The official website of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has been featuring a “hot topic of concern” on cultural diplomacy. Running concurrently on the website of People’s Daily under the title Cultural Diplomacy Propagates China’s True Image,” it is a collection of articles on topics ranging from how to incorporate cultural diplomacy into the country’s pursuit of soft power to how to utilize overseas Chinese NGOs to globalize Chinese culture. Of special interest in this collection of articles is a July 27th piece titled “Cultural Diplomacy Nurtures without a Sound” by Wu Jianmin, president of the China Foreign Affairs University and former ambassador to the United Nations. Wu defines cultural diplomacy as soft power with three characteristics:
A 2004 opinion piece in the English edition of People’s Daily mapped out the subtler approach of cultural diplomacy as a strategic component of a country’s overall diplomacy:
This determination to “go abroad” culturally was reiterated in a 2005 People’s Daily opinion piece in a thinly veiled criticism of the United States:
As suggested in a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), declassified this past May, one way for Beijing to push its cultural diplomacy is to establish a global network of Confucius Institutes. Since the launch of a pilot program in 2004 in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, 160 such institutes have been created all over the world, including 13 in the United States. With the stated goal of “promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching,” Confucius Institutes worldwide are operated by China’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL). While there is no overt political or ideological element in the curriculum, NOCFL’s leadership is made up of top officials from 11 departments under the State Council, China’s cabinet. They include the minister of education, the vice minister of finance, the vice minister of foreign affairs, the deputy director of the state development and reform committee, and the deputy director of the information office of the State Council.
