Spreading Soft Power Through Language in Africa
China’s Confucius Institutes (CI)–government-funded centers for research and language...
china studies
The 2014 China Scholars Twitterati 100
The University of Nottingham’s Jonathan Sullivan has added a further 100 actively tweeting...
The Craze for Teaching Chinese may be a Misguided Fad
From Economist: “China will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are immense.” Thus Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a conference in 2006 entitled “Why every school should offer Mandarin”. Nearly two years later, the spectacular growth of the language in British schools […]
101 Misconceptions About China – angrychineseblogger
From The Angry Chinese Blogger‘s blog: While China is indeed becoming more and more accessible to foreigners, particularly those of a free spending nature, China is still, for all intensive purposes, a complete mystery to most foreigner. As such, it is common for non-Chinese to harbor a great many misconceptions about China. Some of which […]
How To Understand China Without Its Being Misunderstood – Tom Plate
Recommending Jeffrey Wasserstrom‘s new book about China, UCLA professor Tom Plate wrote on Seattle Times editorial section: Understanding China is going to remain irritatingly difficult. It’s an obviously important but intensely problematic place, with a possibly fabulous or possibly tragic future. We maybe have a better shot figuring out the future of India, or even […]
Have China Scholars All Been Bought? – Carsten A. Holz
From Far Eastern Economic review: Academics who study China, which includes the author, habitually please the Chinese Communist Party, sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously. Our incentives are to conform, and we do so in numerous ways: through the research questions we ask or don’t ask, through the facts we report or ignore, through our use […]
China scholarship, writ large – Berkeleyan
A promotional piece by UC Berkeley’s campus newsletter about the Berkeley China Initiative via its helmsman Sociology Professor Tom Gold: When a new adaptation of the 400-year-old opera The Peony Pavilion arrived at Zellerbach Hall last month, critics proclaimed it an artistic triumph. But it was more than that. The production’s U.S. premiere marked a […]
Online video game will aim to teach Chinese language, culture – Josh Jarman
From The State News (link): Made flash cards of vocabulary words? Check. Read study terms in textbook? Check. Played online video game with friends? Check? When MSU announced a new partnership with the Chinese government Monday to create the MSU Confucius Institute, which will offer online language courses in Mandarin Chinese, it also embarked on […]
Study in China key to future careers: American students – China Daily
From Xinhua News Agency (link): To a growing number of US students in China, study in the ancient country is no longer just a cultural experience it has become an important part of their future professional careers. Sam Gor, a 26-year-old student from Santa Clara, a county near San Francisco, said the purpose of his […]
British Library sets sights on the East – Anushka Asthana
From The Guardian (link): China and India – already braced to become two of the world’s greatest economic powers – are now expected to become two of its most important academic powerhouses. The British Library – renowned for collecting books, journals and artefacts from across the globe – is set to shift its focus from […]
China grows as study hotspot for U.S. students – Margo Buchanan
From the International Herald Tribune: China’s rise as an economic powerhouse is resulting in a rapid expansion of its system of higher education, making it the fastest-growing destination for American foreign exchange students, a study has found. The number of American students seeking higher education in China has never been greater, increasing by 90 percent […]
Red Hot China – Scott Jaschik
From Inside Higher Ed: At Northwestern University this fall, there are two sections of third-year Chinese, the first time ever that a second section has been needed. At Yale University, enrollment in introductory Chinese is up 68 percent from last year, and for the first time professors can remember, significant numbers of freshmen are arriving […]
Kazuto Tsukamoto: Chinese institutes spread word on culture
From The Asahi Shimbun: China has learned that the world wants more than just its yuan. So Beijing plans to further spread its influence through language and culture institutes in major centers of the world. Called Confucius Institutes after the fifth-century B.C. philosopher who greatly influenced Asian thought, these schools will offer both short and […]
Caroline Haydon: Chinese Revolution
“China is expected to become one of the world’s leading economies. So why are pupils still learning French rather than Mandarin?” an article in the Independent asks: “The British Council has historically promoted Britain in China,” says Carol Rennie, the secretary of the British Association for Chinese Studies. “Now, we all ought to be making […]
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