also hosts overseas exhibitions in India.
The difference in the functioning of these two establishments offers a fascinating glimpse in the very values that China and India cherish. Mao once said, ‘letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.’ But it is in India’s democratic courtyard that thousand flowers blossom and therefore its soft power from yoga to Ayurveda becomes more relevant and effective.
India does not offer generous funding but its diversity, multicultural society and democratic polity work like magic. India offers some of the best talent required to serve the diverse need of our connected and interdependent world. Our diaspora, Bollywood, cuisine, performing arts and varied heritage are able to engage the world and thus add to soft power with or without government help. Alas this can’t be said of China which has to work hard to use its soft power. And that includes tearing pages from conference literature and imposing limits on academic freedom. In effect the difference is somewhat between that of Mao and the Maulana. While Mao was a ruthless strategist, Maulana was in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru a ‘Mir-i- Karawan’ (the caravan leader), and ‘a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few’ ‘The Emperor of learning’ remarked Mahatma Gandhi about Azad counting him as ‘a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras’. Compared to most other countries, India has a perennially renewable source of energy called ‘soft power’.
