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China — reaching out to the world

Pallavi Aiyar

There is a global fascination now for all things Chinese. On its part, Beijing gives due importance to cultivating soft power.

WHILE THE awakening of the sleeping dragon that was China is usually framed in economic and strategic terms, Beijing's cultural clout or soft power is also on the rise. Soft power, a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye, refers to a country's ability to influence others by the attractiveness of its ideas and values. For decades it was a term primarily associated with the United States, given the ability of Hollywood and Mickey Mouse to attract across borders and the importance of English as a global language.

Gradually, however, the supremacy of U.S. soft power is being challenged by the might of Chinese culture and language. Chinese food has for long been its most successful cultural export: witness wayside dhabas in even small Indian towns proudly serving up chow mein and paneer Manchurian. But chopsuey is no longer alone in representing China's cultural currency abroad.

Chinese tourism is burgeoning; visitors from China rather than Japan now constitute the dominant tourist group in Southeast Asia. Chinese cinema, art, and traditional medicine are all booming globally. And Mandarin Chinese, already the world's most spoken language, is gearing up to force English to look to its laurels.

"In the 70s, everyone in Singapore only wanted to learn English because it was seen as the most important language of the future," said Choo Shuo Yen, a Singaporean student who recently completed a degree in International Relations from Beijing University. "But now, it's seen as a disadvantage to not be fluent in Mandarin," he explained. Thus, in 2004 the official language policy of Singapore was reformed to place greater emphasis on Chinese. Shuo Yen added that not only ethnic Chinese, but even Malays and Indians in Singapore were taking a greater interest in learning Mandarin.

According to the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL) in Beijing, there are approximately 30 million people learning Chinese around the world and it is China's stated purpose to ensure that this number grows to 100 million by 2007. It's an audacious goal, and the government is backing it by funding — to the tune of nearly $25 million a year.

Currently, more than 2,300 universities in about 100 countries offer courses in Chinese and thousands are flocking to China's shores in the hope of mastering the language. There are now more foreign students in China, (estimated at more than 86,000) than Chinese students abroad.

NOCFL statistics show that nearly 800 universities have begun Chinese language courses in the U.S. and that in the ASEAN region Chinese language learners number 1.6 million. South Korea's Seoul National University announced as far back as 2003 that Mandarin had replaced English as the most popular major amongst liberal arts students. Some 40,000 Korean students are currently studying in China. Even in South Africa, Mandarin is making inroads with a major TV company having begun to broadcast Chinese language teaching programmes.

Not surprisingly, interest in the HSK, a standardised exam to test proficiency in Chinese similar to the TOEFL test for English, has surged. From a decade ago when only some 2,000 people appeared for the exam, the number of test takers leaped to 117,600 in 2005. Significantly, the profile of those taking the HSK has also changed from comprising largely academics and linguists to include large numbers of entrepreneurs and white-collar professionals.

Driving this boom in learning Mandarin is the perception of the economic opportunities that China offers and a concomitant sense that the future belongs in the hands of the Middle Kingdom. Multinational businesses across China now routinely require foreign employees to be fluent in Mandarin.

To ensure that the demand for Mandarin continues to grow, Beijing had begun to establish a series of "Confucius Institutes" aimed at promoting the teaching of Chinese abroad. The first of these was inaugurated in November 2004 in Seoul. Agreements to establish institutes have also been reached with countries as diverse as the U.S., Uzbekistan, Kenya, and Sweden.

Reflecting the manner in which the Chinese have come to use the promotion of their language as a diplomatic tool, China's Education Ministry announced a plan to help train hundreds of U.S. educators in Mandarin just weeks before President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington DC in late April. The initiative will bring more than 150 guest teachers to U.S. high schools from China and immerse nearly 600 American teachers in Chinese culture and language through summer institutes.

Tourist hub

That China's cultural clout is on the ascent is also reflected by its emergence as a tourist hub of significance. In 2004, China received 109 million visitors according to official figures and overtook Italy as the fourth-most visited country in the world after France, Spain, and the U.S. Beijing's Forbidden City and the Army of Terracotta Warriors in Xian now attract more picture-snapping tourists than Florence's Uffizi Gallery or Rome's Coliseum. Moreover, the World Tourism Organisation forecasts that by 2020 China will become the world's most visited country as well as the fourth-largest source of outbound tourists.

For decades, travel for Chinese citizens themselves was restricted. Recent years, however, have seen the acquisition of passports become easier and a growing number of countries being given approved destination status (ADS) by Beijing. As a result, literally millions of Chinese are now travelling abroad, bringing with them an image of a newly confident and prosperous China. According to the National Tourism Administration, close to 26 million Chinese citizens travelled abroad in 2005. Their impact, however, was not just limited to their sheer number but also the liberal amounts of cash they spent.

A Goldman Sachs report published last December concluded that the amount spent by the average Chinese tourist "is already on par with, if not slightly higher than that of the Japanese."

For Chinese tourists abroad, finding home-style entertainment has also never been easier with directors and actresses from China having taken the world of international cinema by storm. Films such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers by director Zhang Yi Mou have set box office registers ringing across Europe, America, and Asia. Cementing her status as an upcoming international celebrity, actress Zhang Ziyi, the star of both films, was picked to be an award presenter for the second time running at the Oscar ceremony this year.

This year also saw Hollywood's first mega-production exclusively starring Chinese actresses in all the lead roles, grabbing headlines. The movie version of Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha, featured Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li as well Michelle Yeoh, a Malaysia-born ethnic Chinese.

While the choice of casting Chinese actresses to represent Japanese geishas has proved controversial, the filmmakers defended themselves by saying that casting decisions rested on star power and acting ability. In short, no Japanese actress today has the global profile of a Zhang Ziyi.

Chinese influence on directing style and camera work on Hollywood films is also visible from blockbusters such as The Matrix and Kill Bill. The latter, directed by Quentin Tarrantino was in fact partly filmed in Beijing. Almost every fight sequence in an American movie today has undertones of Chinese martial arts. Directors with Chinese affiliations like John Woo and Ang Lee have been amongst the world's most successful in recent years.

According to the Xinhua news agency, China has in fact emerged as the world's third largest film producer following India and the U.S., producing some 260 films in 2005. In 2005, Chinese films earned 1.65 billion yuan from overseas showing, a figure exceeding the revenue of imported foreign movies in China, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

The global fascination for all things Chinese also extends to Chinese art and traditional medicine. At Sotheby's first New York auction of contemporary Asian art held in late March, a painting by Chinese figurative painter Zhang Xiaogang almost broke the $1 million mark when it sold for $979,200, more than twice the auction house's high estimate of $350,000. In the U.S., where there are some 12,000 registered practitioners of Chinese medicine, medical insurance policies are increasingly beginning to include acupuncture.

Behind this burgeoning Chinamania is a conscious policy on the part of Beijing, that gives due recognition to the importance of cultivating soft power. Celebrating "friendship and culture years" with other powers like Russia, ASEAN, Italy, Egypt, and India — to name just a few — has become an important weapon in Beijing's diplomatic arsenal.

Of course, China still has a long road to travel before it can hope to match the might of the world's current reigning cultural hegemon: the U.S. It is highly unlikely, for example, that Mandarin Chinese will replace English as a global lingua franca. Mandarin has four tones and thousands of characters, making it torturously difficult to master. And while millions are now learning it as a second language, the numbers pale in comparison to those learning English, an estimated 375 million in China alone.

Nonetheless, the increasing muscularity of China's soft power that both reinforces and results from the country's economic vigour is also undeniable. As France celebrated the official "year of China in France" in 2004, the Eiffel Tower was bedecked with red lights and silk lanterns to celebrate the Chinese New Year. It would require a fertile imagination to conceive of the French feting the Fourth of July with similar enthusiasm. America might still be the world's greatest power, but with its continued focus on the war on terrorism and blunt, "you are either with us or against us" tone, it is China that is being able to project a comparatively soft touch.

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