China spreads cultural influence through Mandarin

The argument

China has a rich cultural history, and countries outside of China have actively been interested in Chinese culture for much of that history. The point matters because a language becomes a world language when people outside its borders want what is written and spoken in it, and China has attracted that interest repeatedly and at a distance. For example, before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans were interested in and admired China's Confucianism. Japan and the kingdom of Ryukyu, modern-day Okinawa, were interested in Chinese religion, art and tea-drinking, and the Japanese even found that learning Mandarin was important and interesting. The pattern therefore has precedent: cultural attraction has drawn foreigners to the language before, in periods when China was the region's centre of gravity. Today the same dynamic is operating on a much larger geographical scale. The opening of Confucius Institutes, alongside economic investment, in countries in Africa is an example of China's growing "soft power" — an infrastructure for teaching the language that follows the investment rather than competing with it. Young people in Uganda, East Africa, and Kenya enjoy learning Mandarin, and students at a Confucius Institute in Senegal report that through learning Mandarin they come to appreciate Chinese culture. What those students say next is the important part. They report finding more reasons that Senegalese and Chinese people are similar and compatible to live with one another, more so than Europeans who settle in Senegal. That is an attachment of a kind that trade figures alone do not produce, and it is what distinguishes durable linguistic influence from a passing commercial relationship — a generation choosing Mandarin because it feels closer to them than the languages of the former colonial powers. As China's "soft power" grows, so will the need and interest to learn Mandarin, especially in Africa, which is how Mandarin becomes the next world language.

Context

China has been extending its "soft power" through sharing a favorable view of Chinese language and culture. One example of China's "soft power" is through opening Confucius Institutes. The Confucius Institute is a Chinese cultural promotion organization that opens public educational partnerships between universities in China and elsewhere in the world. Confucius Institutes fund Chinese language and culture teaching in various places around the world for the purpose of cultural exchange and promoting mutual understanding between China and the world.

Premises

Counter-arguments

China's cultural influence may be growing, but other countries are still more powerful. The “China Adjacent Region” which includes Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the rest of Southeast Asia, and India have a greater population and economic power than China. Countries are wary of China's attempts to spread economic influence and attempt to police or even shut down Confucius Institutes (CI). CIs have been known to censor or gloss over issues such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, or Taiwan. Sweden, Germany, and the U.S. have shut down Confucius Institutes over possibilities of propaganda and conflict of interests. Some Africans are critical of China's Confucius Institutes and see China's efforts to spread Mandarin as linguistic colonization—exactly what the British did in the colonization period. In South and Southeast Asia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan have expressed concern and resentment about China's growing presence. Though China's cultural influence is spreading through the spread of Mandarin, many countries are still wary of China's policies and intentions to dominate the global field. While China's attempts to extend its "soft power" through economic partnerships are successful (particularly in Africa) its soft power campaign is limited by several factors including pollution, food safety, territorial disputes, and its authoritarian political system.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The historical cases do not establish the pattern. European admiration for Confucianism produced almost no Mandarin speakers, and Japan borrowed the writing system in a particular period rather than adopting the spoken language — in both examples cultural admiration and language adoption came apart. [Rejecting P2] State-sponsored institutes are an attempt to project influence, not a measure of its success. Several countries have closed them over concerns about political control of content, and in parts of Africa the programme has been read as linguistic colonisation rather than as exchange. [Rejecting P3] Enthusiasm among students at language institutes is a weak base for the conclusion. Learners there are self-selected, the numbers are small against global English learning, and most are acquiring Mandarin for trade access rather than switching their working language. [Rejecting C] World-language status turns on factors the premises never reach: the installed base of speakers, use as a lingua franca between third parties who share no other language, the learning cost of the writing system, and the entrenchment of English in science and technology publishing.