China’s policy of Chinese as a foreign language and the use of overseas Confucius Institutes

摘要

China’s economic power is changing attitudes towards Mandarin Chinese worldwide. Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) consequently emerges as a subject for research as well as an educational market. This article investigates the modern evolution of CFL curriculum policy that has led to the current rapid growth of the Confucius Institute (CI) around the world, using media sources including government policy, Confucius Institutes themselves, newspaper reports from the Internet, and individual blogs posted by teachers of Chinese language, as well as university academics’ observations. It opens up a discussion of the implications of the development of China’s CFL policy, particularly through the Confucius Institutes, in diversifying the world’s lingua franca and sharing the market of education in the coming era. The analysis indicates that it is unlikely that Chinese will displace English as the world’s most widely used language in the foreseeable future, but the view that the Chinese language is an important element in the future unity of the world has been voiced.