The Soft Power of Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year celebrations in London–Photo by Lalitphat Phunchuang on Unsplash

A few years ago, when I started my Twitter analysis, I was surprised to see that most of the US Congress members posted about Chinese New Year. Some broadened it out to Lunar New Year, but most called the holiday Chinese New Year, and most indicated which year it was in the zodiac (i.e. Happy Year of the Tiger, complete with a tiger emoji 🐅). It’s been a bigger thing in the West more generally in recent years–noticeably in terms of marketing, as the supermarkets advertise Chinese takeaway meals with “Chinese New Year” labels. M&S goes as far as indicating that it’s the Year of the Tiger on its packaging. It’s an annual Google doodle. My son’s primary school class celebrates it every year, with arts & crafts (paper lanterns, dragons) and stories about China. While I think I was vaguely aware of it as a kid, maybe through Sesame Street, it seems that the holiday is an increasingly recognisable and well-regarded part of Chinese culture in the West, extending beyond the Chinese diaspora.

The names “Chinese New Year” and “Lunar New Year” are used interchangeably in the West, with the latter being used to acknowledge that it’s celebrated by other countries in East and Southeast Asia, such as Korea and Malaysia. The name “Chinese New Year” dominates in terms of usage, however–a Google search for Lunar New Year produces 2.4 billion results, while Chinese New Year produces 4.2 billion. #ChineseNewYear trends over #LunarNewYear on Twitter, and of course the use of English and the platform Twitter indicate that these are generally not Chinese people talking about it. The association of the holiday with China specifically, rather than Lunar New Year more generally, makes it part of the nation’s soft power–it’s a cultural resource that makes China attractive to the rest of the world.

Chinese New Year presents an opportunity for China to showcase a range of different cultural aspects–its history, traditional folklore, food, music, dance, etc. Confucius Institutes around the world take advantage of increased interest in the holiday to share Chinese culture and traditions.

In celebration of #ChineseNewYear, some of our teachers are sharing what the new year means to them and their favourite #traditions of #China’s biggest festival. Today we hear from Emma, who shares how she celebrates the #SpringFestival with her parents at home in China. #CNY2022 pic.twitter.com/l85JygIBhr

— Manchester Confucius Institute (@ConfuciusMCR) February 1, 2022

Do events like Chinese New Year actually influence people’s perceptions of China, though? This post on Modern Diplomacy from 2018 emphasises the positive aspects of Chinese New Year as a cultural showcase, but some of its arguments reveal the limitations of one-sided celebrations of culture as a soft power tool. It suggested the emphasis on pandas and harmony with nature in Chinese culture was evidence of the country’s eco-friendly credentials. The authors claimed “the rise of China would not be completed at the cost of the ecological environment like many other countries did in history.” This has been shown to be untrue, as China’s development has generated huge amounts of pollution. According to a piece on Statista, “China released 10.67 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, making it by far the largest world’s largest polluter that year. While most countries experienced dramatic emission reductions in 2020 due to COVID-19, China was one of only a handful of countries where emissions increased.” It’s still nowhere near the overall levels of pollution from the US, but these figures contradict the above statement about China’s rise being eco-friendly.

In addition to the environmental concerns, there is the matter of human rights abuses in China, from silencing journalists and activists to the genocide of China’s Muslim minority, the Uyghurs. No amount of celebrating cultural traditions can counteract the negative impact of its human rights abuses and climate destruction. It’s like expecting American-style Christmas traditions to make up for U.S. military aggression and drone strikes in the Middle East, or making up for colonial legacies in Africa (i.e. Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”). Soft power without policy substance is ineffective.

So, we had our dumplings and egg fried rice and fortune cookies (an American invention), and George showed us his lantern and dragon crafts from school, and we looked up our horoscopes for the Year of the Tiger. But we can balance this celebration of Chinese culture with an acknowledgement that China’s government is responsible for some terrible things. It’s what many people around the world have done with the West for decades–they can enjoy Western films and television, eat Western foods and wear jeans, and love and respect individual American/British/French etc. people, while condemning some of the actions of Western governments and militaries. It’s a very grown-up, nuanced way of looking at the world, and something that exchange diplomacy can promote, by giving people that blend of policy and cultural knowledge.

Out Now: The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy

The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy is officially published! It’s been a pleasure to contribute to this volume, edited by Dr. Colin Alexander, who I’ve known since our MA days at Leeds, and contributed to by a couple of other former Leeds folks, Gary Rawnsley and Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob (none of the 4 of us are at Leeds now, but you can see from this book that there used to be a thriving PD group!).

My chapter tries to be a bit innovative and plays around with theory more than we generally see in exchange diplomacy research. It was definitely an effort to leave my comfort zone and challenge myself (and readers) to think differently about exchanges and where they fit within the larger contexts of public diplomacy, international education, and statecraft more generally.

Looking forward to getting my hard copy and reading the other contributions, especially from the non-Leeds folks whose work I’m less familiar with. This autumn, we’re going to be holding a series of virtual talks on the book, with contributing authors sharing their chapters and answering questions. I’ll be posting more details about those closer to the time.

Replacing Erasmus+: Wales’s New International Learning Exchange

Wales may have voted for Brexit in 2016, but it looks like Welsh higher education didn’t want to leave Erasmus+ and turn its back on exchange diplomacy.

The Welsh Government and Cardiff University have developed a new exchange programme for Welsh universities that will “fill the gaps Turing leaves.” There are several key differences between Erasmus+ and the UK Government’s new Turing Scheme, and this new programme addresses the major points of contention around reciprocity and categories of exchange. While the Turing Scheme funds only UK students to go overseas, the New International Learning Exchange facilitates travel in both directions–its first four years are projected to fund 15,000 participants from Wales going abroad, and 10,000 foreign participants coming to Wales. This is a smaller scale than Turing (which proposed 35,000 participants in its first year), but Wales is a much smaller country–and it’s still eligible to participate in the Turing Scheme, too. The Welsh scheme also facilitates youth coming to Wales for work, like Erasmus+, which the Turing Scheme does not include.

“Kirsty Williams, Wales’ education minister, said: ‘We have been clear that international exchange programmes, which bring so many benefits to participants, as well as their education providers and wider community, should build on the excellent opportunities that the Erasmus programme offered.

‘We owe it to this next generation of students and learners to have the same opportunities previous years had.'”

Richard Adams, Wales sets up its own Erasmus programme, The Guardian, 21 March 2021

I’m so glad to see this development–hopefully the UK Department of Education will learn from its devolved counterparts and address these gaps to create a two-way, long-term Turing Scheme that covers more than just UK students. Only then will it adequately replace Erasmus+.

Now More Than Ever: the Fulbright Program in times of strained relations

The Fulbright Program with China and Hong Kong has been suspended, as part of an executive order on 14 July. Tucked away under section 3 (i), he tells heads of relevant agencies to “take steps to terminate the Fulbright exchange program with regard to China and Hong Kong with respect to future exchanges for participants traveling both from and to China or Hong Kong.”

This is not the first time a Fulbright exchange program has been suspended–it’s not even the first time that the US-China program has been suspended–but to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a US president has used an executive order to suspend Fulbright exchanges.

In the past, exchanges have usually been suspended due to war. The Korean War broke out less than two months after an exchange agreement was signed, and the program was suspended before any exchanges had taken place. The Iran Fulbright Program was suspended from 1953-57 due to a lack of funding, rather than a political cause–that came later, in 1979, when the Iran program was suspended due to the Islamic revolution. The first suspension with China also came with a revolution, in 1949. In 1989, China suspended Fulbright exchanges following the Tiananmen Square incident (the former CAO in China at the time, Michael McCarry, wrote about the contrast between that suspension and the current one here on the PDC blog). Trump’s decision to end the US-China Fulbright Program right now doesn’t fit with any of these precedents.

It also doesn’t fit with the apparent mission of this executive order, which was to end preferential treatment of Hong Kong over mainland China (the argument being that it’s no longer sufficiently autonomous to warrant that difference in treatment). Other points in the text align with that purpose–revoking license exemptions for exports, for example–but this does not. It simply ends the Fulbright Program for both China and Hong Kong, rather than, for instance, removing special provisions for applicants to/from Hong Kong (if they had existed). It doesn’t fit, which makes it just seem like a knee-jerk reaction–and therefore typical of Trump’s clumsy foreign policy style.

“The latest move by the White House seems to confirm a transactional view toward U.S.-China relations, in which the Trump administration is willing to sacrifice a source of long-term relationship and knowledge building in a bid to punish current Chinese behavior. Such shortsightedness, however, is likely to damage bilateral ties further down the road by politicizing nuanced vehicles of exchange between China and the United States.”

Eleanor Albert, The Diplomat, 22 July 2020

I particularly liked that description–it captures the administration’s short-term, reactionist approach towards this very long-term, slow-moving activity. They don’t understand its nuance, clearly.

During times of strained relations, exchange diplomacy is needed more than ever. Exchanges offer a way for people to get to know and understand the people of another country–even (and especially) when their governments don’t see eye-to-eye. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that exchanges make long-term contributions to participants’ professional and personal lives, and the lives of those around them in both the home and host countries–their colleagues, peers, students, friends and families. When the “official” situation between two countries is tense, for whatever reasons, these unofficial ties between individual citizens of each nation can offer pathways to understanding and resolution. It’s why the Pew Global Attitudes Survey often finds that respondents around the world have favourable views of “the American people”, even when their view of “the United States of America” has soured. People make a distinction between the country and its people, in part because of exchanges and other opportunities they’ve had to meet foreign nationals face-to-face and get to know each other.

Presidents and their foreign policy agendas come and go, but the Fulbright Program endures–next year will mark its 75th anniversary. I’m confident that this suspension (and many other things about the Trump era) will be just a blip, and US-Chinese exchanges can resume and improve in the future.

Fulbright and Race

A few years ago, I noticed gaps in the literature on educational exchanges/PD around race and gender. It seemed odd, because academics always seem to include those two approaches to a subject, and rightly so. It’s a step towards addressing the dominant white Western male voice and perspectives that are so often the default. Including perspectives on race is often done as an afterthought— Anamik Saha pointed out how textbooks usually include “the bit about race” somewhere around chapter ten. I would love to see a study on the Fulbright Program and race. I’m not qualified to undertake it myself, as I don’t want to be a white researcher trying to add a race lens to their work. I would hate to see women’s experiences in the Fulbright Program ‘mansplained,’ so I won’t do that with race in my work. Here are a couple of potential areas to explore…

1) Senator Fulbright had a bad record on race.

As much as we can admire his ant-war stance during Vietnam, and appreciate his promotion of educational and cultural exchanges, we have to acknowledge his record on race.

Fulbright voted against integrating schools. He claimed it was a matter of representing the views of his constituents—if he wanted to stay in Congress, he had to vote the way his constituents wanted him to. He said they didn’t care about his views on foreign policy—he could vote his conscience on those issues, because his constituents didn’t know or care about them. But when it came to integration, they cared because it effected their day to day lives, and they were outspoken in their opposition.

As an interesting aside, when Johnson and Fulbright fell out over Vietnam, Johnson claimed that Fulbright’s opposition to the war was because he was racist—Fulbright ‘didn’t care about brown people’, whereas Johnson believed in helping them. Fulbright rejected that, of course, and questioned how bombing was helping them.

I always wondered whether it really was a matter of political survival or if Fulbright was racist. When I interviewed his biographer, Randall Bennett Woods, he was an elitist rather than a racist, and his views on segregation and race transformed as his political views shifted towards the left throughout the 1960s and into the 70s.

“You know, Fulbright was a segregationist to begin with…But his views changed dramatically. Like so many white middle-class Southerners like my parents, he was radicalized by the civil rights movement. His racism had more to do with class than it did with color. If he was dealing with the elite of Ghana or Kenya or India, skin color didn’t matter. If you were educated and part of the elite, you were acceptable to him, so it wasn’t race prejudice as much as class prejudice. But he even moved away from that.”

28 January 2013 Interview with Randall Bennett Woods

2) Information gaps lead to literature gaps.

The lack of research on race and exchanges might be down to practical challenges for researchers: missing demographic information. Data on race (and gender) hasn’t been collected throughout the program’s history, so it’s difficult to paint a full picture of BIPOC participation in the Fulbright Program.

An organization’s decision to collect data on race is complicated, as there are risks involved in both options–acknowledging or ignoring the role of race. National census data collection illustrates this challenge on a large scale. Some countries ask about race/ethnicity, while others do not (this is a very interesting 2017 report about EU countries’ varied practices). France is a well-known example of not asking about race. Race, ethnicity, and religion are all deemed irrelevant to French identity, at least in terms of official statistics. It’s about liberté, égalité, fraternité instead.

But excluding race from data has significant consequences. It can exacerbate inequality, because problems must be seen in order to be addressed. Discrimination can be swept under the rug more easily. In terms of the current fight against COVID-19, for example, France has noted a high number of cases in “poor and multiracial communities,” but because they don’t include race in their COVID-19 data, they haven’t made that connection.

“While the United States and Britain have come to recognize that their racial minorities are dying disproportionately of covid-19, France inhibits itself from making that sort of assessment. Critics say that may limit the country’s ability to identify and protect vulnerable populations, especially in the event of a second wave of the pandemic.”

James McAuley, “How France’s aversion to collecting data on race affects its coronavirus response,” Washington Post, 26 June 2020

The U.S. is currently undertaking a census, and as this piece from the Daily Show points out, when people of color don’t participate in a census, their household might be assumed to be white. I was shocked that this was a thing…I assumed that if a household’s demographics are unknown, they would just be counted as “unknown”, not added to the local majority count. That’s crazy.

What do we not know about BIPOC participation in the Fulbright Program, due to this missing demographic data? We don’t know of people of color are underrepresented in the program. We don’t know whether they apply at the same rates as their white peers. We don’t know the top destinations of US Fulbright students of color, the top academic fields of Fulbright scholars of color, etc. There’s also the more qualitative side of this information–we don’t know their stories, good or bad: their experiences with discrimination, their achievements and cultural knowledge gains. As I mentioned in the recent post about Nancy Snow’s webinar, when exchange students experience discrimination, it’s going to have a major impact on their views of the host country.

3) Some profiles of BIPOC Fulbrighters:

–Ruth Simmons, first African American woman to head a major college or university (Smith College), and the first African American President of an Ivy League institution (Brown University). Fulbright to France, 1967.

–BIPOC Fulbrighters who have been Heads of State, including two Presidents of Ghana: John Atta Mills (Fulbright 1970) and Kofi Abrefa Busia (Fulbright 1954). (Why haven’t I seen a study on Ghana’s Fulbright Program?!)

–John Hope Franklin–Pre-eminent American historian who also played a significant role in the Fulbright Program’s history. He was a civil rights activist, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in 1965–while he was a member of the Board of Foreign Scholarships (appointed 1962). Fulbright to Australia, 1960.

–Joy Buolamwini, computer scientist and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League that tackles algorithmic bias–the failure of facial recognition software to detect the features of people of color. Fulbright to Zambia, 2012.

I’ll close here and publish, as this draft has been dragging on for a month and I never have time to do it justice. I would love reading suggestions re: exchanges and race, or public diplomacy generally and race–I’m familiar with some of the work on jazz diplomacy, but would love to see more. If you have any recommendations, please do get in touch!

The Short-Sightedness of “Unshackling” British Diplomacy from Brussels

Once again I’m finding news to be very distracting–between Trump and Brexit, it’s hard to focus (I feel like I’ve been saying that since 2016, though…). But I noticed something in the news today that actually is relevant to public diplomacy scholars–British diplomats are leaving Brussels now, before Brexit even happens.

British diplomats will pull out from the EU’s institutional structures of power in Brussels within days, under plans being drawn up by Downing Street.

In an attempt to reinforce the message that the UK is leaving the EU by 31 October, “do or die”, the UK will stop attending the day-to-day meetings that inform the bloc’s decision-making.

The move under discussion is said by UK officials to be in line with Boris Johnson’s first statement in the House of Commons, in which he said he would “unshackle” British diplomacy from EU affairs.

British diplomats to pull out from EU decision-making meetings within days, The Guardian, 12 August 2019

Admittedly, I didn’t watch Boris Johnson’s statement, but it’s not surprising and it sounds just like him. It’s a symbolic move, as the article says, and would just end up hurting UK interests in the end because we’re removing ourselves from discussions that impact us. “Do or die” is the most undiplomatic language to describe foreign affairs–but Boris is a very undiplomatic figure, too.

In dealing with this hot mess of foreign policy, one expert was quoted as saying that the UK would need to invest heavily in public diplomacy, including involvement from the private sector:

Paul Adamson, a visiting professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, said the UK government would need to build up its embassy in Brussels after Brexit.

He said: “One of the many ironies of Brexit is that the UK government will have to significantly increase its diplomatic presence in Brussels – as well as in key EU capitals – both to find out what is going on in meetings from which it will be excluded but also to try to influence the direction of EU policy making. Brussels decisions will continue to impact the UK.

“[The government] and its agencies will have to invest heavily in public diplomacy to repair alliances and to forge new ones. The private sector, whether its business, civil society, the think-tank world and the like, will very much need to be part of this exercise”.

British diplomats to pull out from EU decision-making meetings within days, The Guardian, 12 August 2019

Although it definitely makes some good points, this statement reminded me of a key takeaway from Phil Taylor’s Masters class in public diplomacy:

No amount of public diplomacy can make up for bad policy.

It is not a solution for the inevitable problems that will arise if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal on 31 October. It’s not an alternative form of international relations, or a consolation prize. Public diplomacy works best as an adjunct, supporting traditional diplomatic relations between states by offering additional (not alternative) forms of engagement. It also includes listening, something that the current UK government doesn’t seem interested in, given this premature disengagement in Brussels.

To illustrate the concept of PD not being a cure-all, Phil Taylor used to use the example of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Charlotte Beers’ failed efforts in the Middle East during the Iraq War. The “Shared Values” campaign was a particularly memorable disaster–a commercial-length TV program showing Muslim Americans talking about their life in America.

“Actors in the program talked of tolerance and religious freedom in lines including, ‘In my neighborhood all the non-Muslims, I see that they care a lot about family values just as much as I do. I didn’t quite see any prejudice anywhere in my neighborhood after September 11.’ Several countries in the Middle East refused to air the programs entirely.”

Anna Tiedeman, p. 22

Phil used to point out a major flaw in the “Shared Values” strategy: Middle East audiences didn’t want to hear “how good life was for Muslim Americans” while at the same time their country was being invaded by US and coalition troops, homes were being bombed, and innocent civilians were dying. “Good for them,” he’d shrug, “but what about us?”

These international broadcasting and information campaigns weren’t the only efforts–the US also re-established the Iraq Fulbright Program in 2003, and included other exchange initiatives in its public diplomacy efforts. Teresa Brawner Bevis’s book on post-9/11 US-Middle East educational exchange noted a dramatic rise in Americans studying Arabic and Middle East area studies, as well as studying abroad in the region–but this may have been too little, too late:

“The increase in numbers of Americans studying abroad was good news for policy makers, who for decades had lamented how few people in the United States studied the Middle East, a situation that created shortages of expertise in the military, intelligence services, and diplomatic corps.”

Bevis, 2016, Higher Education Exchange between America and the Middle East in the Twenty-First Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 87

The long-standing, systemic problems in US-Middle East relations, combined with the context of the Iraq War, meant that public diplomacy efforts could never repair Middle Eastern audiences’ negative perception of America. US foreign policy would always nullify any amount of public diplomacy.

Boris Johnson doesn’t care about that, of course, but it’s something the British people and officials should take notice of–crashing out of the EU with a “do or die” attitude will be remembered, and it will matter far more to global perceptions of the UK than any version of a British ‘Shared Values’ campaign.

Happy 73rd Anniversary to the Fulbright Program!

On this day in 1946, President Truman signed the Fulbright Act into law. As I did in last year’s post, the program’s anniversary is always an occasion to reflect on the program and what it’s achieved over the years.

Thinking back over its 73 year history, one of the things that stands out most to me is the program’s consistency and stability. The Fulbright Program has shown an amazing ability to survive. It’s outlasted political chaos and economic fluctuations, wars and diplomatic crises, and supportive and critical occupants of the White House.

Recently, I was looking through my old archive photos from University of Arkansas trip, and I came across this gem. The clipping was enclosed in a letter to J.W. Fulbright from Arkansas Gazette editor James O. Powell (Fulbright’s reply letter was dated 9 January 1978). At the time, the Fulbright Program was being shifted from the US State Department to the new, reorganised version of the US Information Agency (USIA), the US International Communication Agency (USICA). This Carter-era bureaucratic shift wasn’t an attempt to turn exchanges into propaganda, as the cartoon suggests. The Carter administration was supportive of exchanges, and it was really more of an effort to shift USIA towards two-way, mutual understanding promotion, instead of its original overseas ‘information’ (propaganda) remit. Despite the fact I disagree with this characterisation of the Carter administration’s USICA, I still like the cartoon, because it perfectly captures the tension between the two conceptualisations of exchange diplomacy–is it about education and culture, or is it about persuasion and national images? Are they mutually exclusive concepts, or is there room for both aspects in exchanges?

University of Arkansas Library Special Collections, Fulbright Post-Senatorial Papers, Series 4, Box 22, Folder 2.

Note the “America First” slogan on the eagle, too–Trump didn’t invent the phrase. This attitude is nothing new, and it’s part of a bigger concept of what the US is/does/stands for. I love that it’s opposed to education and culture. That’s appropriate for the current wave of populist politics–cutting public education funding, cutting the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities, rejecting climate science and vaccine research, generally anti-expertise attitudes.

Yet, despite all of that, the Fulbright Program carries on, as it has for the past 73 years, quietly bringing students and scholars, professors and researchers into contact with their international colleagues, facilitating the exchange of ideas and promoting mutual understanding. When America’s President is viewed unfavourably around the world, the American people are still regarded in a positive light–and I think it’s thanks, in part, to interpersonal contact.

Pew Research Center, 2018

When you can relate the abstract idea of America to an actual person you know, not just Hollywood, or Coca-Cola, or blue jeans, or Disney, you can get past its leader. This gives some hope for other countries, too–if you know a British person, you’ll know they’re not all like Boris Johnson. My Chinese students are not Xi Jinping, my Brazilian friends are not Bolsonaro, etc. (That said, when you have a leader that’s viewed favourably, it helps!)

May the Fulbright Program continue bringing people together, showing Americans and international participants the realities of life in other countries and cultures, and promoting genuine mutual understanding of international affairs that goes beyond the headlines.

Out now! The Legacy of J. William Fulbright: Policy, Power and Ideology

The edited volume with my book chapter is now officially published! It’s listed on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, Google Books, Jstor, and sometimes I’m even listed as a contributing author! I’m so excited to see it in print! I love the cover, too–it has a definite 1960s, retro feel to it, and the ’60’s were the Senator’s prime years.

This book came out of a fantastic conference I took part in at the University of Arkansas, 1-2 September 2015.

I’m hiding away behind Nancy Snow–it was such a great experience to finally meet her, talk about our mutual interests in exchange diplomacy, and share memories of Phil Taylor!

My chapter is much improved after being rewritten a couple of times since then, and it’s not the only thing that’s changed:

9 week old George in our conference hotel room…

Our walking, talking 4 year old George today!

I’m so proud of the editors and contributors for all of their hard work, and so grateful that I had the opportunity to take part in this project. It covers a great mix of biography, history, sociology and public diplomacy. All academic books try to emphasise their originality, but it really does add some new perspectives and insights on the Senator and on his namesake exchange program. My chapter and Alice Garner & Diane Kirkby’s chapter bring a discussion of gender to the collection that, until now, has been ignored in studies of the Fulbright Program. Well done everybody!

China and global higher education

In terms of the global flow of international students, there’s no bigger actor than China–they send hundreds of thousands of students overseas each year (662,100 in 2018) and institutions in the US, UK, Australia and Canada compete for them and the economic benefits and cultural diversity they bring to campus with them. There has been an expansion of higher education opportunities for Chinese students, with more students from ordinary backgrounds pursuing degrees overseas–it’s no longer exclusively for wealthy elites. Chinese students are also increasingly likely to return home after their studies–fears of international higher education contributing to the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon are not reflected in practice.

The Diplomat recently featured an interview with former Ambassador and current VP of International Programs at Washington State University, Dr. Asif Chaudhry. When Dr. Chaudhry was asked about U.S. policymakers’ concerns about Confucius Institutes (CI), his response captured the key elements of the debate very clearly & concisely:

“This can be a very controversial topic because of the potential for conflicts among issues of protecting U.S. interests, principles of academic freedom, and concern over curricular control and Chinese state censorship. In this complex environment, it is important to not lose sight of the value of promoting shared cultural understanding. It seems more productive to ask a somewhat different set of questions: a) is the current CI model the best way to achieve the goals of providing Chinese language learning and Chinese cultural understanding and/or, b) how else can this be done without hosting a CI in an era in which it is crucial to intellectually engage with China and protect the integrity of the goals and values of higher education?”

Dr. Asif Chaudhry, US-Asia Education Exchange: The Impact of Public Diplomacy

I particularly liked his second question, the idea of alternative ways of engaging with China that go beyond the Confucius Institute. Exchanges are an obvious answer, as are overseas campuses that bring Western institutions to mainland China. Last year, the government ended many of its partnerships with foreign universities, but they remain a significant link between Chinese students and Western faculty.

I also liked Dr. Chaudhry’s emphasis on cultural understanding. He connected discussions of U.S. policy towards Asian students to larger questions of cultural exchange and understanding.

“Without exposing U.S. students and scholars to other cultures of the world and vice versa, we cannot ensure a mindful understanding and appreciation of each other in a global economy. Policy decisions that inhibit the free flow of ideas or the ability to interact with each other are ultimately detrimental to U.S. interests at large.”

ibid.

Connecting U.S. interests to international education is a classic way of generating political support–Senator Fulbright did it in the 50’s when he argued for exchange funding as part of a larger Cold War strategy. Today, it might be the global economy instead–very important, especially in light of Trump’s trade war with China. American policymakers worry about the impact of Confucius Institutes, but the trade war has much more immediate, tangible effects that are worth worrying about.

What I’m Reading: Rewire

A colleague who studies social media passed this book onto me–I thought it sounded interesting, but I didn’t realise how surprisingly relevant to exchange diplomacy it would be, too. Zuckerman points to the example of his friend Johan Ugander, who co-authored a paper on international ties on Facebook. As a Swedish-American, he has more international ties than a typical social media user. This has knock-on effects, in terms of exposing those in their social networks to news and other shared content from different places. In exchange diplomacy, this is really part of the ‘multiplier effect’, where exchange participants pass on their knowledge gains post-sojourn to those in their social circles.

“People like Ugander who’ve lived their lives in different corners of the world are likely the key if we want social media to give us a broad view of the world and help us care about people we don’t otherwise know. With a Swedish citizen in my network of friends, I’m likely to be exposed to news and perspective I otherwise would have missed. Whether that exposure turns into interest and attention is a function of my receptivity and Johan’s ability to provide context around the news he’s sharing.”

Ethan Zuckerman, Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), p. 116

Exchange diplomacy is all about connection and cosmopolitanism. The underlying logic of exchange diplomacy is that connections between people of different nations/groups/ways of thinking will lead to a sense of shared humanity and a cosmopolitan mindset.

Has the ease with which we can connect digitally with others around the world made the face-to-face connections of exchange diplomacy obsolete?

I would argue that it hasn’t at all, because there is a gap between the potential to connect digitally and the actual ways we use these digital tools. We may be able to access platforms that enable discussion with foreign publics, but we don’t necessarily use them. Our online social networks mirror our offline friendship circles, and we develop filter bubbles just as we spend time with like-minded people in real life.

Furthermore, exchange diplomacy processes might be enhanced with the development of social media, not rendered irrelevant by them. As Zuckerman suggests, world travellers might play an important role in broadening online networks and making them more cosmopolitan–if we have a personal connection, a friend-of-a-friend, then news about a distant country we’ve never visited can feel more relevant and meaningful.