Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Europe Compared 9789811555916, 9789811555923

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Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Europe Compared Edited by Jarmila Ptáčková · Ondřej Klimeš Gary Rawnsley

Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy

Jarmila Ptáˇcková · Ondˇrej Klimeš · Gary Rawnsley Editors

Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Europe Compared

Editors Jarmila Ptáˇcková Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences Prague, Czech Republic

Ondˇrej Klimeš Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences Prague, Czech Republic

Gary Rawnsley University of Nottingham Ningbo, China

ISBN 978-981-15-5591-6 ISBN 978-981-15-5592-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

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Introduction: The Soft Edges of China’s Hard Power Jarmila Ptáˇcková, Ondˇrej Klimeš, Gary Rawnsley, and Jens Damm

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Cultural Diplomacy Today: A ‘Culture of Dialogue’ or a ‘Dialogue of Cultures’? Gary Rawnsley

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Xinjiang in China’s Public Diplomacy in Central Asia: Case Study of Almaty Ondˇrej Klimeš

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China’s ‘Silk Road’ Public Diplomacy in Central Asia: Rethinking the ‘Network’ Approach to the Study of Public Diplomacy and Its Instrumentalism Vˇera Exnerová Establishing a Common Ground—Admiral Zheng He as an Agent of Cultural Diplomacy in Malaysia Jakub Hrubý

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CONTENTS

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Two Confucius Institutes and a Cross-Border University as Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Malaysia: The Limitations of ‘Domestic Structures’ Tomáš Petru˚

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Attracting the Arabs? Promoting ‘Muslim’ China to Boost Regional Development in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Jarmila Ptáˇcková

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China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin: The Impact of Transnational and Local Actors Jens Damm

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Trajectory of Chinese Cultural Diplomacy: The Case of International Co-production of Documentaries Gary Rawnsley, Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, and Ming Yu

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Jens Damm is an Associate Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT), Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. He was awarded his Ph.D. at Free University of Berlin in 2002. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies, Chang Jung University, Tainan, Taiwan (2009–2019), and an Assistant Professor at Free University Berlin. From 2015 to 2017, he was also affiliated with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences within the project China’s Cultural Diplomacy: Role of Nonstate Actors and Regional Variations sported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR). He is currently also a board member of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS e.V.). His research interests include the new media and the Internet, the Taiwanese and Chinese diasporas, and gender studies. Vˇera Exnerová is Research Fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She was Fulbright-Masaryk Fellow at Harvard University and Visiting Fellow at Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie Centrale and Moscow State University. In 2007–2008, she lived and carried out research in Afghanistan. Her most recent publications on Islam and politics include ‘Radical Islam from Below: The Mujaddidiya and Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the Ferghana Valley,’ In Jones Luong, Pauline (ed.): Islam, Society and Politics in Central Asia, University of Pittsburgh Press 2017; and ‘The Veneration and Visitation of Graves of Saints in Soviet Central Asia. Insights from Southern Ferghana Valley, Uzbekistan,’ vii

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Archiv Orientální 83 (2015), No. 3, 501–536. Her research interests also include the public diplomacy and transnationalism, including the recent publication ‘Introducing Transnationalism Studies to the Field of Public Diplomacy,’ The Journal of International Communication vol. 23, 2017, No. 2, 186–199. Jakub Hrubý is currently a Researcher at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from the Far East Department at Charles University in Prague. His dissertation examines the emergence and functioning of the official system of titled nobility in Early Medieval China. His work over the past ten years has focused on political, social, and institutional history of Medieval and Early Modern China, from the structure of the elites, their interaction with the state power, to nature of the imperial authority and various means of political legitimization of the imperial dynasties. He is also interested in the interaction of the Han and non-Han worlds and history of the non-Han dynasties and other political entities which existed within the limits of the present-day China. He has authored a monograph on the ruling family of the Jin Dynasty and co-edited a collective volume of essays on the legitimization of ruling power in the world of the fourteenth century. Recently, he has also worked on the history of China-Southeast Asia relations and the various uses of history in the PRC diplomatic effort toward the region. Dr. Hrubý also regularly lectures at various universities in the Czech Republic including Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. Ondˇrej Klimeš is a Researcher at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His expertise is in politics of modern and contemporary Xinjiang and China. His expertise is in contemporary Chinese politics with focus on ideology and propaganda, ethnic policy in Xinjiang. His research languages are Chinese, Uyghur, and Russian. His is the author of Struggle by the Pen: The Uyghur Discourse of Nation and Nationalism, c. 1900–1949 (Brill, 2015), of research articles published, e.g., in the Journal of Chinese Political Science, Central Asian Survey, China Brief or within the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN). He has also collaborated on Uyghur issues with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Radio Free Asia. He regularly comments for media on China and Xinjiang politics and is an external lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the Charles University in Prague.

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Tomáš Petru˚ is Research Fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is also Assistant Professor of Indonesian Studies at Charles University in Prague. He co-authored the first full-fledged monograph on the history of Indonesia in the Czech language, Dˇejiny Indonésie (NLN, 2005), and authored two dozen articles and chapters on Indonesian, Malaysian, and wider Southeast Asian history and politics in journals such as Asian Ethnicity, Moussons, and Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies. In his research, Petru˚ has been focusing on the interaction of politics, ethnicity, and religion in Indonesia and the Malay world. Jarmila Ptáˇcková graduated from the Humboldt University in Berlin, specializing in Chinese and Central Asian Studies. At the Humboldt University, she as well obtained her Ph.D. in Tibetan studies. She worked as a Researcher and lecturer at the Leipzig University and the Humboldt University. Her research focuses mainly on Chinese development policy and subsequent social and economic changes in China’s minority areas, on China’s ethnic policy, as well as on the role of China’s minorities in the PRC’s cultural diplomacy. Currently, she is affiliated with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Gary Rawnsley is Professor of Public Diplomacy and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). Working at the intersection of international relations and international communications, Professor Rawnsley has published widely on propaganda, public and cultural diplomacy, soft power, and the role of the media in democratisation. His work has appeared in such journals as The China Quarterly, Political Communication, The International Journal of Media and History, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, and International Affairs. He is the co-editor of theRoutledge Handbooks of Chinese Media (2015) and Soft Power (2016), as well as the Edward Elgar Handbook of Political Propaganda (2020). Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is also Research Associate at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr. Rawnsley was Secretary-General, European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS, 2012–2018), and is the founding Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Taiwan Studies (2018–present),

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co-sponsored by EATS and Academia Sinica. She worked as a Researcher at the University of Nottingham (1999–2005) and became Head of Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (2005– 2007). Before she joined SOAS in 2013 and Academia Sinica in 2018, Dr. Rawnsley researched and taught East Asian film industries at the University of Leeds (2007–2013). She has published widely in both English and Chinese on Chinese-language cinema and media and democratization in Taiwan. Her earliest publications included The World of Media (in Chinese, 2000) and Critical Security, Democratisation and Television in Taiwan (co-authored with Gary Rawnsley, 2001). Her more recent publications were Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (eds. with Gary Rawnsley, 2015), Discover Taiwan Films (in Chinese, 2015), and Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change (eds. with Kuei-fen Chiu and Gary Rawnsley, 2017). Dr. Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is currently working on several projects, including the translation of The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business (by David T. Courtwight, 2019) from English to Chinese, an exhibition and research project on Taiwanese-language cinema of the 1950s–1970s, and a study of cultural diplomacy and film festivals in Taiwan and Asia. Ming Yu is a lecturer at School of Art and Communication, Beijing Normal University (BNU). She worked as a postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University (2017–2018) and a postdoctoral fellow at School of Art and Communication, Beijing Normal University (2016–2019). She was a lecturer in the Department of Culture Communication, China University of Labor Relations (2011–2016), and a lecturer at Art College, Sichuan University (2005–2007). She has been working as Associate editor on Annual Report of the Development of Chinese Documentary (2011–present). She is also a documentary filmmaker and used to work as a director for CCTV, Phoenix TV, and Documentary Centre, BNU. She has made a dozen documentary programs. Her recent works include Born in 2000 and Post-00s.

List of Tables

Table 3.1

Table 9.1

Population of Xinjiang origin in CARs estimated according to official data of respective countries, PRC statistics, and other sources (Li 2013, 9) Contrasting the voiceovers in the opening sequences of the BBC and CCTV versions of Wild China (The BBC version of the voiceover is from the program’s own English subtitles. We provide our own English translation for the CCTV version from its Chinese subtitles)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Soft Edges of China’s Hard Power Jarmila Ptáˇcková, Ondˇrej Klimeš, Gary Rawnsley, and Jens Damm

This book explores the contemporary cultural diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Cultural diplomacy can be defined as governmentally facilitated communication with a foreign audience through what is considered culture (Pánek Jurková 2018) or as an exchange of ideas, information, art, and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding (Cummings 2009). As a

J. Ptáˇcková (B) · O. Klimeš Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] O. Klimeš e-mail: [email protected] G. Rawnsley University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China e-mail: [email protected] J. Damm Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_1

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discipline of public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy generally allows for the involvement of actors that are not controlled by the state but can have a significant influence on the image-building of a society or a country. The PRC’s public and cultural diplomacy, which for the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) falls within the broader portfolio of ‘ideology and propaganda work’ (sixiang xuanchuan gongzuo), on the other hand, tends to make the participation of non-state actors conditional upon their conformity with the state’s narrative and policy (Xinhua 2018; Edney 2014; Passin 1963). According to the Deputy Minister of Cultural Affairs, Meng Xiaosi, the actors of cultural diplomacy are thus government agencies or those supported or promoted by the government (Meng 2005). These are major state institutions and media platforms such as the PRC’s diplomatic missions, China Cultural Centers, Confucius Institutes, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, and others, as well as various ‘people’s organizations’ (renmin tuanti) coopted by the party-state. The concept of culture is an essential avenue of their engagement with foreign state institutions, non-state entities, transnational actors, and the general public with the aim of not only enhancing soft power and mutual understanding, but also implementing broader foreign policy objectives. It is also closely linked to domestic propaganda techniques and objectives (Edney 2014). The CPC’s embrace of cultural diplomacy stems partially from the post-Maoist transformation of its politics. Following the implementation of the ‘reform and opening up’ (gaige kaifang ) policy from 1978, Chinese academics and leaders gradually realized that states were more receptive to cultural exchange and cooperation than to a direct promotion of policy objectives (Ma 2010). In the Hu Jintao era (2002–2012), public diplomacy, national image, and soft power were identified by the CPC leadership as one of the PRC’s diplomatic priorities and, as in domestic propaganda, a wide range of themes from traditional Chinese ideology and discourse were adopted (Hu 2012; Yan 2011; Wang 2011; Callahan and Barabantseva 2011; Rabinovitch 2008; Kurlantzik 2007; People’s Daily Online 2007). CPC propaganda and public diplomacy’s thematization of culture, history, and tradition, as well as its embrace of Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power since the 1990s, simultaneously seek to overcome the negative impact inflicted on the country’s image by the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and build on the Mao-era diplomacy and united front work (Perry 2013; Nai 1992; Nye 1990).

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Since Xi Jinping’s assumption of power in 2012, building ‘cultural soft power’ (wenhua ruanshili) through ‘external propaganda’ (duiwai xuanchuan), ‘cultural exchange’ (wenhua jiaoliu), and ‘public diplomacy’ (gonggong waijiao) has often been declared a key foreign policy objective. The CPC leadership hereby hopes to mitigate the stereotypes of China as a Communist dictatorship, a violator of human rights, and a producer of cheap and low-quality goods, and instead seeks to build a ‘national image’ (guojia xingxiang ) as a relevant global authority. The CPC also seeks to solicit international acknowledgment for the PRC’s political and social order as a cultural and civilizational model. Public and cultural diplomacy promoting national consciousness and a feeling of cultural and moral superiority, building on China’s glorious past, are important tools to overcome the national trauma caused by the Western powers during the so-called century of national humiliation (bainian guochi), i.e., from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The ‘Chinese dream’ (Zhongguo meng ) of the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ (Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing ) is one of the essential tropes of Xi Jinping’s policy and is meant to reinvigorate China’s international position and the legitimacy of the CPC (Zhu et al. 2019; Gil 2017; Yang 2017; Hartig 2016; Callahan 2015; Ford 2015; Wang 2014; Xinhua 2013a; Xi 2012). Having only recently been perceived as a Third World country, in the last three decades the PRC has overwhelmed the international community with its impressive economic achievements. At the CPC’s Nineteenth National Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping declared that in the upcoming era the PRC will aspire to ‘move closer to the center stage’ (zoujin shijie wutai zhongyang ) of global politics and that it is willing to be the ‘preserver of international order’ (guoji zhixude weihuzhe; Xinhua 2017). According to the CPC, ‘Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’ (Xi Jinping xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehui zhuyi sixiang ) is thus bound to become the guiding blueprint not only for domestic governance, but also in international affairs (State Council of the PRC 2019; Mardell 2017; Lam 2017). Such developments are in line with indications that the PRC would seek to expand its role in the global economy and politics from the beginning of the new millennium (Sutter 2019; Teufel Dreyer 2019; Shambaugh 2013; Xinhua 2013b, c; Zhu 2010). The CPC also seeks to increasingly extend its principles of domestic governance beyond the PRC’s borders as a more efficient and righteous alternative to the existing world order. To legitimize its regime as a global model of governance, China also points

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to the turbulent history and complicated present of ‘Western’ countries, interpreting multiple issues as a failure of democracy. The PRC’s ascent on the global stage might somewhat obfuscate the CPC’s factual intentions. The broader objectives of the PRC’s cultural diplomacy and the proposed alternative world order are, in many ways, a conceptual and practical extension of its domestic governance (Rolland 2020; Callahan 2016; Wang 2014). The main internal propaganda themes, such as the allegedly ‘unique’ (dute) ‘cultural traditions’ (wenhua chuantong ), ‘historical destiny’ (lishi mingyun), and ‘fundamental national conditions’ (jiben guoqing ) which predetermine the specifically ‘Chinese model’ (Zhongguo moshi) of development anchored in ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ (Zhongguo tese shehui zhuyi) designed to forge a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) at home and a ‘harmonious world’ (hexie shijie) abroad (Xinhua 2018; Heath 2013, 2014; People’s Daily Online 2013), have also been disseminated outside the PRC’s borders to win the hearts and minds of global audiences. The idea of a unified and cohesive ‘Chinese’ polity is an important tenet of the party-state’s legitimation of its own power in the PRC’s ethnic and political borderlands and neighborhoods, such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Kallio 2019). The PRC’s cultural diplomacy widely furthers interests that have little to do with culture and, conversely, a cultural dimension is regularly present in the country’s broader foreign activities. In cultural diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, cultural messages are closely aligned with topics of economic development, social progress, and political achievements. Besides its specific worldview and values, the CPC also seeks to extend other tracks of its internal governance model, which has grown increasingly centralized and party-controlled under Xi. The CPC has reclaimed multiple domains of decision-making and policy implementation at the expense of state institutions and embarked on more consolidated and topdown domestic rule and a more assertive foreign policy, thus reversing the trend inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping at the beginning of the reform period. The Xi era trademark Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; also known as the One Belt One Road, OBOR, yidai yilu) has become almost synonymous with Chinese diplomacy. Its content embodies both domestic and international trends, whereby the CPC seeks to build domestic legitimacy and to attract foreign governments and publics through a narrative of mutually beneficial cooperation and by promoting attractive features of China’s rich culture and long history. The initiative also serves the

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PRC’s broader geopolitical objectives, often channeled through stateowned enterprises. As in a domestic context, the CPC’s foreign objectives furthered internationally through the BRI strongly rely on technology and infrastructure construction (Hála 2020; Cai 2017; Lim et al. 2016). The PRC has managed to effectively collaborate with numerous European governments and economic entities both inside and outside the European Union, as well as with partners in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and South America. Many European Union countries, which unlike Asian neighbors have no territorial disputes with the PRC and hadn’t—until recently—directly experienced the PRC’s attempts to influence their politics, initially welcomed the prospect of Chinese investments and participation in the BRI (Teufel Dreyer 2019). Similarly, the PRC’s Made in China 2025 (Zhongguo zhizao 2025) strategy plans to take advantage not only of technological development in ‘Western’ countries, but also of increasing open-mindedness toward Chinese products resulting partially from cultural diplomacy. The official version of ‘Chinese culture’ thus often comes hand in hand with the PRC’s rhetorical or factual business transactions, although it is obvious which of the two is the more persuasive for many foreign governments and economic entities. This linking of cultural diplomacy with broader CPC objectives has, however, often become counterproductive, e.g., in the case of the closure of some of the Confucius Institutes. The country’s national image has also been negatively affected by recent actions of the Xi leadership in the South China Sea, in Xinjiang, and during the coronavirus pandemic, which testify to the gap between the PRC’s declared principles and its actual behavior at home and abroad (Allen-Ebrahimian 2020; Reuters 2020; Sutter 2019; Redden 2019; Millward 2018). Inside the PRC, the streamlining of Chinese history, culture, and tradition in school textbooks and in the media has surged in recent years, inviting comparisons of Xi Jinping’s central role in politics with that of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution (Stuckey 2018). Outside China, however, actors such as Chinese dissidents, ethnic diasporas, rights advocates, politicians, academia, the arts scene, and other critical groups can easily challenge the strictly controlled narrative put forward by the CPC’s public diplomacy and domestic propaganda, revealing that the promoted values and content might not always accord with those of its various audiences (Lau 2019). As Gary Rawnsley outlines in his introductory chapter, culture in general is a subjective phenomenon and it would

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be simplistic to assume that the PRC’s cultural diplomacy is different. Regardless of how much money is spent, how many Confucius Institutes are opened, or how many books are sent to foreign countries, audiences may still view the CPC’s efforts in a negative way for multiple reasons. The present volume illustrates some of the above developments using examples of the PRC’s Xi Jinping era cultural and public diplomacy in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central Europe. The case studies outline different approaches the PRC adopts in dealing with culturally, socially, and economically different parts of the world and analyze the particular roles of the various Chinese state and non-state actors and their international counterparts. The book is an outcome of collaboration between researchers of the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences—who conducted their studies between 2015 and 2017 with the support of a research grant, China’s Cultural Diploˇ GA15– macy: Role of Non-state Actors and Regional Variations (GACR 21829S), funded by the Czech Science Foundation (Grantová agenˇ ˇ 1 —and external experts—namely, Gary D. tura Ceské repuliky, GACR) Rawnsley, an expert in public diplomacy at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, a research associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and Ming Yu, a lecturer at the School of Art and Communication, Beijing Normal University. Preliminary research outcomes were presented at the Regional Variations and the Role of Local Actors in China’s Cultural Diplomacy conference organized by the Oriental Institute on February 23–24, 2017 in Prague. Other outcomes of the research project have been published in other venues (Exnerova 2017; Klimeš 2017; Hrubý 2017a, b, 2018a, b; Exnerova 2018; Ptackova 2018; Klimeš 2018; Klimeš et al. 2018; Hrubý and Petru˚ 2019). The authors hope this volume will be informative for readers interested in contemporary Chinese politics, international relations, public diplomacy, propaganda, and related fields.

1 Additional research of Jarmila Ptáˇcková and Ondˇrej Klimeš was funded by Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship of the Czech Academy of Sciences and their chapters are a result of the Oriental Institute’s Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order research platform.

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ˇ Klimeš, Ondˇrej, et al. 2018. Kulturní diplomacie Cíny a její regionální variace [Cultural Diplomacy of China and Its Regional Variation]. Prague: Academia. Kurlantzik, Joshua. 2007. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lam, Wo-Lap Willy. 2017. What Is Xi Jinping Thought? China Brief 17 (12): 4–8. https://jamestown.org/program/what-is-xi-jinping-thought/. Lau, Mimi. 2019. China’s Fudan University Students in Flash Mob for Freedom. South China Morning Post, December 18. https://www.scmp.com/news/ china/politics/article/3042681/chinas-fudan-university-students-flash-mobfreedom-thought. Lim, Tai Wei, Henry Chan Lee, Tseng Hing, Katherine Hui-Yi, and Wen Xin Lim (eds.). 2016. China’s One Belt One Road Initiative. Singapore: Imperial College Press. Ma, Lirong. 2010. China’s Cultural and Public Diplomacy to Countries in the Middle East. Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia) 4 (2): 32–43. Mardell, Jacob. 2017. The ‘Community of Common Destiny’ in Xi Jinping’s New Era. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2017/10/the-commun ity-of-common-destiny-in-xi-jinpings-new-era/. Meng, Xiaosi. 2005. Zhongguo: Wenhua waijiao xian meili [Chinese Cultural Diplomacy Shows Charm]. People’s Daily, November 11: 7. http://culture. people.com.cn/GB/27296/3849267.html. Millward, James. 2018. What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State. The New York Times, February 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/ sunday/china-surveillance-state-uighurs.html. Nai. 1992. Meiguo ding neng lingdao shijie ma? [Is America Bound to Lead the World?]. Beijing: Junshi yiwen chubanshe. Nye Jr., Joseph S. 1990. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books. Pánek Jurková, Jitka. 2018. Teoretický úvod do kulturní diplomacie [A Theoretˇ ical Introduction to Cultural Diplomacy]. In Kulturní diplomacie Cíny a její regionální variace [Cultural Diplomacy of China and Its Regional Variation], ed. Ondˇrej Klimeš et al. Prague: Academia. Passin, Herbert. 1963. China’s Cultural Diplomacy. New York: Praeger. People’s Daily Online. 2007. Hu Jintao zai dangde shiqidashang de baogao [Hu Jintao’s Report at 17th Party Congress], October 24. http://politics.people. com.cn/GB/1024/6429094.html. People’s Daily Online. 2013. Keguan renshi dangdai zhongguo yu waibu shijie [Getting to Objectively Know Contemporary China and Outside World]. August 30. http://opinion.people.com.cn/n/2013/0830/c100322743925.html.

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Perry, Elizabeth J. 2013. Cultural Governance in Contemporary China: “Reorienting” Party Propaganda. Harvard-Yenching Institute Working Paper Series. Harvard University. May 17. http://www.harvard-yenching.org/fea tures/hyi-working-paper-series-elizabeth-perry. Ptackova, Jarmila. 2018. Silk Road of Friendship: China’s Cultural Diplomacy towards the United Arab Emirates. China in a Global Context/Berliner ChinaHefte 50: 118–132. Rabinovitch, Simon. 2008. The Rise of an Image-Conscious China. China Security 4 (3): 33–47. Redden, Elizabeth. 2019. Closing Confucius Institutes. Inside Higher Ed, January 9. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/09/collegesmove-close-chinese-government-funded-confucius-institutes-amid-increasing. Reuters. 2020. Exclusive: Internal Chinese Report Warns Beijing Faces Tiananmen-Like Global Backlash over Virus. May 4. https://www.reuters. com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-sentiment-ex/exclusive-internal-chi nese-report-warns-beijing-faces-tiananmen-like-global-backlash-over-virus-idU SKBN22G19C. Rolland, Nadège. 2020. China’s Vision for a New World Order. The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle. https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinasvision-for-a-new-world-order/. Shambaugh, David. 2013. China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. State Council of the PRC. 2019. Zhengfu gongzuo baogao [Report on the Work of the Government]. March 5. http://www.gov.cn/zhuanti/2019qglh/201 9lhzfgzbg/index.htm. Stuckey, Brian. 2018. Why Xi Jinping Personality Cult in China Brings Back Memories of Mao. South China Morning Post. August 7. https://www. scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2158612/why-xi-jinping-personalitycult-china-brings-back-memories-mao. Sutter, Robert G. 2019. Foreign Relations of the PRC: The Legacies and Constraints of China’s International Politics since 1949, 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Teufel Dreyer, June. 2019. China’s Political System. New York: Routledge. Wang, Jian (ed.). 2011. Soft Power in China: Public Diplomacy Through Communication. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wang, Zheng. 2014. The Chinese Dream: Concept and Context. Journal of Chinese Political Science 19 (1): 1–19. Xi, Jinping. 2012. Zai canguan ‘Fuxing zhi lu’ zhanlan shi de jianghua [Speech During the Visit of the ‘Road to Revival’ Exhibition]. November 29. http:// www.qunzh.com/xxzt/jd95zn/zyls/201606/t20160602_21107.html. Xinhua. 2013a. Xi Jinping: yishi xingtai gongzuo shi dangde yixiang jiduan zhongyao de gongzuo [Xi Jinping: Ideological Work Extremely Important

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for the Party]. August 20. http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-08/ 20/c_117021464.htm. Xinhua. 2013b. Xi Jinping zai Nazhaerbayefu daxue de yanjiang [Xi Jinping’s Speech at the Nazarbayev University]. September 9. http://www.xinhuanet. com/politics/2013-09/08/c_117273079_3.htm. Xinhua. 2013c. Xi Jinping zai Yindunixiya guohui fabiao zhongyao yanjiang [Xi Jinping Holds Important Speech in Indonesian Parliament]. October 10. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-10/03/c_117591171_2.htm. Xinhua. 2017. Xi Jinping: Xi Jinping: juesheng quanmian jiancheng xiaokang shehui, duoqu xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehui zhuyi weida shengli. Zai Zhongguo gongchandang dishijiu quanguo daibiao dahuishangde baogao [Secure a Decisive Victory in Comprehensively Building a Moderately Prosperous Society, Strive for the Great Victory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Work Report Delivered to the 19th CPC National Congress]. October 27. http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/19c pcnc/2017-10/27/c_1121867529.htm. Xinhua. 2018. Zhongguo dui Oumeng zhengce wenjian [China’s Policy Paper on the European Union]. December 18. http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/ 2018-12/18/c_1123868707.htm. Yan, Xuetong. 2011. Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yang, Zi. 2017. Xi Jinping and China’s Traditionalist Restoration. China Brief 17 (9): 8–13. https://jamestown.org/program/xi-jinping-chinas-tradit ionalist-restoration/. Zhu, Ying, Kingsley Edney, and Stanley Rosen (eds.). 2019. Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds. Abingdon: Routledge. Zhu, Zhiqun. 2010. China’s New Diplomacy: Rationale, Strategies, and Significance. Farnham, VB and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

CHAPTER 2

Cultural Diplomacy Today: A ‘Culture of Dialogue’ or a ‘Dialogue of Cultures’? Gary Rawnsley

…since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. —The preamble to the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 1945.

Few ideas in International Relations have captured the imagination of academics, policy makers, and journalists like soft power. Governments around the world, seeking a less expensive and more legitimate form of statecraft than ‘hard power,’ have embraced the concept of soft power with well-documented enthusiasm. Moreover, discussions of soft power have also given rise to a series of variants: first ‘smart power’ and now

Taken from M. Berger et al. (2008, 5). G. Rawnsley (B) University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_2

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‘sharp power’ have entered the lexicon, the latter applied specifically to China by The Economist magazine at the end of 2017.1 However, soft power is widely misunderstood and is too often used as a synonym for a range of communicative activities that project national soft power capacity. Allegedly, US Secretary of State for Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked in 2003 about soft power, and he confessed he did not know what it means (Nye 2006). This is hardly surprising given the term’s ambiguity, the multiple definitions assigned to it, and the academic bandwagon that has appropriated soft power without engaging with it in an appropriately critical way. As I have argued elsewhere (Rawnsley 2018), the term—too often a convenient catch-all term that can mean everything and therefore nothing—is so abused that it is on the verge of becoming irrelevant, if not redundant, as a meaningful concept; while the unnecessary labels ‘smart’ and ‘sharp’ power simply muddy the waters even further. I suggest that for ‘soft power’ to have continued significance as a way of approaching international politics, we must understand how it is generated by a government’s behavior at home and abroad, and by the credibility and legitimacy of that behavior. It may be the product of moral authority and leadership by example, and the natural product of decent and effective governance; or it may be the application of culture and values to intervene in domestic politics or to disrupt mechanisms of governance without resorting to instruments of hard power (the so-called hard character of soft power that I will discuss in this chapter). What is important to recognize and acknowledge is that soft power is not synonymous with cultural attraction and familiarity and is more than a way to maintain a high national or international profile. Surveys reveal high levels of acquaintance with Chinese culture among publics overseas, and this may translate into familiarity and even attraction; but such surveys reveal nothing about soft power—how such intangibles are converted into tangibles and help defined political objectives (power being a political term after all). Many of the governments that profess a commitment to soft power, including China, do not always uphold and promote the values that might make them attractive, preferring instead to regard soft power as little more than 1 For the official Chinese response to the unnecessary introduction of ‘sharp power’ in current discussions, see Liu Si’s article ‘Spotlight: Who’s Behind the Term “Sharp Power”?,’ 13 February 2018, available at http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-02/ 13/c_136972986.htm.

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nation-branding or a popularity contest. Rather, governments need to focus on their own policy-making processes and how audiences overseas react to their decisions. These audiences do not judge a government in a political or cultural vacuum. Rather, their assessment is based on their perception of the government’s behavior, as well as their location within their own social milieu. Power does not reside in governments, the media, or in the cultural industries. Instead, the power is situated among audiences who choose which messages to receive and internalize, and whether or not they will change their opinion in response. I suggest that Senator J. William Fulbright captured the essence of soft power—almost thirty years before Nye attached his label—in his Foreword to The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy by P. H. Coombs in 1964. ‘Foreign policy,’ he wrote, ‘cannot be based on military posture and diplomatic activities alone in today’s world. The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how well we communicate the values of our society to others than by our military or diplomatic superiority’ (Coombs 1964, ix). So, a more nuanced understanding should begin from the premise that states have at their disposal a range of discrete communication mechanisms, including public and cultural diplomacy, to project their soft power capacity. This means we must accept soft power as a resource, and public and cultural diplomacy as instruments. Many governments, including that of China, wrongly assume that they can develop a soft power strategy and can wield or exercise soft power as an instrument, when actually they need to focus attention on their own behavior and the policies they pursue. Therefore, I call for greater attention to the attractive power of political institutions, processes, and values—the political culture. In this chapter, I will provide an overview of the conceptual understandings of cultural diplomacy, one of the instruments that can actually help achieve the levels of familiarity and attraction that proponents mistakenly claim for soft power. I say ‘understandings’ because, like soft power, there is no single agreed definition of the term. I will evaluate how the idea and practice of cultural diplomacy have developed in both Western and non-Western (specifically Chinese) contexts, and position cultural diplomacy within a typology of other communication activities such as public diplomacy and cultural relations. When he was the Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy Brandt famously called culture the ‘third pillar of foreign policy’ after politics and trade. As Mitchell (1986, 1) points out, culture is the fourth pillar for ‘some’ Americans ‘after politics, trade and defence.’ My own research reveals

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that cultural diplomacy is a high priority for the government of Vietnam, supporting trade and economic power—the second pillar? (Rawnsley and Ngac 2017). This chapter will not address in depth the way that China has used and continues to use culture as a tool of its foreign policy. Other contributors to this volume discuss these issues in detail. Rather, I will indicate how the Chinese approach connects with our wider understandings of cultural diplomacy and cultural relations, especially the core component of any political concept or relationship—power—and the political application of these communicative activities. This chapter will also discuss some of the difficulties facing China’s cultural diplomacy that are rooted in the political culture and the Chinese regime’s authoritarian-style government. Today, China is more familiar to international audiences than at any time in the past. We encounter Chinese cuisine, films, New Year celebrations, and students on a routine basis, while Western news organizations remain fascinated by the continued strategic and economic growth of China—the so-called China miracle is a dominant theme in news coverage. Both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and, to a lesser degree, the 2019 Shanghai Expo focused the world’s gaze on China, with news media reporting routinely from 2004 onwards the pace at which China was able to build the infrastructure required to host such events. This was Chinese ‘soft power’ in action, demonstrating its capacity—as a nation and as a political system— to get things done and done quickly; and this theme was designed for domestic as much as international audiences, reinforcing the legitimacy and authority of the Communist government while communicating a powerful narrative of China’s rising status. However, there is still a clear disconnect between liking Chinese ‘culture’ and expressing a positive opinion of the Chinese government and the political system it heads. Of course, this is not unique to China. Other governments, especially the United States, likewise face the challenge of living up to the ideals they communicate through their public and cultural diplomacy mechanisms.

Cultural Diplomacy All art is propaganda —George Orwell

I rarely have cause to disagree with my literary hero. However, I do not accept Orwell’s claim that all art is propaganda. Propaganda suggests

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political or ideological motivation; while art is usually driven by the desire to communicate and inspire emotions over and above the political and which privileges the aesthetic and pleasing qualities of a cultural product. ‘Art for art’s sake’ really does exist. As I write this chapter in early 2018, I find it difficult to recall such an unpredictable, volatile, and often frightening moment since we lived under the shadow of imminent nuclear war in the 1980s. Today we are facing unchecked populism, as well as sweeping racism and bigotry. It is a time when being an ‘expert’ is suspect, when ‘alternative facts’ bleed into everyday narratives, and ‘fake news’ means ‘I don’t like the news coverage I’m getting.’ The Economist magazine carried a worrying report on ‘the next war’ and documented the ‘growing threat of great-power conflict’ (January 27–February 2, 2018). On 13 January 2018, an emergency alert notification was sent claiming a ‘ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii.’ Even though this was the result of someone pushing ‘the wrong button,’ it was nevertheless a taste of what may be as the US and North Korea provoke each other toward the nuclear brink. ‘May you live in interesting times,’ says the ancient Chinese aphorism that is intended as a curse rather than a blessing. At such interesting times, it is customary to turn to and depend on the Arts to make sense of our world and our place in it. Culture is not only a sanctuary from chaos, but also provides another voice to challenge the powerful and give succor to the powerless. Of course, this is not new. At every troubled turn in history pain, confusion, and terror have been the catalyst for artistic achievements. From the twentieth century alone, think of Picasso’s Guernica, the novels of Erich Remarque, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Primo Levi, and John Steinbeck, Franz Kafka, and Milan Kundera—all of whom wrote with passion about their own troubled and interesting times; Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the music of Shostakovich; and the whole wave of artistic expression that reflects and comes to terms with the Vietnam war. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2017, no book has been referenced more than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with ‘alternative facts’ echoing the terror of Big Brother’s Newspeak. In the UK alone, Nineteen Eighty-Four experienced an increase in sales of over 90% in the first half of 2017, while Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, first published in 1935 about an outsider becoming president of the US by riding on a wave of populism, now seems prophetic. Sometimes

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the dry treatises of philosophy and political science speak to us with less urgency and less relevance than culture. So it is perhaps naïve to claim that politics and culture do not connect on some levels—that they are separate entities and activities—and we must accept that their worlds do occasionally collide. Culture can help us understand, engage with, come to terms with, satirize, and challenge power wherever it is encountered. Any discussion of cultural diplomacy—a deliberate act of cultural engagement designed to achieve purposes beyond art for art’s sake—raises a number of questions: Whose culture is represented and, equally, whose culture is marginalized or neglected all together? Who has the power to decide? Who has the authority and legitimacy to determine whose cultural experience is communicated and for what purpose? Why do some political actors consider it appropriate to limit access to cultural products, and for what reason? These are clearly political concerns that link culture with the formation and distribution of power within a given society, exposing and reflecting the political consequences (if not always the intentions) of art.2 Multiple discourses about cultural diplomacy reveal uncertainty about the concept and its relationship to both political objectives and to other instruments of strategic communication. These multiple discourses tend to revolve around a normative agenda that may have long-term national benefits, but which does not necessarily pursue political or national interests. The underpinning idea in discourses about cultural diplomacy is that it is beneficial for both the cultural agent and the audience, and that art and culture have consequences above and beyond the narrow political interests of governments. The most cited definition of cultural diplomacy is from the work of political scientist, Milton C. Cummings: ‘the exchange of ideas, information, art, and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding’ (Cummings 2003, 1). Pavan Varma, the head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, has described how culture has the potential to shape, alter and impact the ideas and opinions of public communities. From a wide-ranging perspective, culture has the capacity to resolve tensions and prejudices – ethnic, religious, communal, national

2 In China, these questions become more pressing because of the ethnic diversity of the Chinese ‘nation’ under Han domination (see Tuttle 2015).

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and international. It can create a climate of tolerance, respect and understanding among nations, religions and entire regions. It is thus an essential medium for peaceful and tolerant contact and communication. (Varma 2007, 128)

Thus, there is agreement on the mutual benefit of engaging in cultural diplomacy, and its value in building international relationships. There is also implicit in such definitions the idea that cultural diplomacy can provide the foundations for other forms of political and non-political interaction. Who can argue against the need for greater tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding? Who would contest the hopes of Jacques Delores and others that cultures can learn to interact in ‘a new spirit which, guided by recognition of our growing interdependence and a common analysis of the risks and challenges of the future, would induce people to implement common projects or to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way’ (Delores et al. 1996, 23)? For once these cultural foundations are in place and secured, often the result of a clear government strategy to establish nominally independent cultural institutions (Mitchell 1986), it becomes much easier to progress to other forms of dialogue and discussion about points of political difference. The long-term purpose of such activity is narrowing the gaps in communication that may hinder the resolution of political conflicts. It is important to note that cultural diplomacy is not (or should not be) about eliminating differences, but rather about recognizing and celebrating diversity. It represents a ‘willingness to engage with the other. It is an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrast rather than uniformity’ (Tomlinson 1999, 185). The problem is that some cultural diplomacy has tried—or is seen to have tried—to impose cultural hegemony, so that diversity becomes something to protect, rather than promote, by political means.3 I discuss this further below. John Brown says this approach to cultural diplomacy as a vehicle for mutual understanding ‘may sound mushy to some, but as a foreign policy tool,’ what he calls arts diplomacy ‘is certainly far better than the American image – and certainly cheaper – than bombing Baghdad’ (Brown 2009, 59). Brown is also sensitive to the unique capacity of culture to 3 As Akira Iriye (1997) has recognized, cultural diplomacy has not prevented expanding and deepening nationalism.

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move an audience emotionally. Arts diplomacy, he says, ‘provides audiences with unique and memorable experiences. … Art creates powerful impressions that are often remembered forever … arts diplomacy can make people abroad associate America with the kind of unique moments that make their lives worth living’ (ibid., 57). By adopting such a normative—some may claim idealist—position, the premise of cultural diplomacy and cultural relations reflects the significant contribution of social constructivism to our understanding of international politics. Based on Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999), social constructivism introduces culture, ideas, and identity as important building blocks in how we understand each other and ourselves. Most importantly, it acknowledges our capacity as social creatures to interact based on shared, understood, and respected norms and identities. Hence, it is more rewarding and revealing to analyze the discourses surrounding the application of culture as an instrument of statecraft, and avoid a simple instrumental approach that focuses on the product itself and its alleged impact. Such accounts may be embedded in, and have embedded within them, specific ideological assumptions and constitutive biases that in turn give rise to the (re)production of particular social relations. It is important to not only discuss the motivation, methods, and consequences of cultural diplomacy and cultural relations, but also to consider the assumptions that the source—the government and people of Country X—create about themselves and their relations with the outside world. In turn, we should also evaluate the origin, meaning, and consequences of claims that other members of the international community make about Country X. In other words, we do well to remember that cultural diplomacy is both relational and communicative: it reflects how the source sees itself, or would like others to see it; and is heavily dependent on the way audiences have socially constructed and filtered the image of the source. It is at this point that we need to address the differences between cultural diplomacy and cultural relations. So far in this discussion we have tended to use both terms without clarifying how they are distinct types of engagement and communications. We tend to think of cultural relations as a form of engagement without, and sometimes despite, government intervention. They can be ‘naturally occurring’ and have long-term consequences (Arndt 2005; Melissen 2005; Pamment 2016; Rose and Wadham-Smith 2004). Cultural relations are undertaken by the cultural industries themselves

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in a programmed arena of activity or via everyday interactions in civil society and in pursuit of art for art’s sake: ‘Artists engage in crosscultural exchange not to proselytize about their own values, but rather to understand different cultural traditions, to find new sources of imaginative inspiration, to discover new methods and ways of working and to exchange ideas with people whose worldviews differ from their own. They want to be influenced rather than influence’ (Channick 2005). For example, the Slav theater scholar and cultural commentator, Dragan Klaic, said that his motivation in working across national boundaries was the promise of ‘cooperation in the creative processes, the creation of new artistic works’ (Klaic 2007, 46). Cultural relations may also refer to acts of everyday cultural engagement—for example, through the presence of overseas students in a nation’s higher education system and through interaction with diaspora communities. One can imagine how mutual understanding can be carved more easily from direct cultural relations at the level of civil society than through government-sponsored or organized activities, or even via explicitly Artistic or Cultural programming. On the other hand, cultural diplomacy refers to deliberate programs or activities sponsored or organized by the government and its agencies to use culture as a way of advancing political, strategic, or national interests. It is a government-led practice designed to reinforce the national and international representation undertaken by envoys. In a report published in 2005, the US State Department described cultural diplomacy as ‘the linchpin of public diplomacy’: … for it is in cultural activities that a nation’s idea of itself is best represented. And cultural diplomacy can enhance our national security in subtle, wide-ranging, and sustainable ways. Indeed history may record that America’s cultural riches played no less a role than military action in shaping our international leadership, including the war on terror. For the values embedded in our artistic and intellectual traditions form a bulwark against the forces of darkness. (US Department of State 2005, 1)

In this way, the State Department acknowledges how culture can contribute to national security and profile, especially when the US suffers from low esteem and trust in the eyes of international public opinion (the Linchpin report was published following the 2003 invasion of Iraq). The report goes on to argue that culture and cultural diplomacy can repair some of that damage and promote a more positive narrative about the US

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and American values. Cultural diplomacy, then, is an instrument that can be deployed in specific situations to reinforce other forms of diplomatic activity and communication (though it is always best to see cultural diplomacy as a long-term mission to build and re-build relationships, trust, and credibility). Richard Arndt has expressed the difference clearly in his magisterial study of American cultural diplomacy, The First Resort of Kings (2005). Cultural relations, he says, ‘grow naturally and organically, without government intervention,’ whereas cultural diplomacy ‘can only be said to take place when formal diplomats, serving national governments, try to shape and channel this natural flow to advance national interests’ (Arndt 2005, xviii). Practitioners have also identified the difference between the two activities. For example, Tim Rivera, formerly a British Council officer, observed that: ‘Cultural diplomacy takes a promotion and advocacy approach, using cultural content for the specific purpose of supporting foreign policy objectives and the national interest. Cultural relations take place outside the sway of government, building mutual trust and understanding, and generating amity and influence in the process’ (Rivera 2015, 35). This echoes the definition offered by Mitchells (1986, 5): ‘Cultural relations … are more neutral and comprehensive … The difference is, in practice, one of mode. The purpose of cultural relations is not necessarily to seek one-sided advantage. At their most effective, their purpose is to achieve understanding and co-operation between national societies for their mutual benefit.’ However, the distinction is not always as clear as the above discussion suggests: political forces—domestic and foreign, hostile or friendly—do intrude on the activities of the cultural industries on a routine basis, thus complicating and sometimes souring the non-political agenda of cultural relations. First, government intervention may be necessary to protect local cultural industries—for example, the quota systems used in South Korea, France, and elsewhere to limit the number of Hollywood movies shown in local cinemas (Freeman 2003). Also governments are important in building and maintaining the infrastructure for the non-governmental sector and the cultural industries to engage in outreach activities. This may be achieved via the creation of more lenient tax regimes, or helping to secure visas for travel into or out of the country, building stadiums, subsidies for museums and heritage sites, etc. It is difficult to imagine how the World Museum in Liverpool could organize and launch in 2018 an exhibition of China’s terracotta warriors from Xi’an without the

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involvement of governments to smooth their passage. The most visible example of how a cultural industry benefited from a deliberate government strategy of investment is presented by South Korea. The global phenomenon we know as K-Pop and the ‘Korean wave’ developed after the 1997 financial crisis with direct government involvement to build and promote South Korean culture as a substitute for declining manufacturing and engineering industries (Hong 2014; Kim 2017). Culture has been used as a tactical instrument in other ways to achieve specific political goals or objectives. For example, cultural boycotts have protested routinely the political behavior of governments. Punishing violations of acceptable conduct in this way reflects a belief that ‘a greater effort will be achieved in the boycotted country, and before world opinion, by restriction than by maintenance of normal cultural relations’ (Mitchell 1986, 6). Examples include cultural boycotts of the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and of Poland following the clampdown on Solidarity in 1980, and the boycott of South African culture and arts during the apartheid era with the essential support of the African National Congress.4 Again, the boundaries between art, culture, and politics are opaque. However, more powerful motivations, often rooted in insecurity, may drive a government to intervene in culture. The government of Country X may view the promoted ‘culture’ of Country Y as threatening political order or undermining (deliberately or otherwise) local social and cultural values. This is the basis for discussions of ‘cultural imperialism’ that were so prevalent during the 1970s and which refuse to disappear today.5 The premise is that behind the cultural industries of Country Y lie distinct values or agendas, the promotion of which are in the interest of Country Y’s political, strategic, or ideological ambitions and interests. Hollywood movies, for example, have long been the target of criticism outside the US for allegedly spreading ‘American values’ and in parts of the Middle East and in China Hollywood movies are subject to strict regulation and censorship for political reasons. As Lee has noted, ‘A target may find a sender’s promotion of cultural and political values (such as democracy) 4 Paul Simon was criticized for performing alongside South African musicians on his 1986 album, Graceland, and was therefore accused of violating the cultural boycott (see Carlin 2016). 5 A useful and brief outline of the criticisms of the cultural imperialism thesis is provided by Fraser (2003, 166–168).

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to be an act of coercion, not persuasion. A sender’s cultural and political values themselves may be interpreted by a target state to be the potential source of threat to society’ (Lee 2011, 22). Or, as Wolf and Rosen (2004) have observed: Among some groups, cultures and subcultures, American values and institutions are already reasonably well understood yet intensely resisted and disliked. Misunderstanding of American values is not the principal source of anti-Americanism. The source lies in explicit rejection of some of the salient characteristics of American values and institutions. Women’s rights, open and competitive markets, and equal and secret voting rights – let alone materialism and conspicuous display – are (in some places and for some groups) resented, rejected, and bitterly opposed. [Original emphasis]

Janice Bially Mattern (2005) called this the hard character of soft power, thus reinforcing the idea that soft power can be used to pursue ‘hard power’ objectives (also Nisbett 2013). Mattern (2005, 587) commented that ‘the form of coercion (and indeed ‘hard power’) to which attraction (and ‘soft power’) is indebted is sociolinguistic rather than physical, but it is coercive nevertheless. In this way, soft power is not soft after all.’ As the US has found to its cost, confidence in the universal application of cultural products or values can easily translate among hostile audiences into political and cultural arrogance, while there is still much suspicion of China’s Confucius Institutes or China’s international television service, CGTN, as agents of propaganda (Rawnsley 2015). Of course, the problem is how to identify the criteria by which cultures can be considered threatening, which in turn depend on political and ideological fiat. It is worrying that some authors have explicitly advocated for American cultural imperialism, adopting the kind of exceptionalism that fuels hostility against the US across the world. Matthew Fraser, for example, concludes his book, Weapons of Mass Distraction, with a case for cultural imperialism. In fact, he writes, ‘…it is surprising that American cultural imperialism has been so persistently challenged as a destructive force. We have attempted to demonstrate that America’s weapons of mass distraction are not only necessary for global stability, but should also be built up and deployed more assertively throughout the world’ (Fraser 2003, 266. See also Rothkopf 1997). Given such sentiments, do the Americans really need to ask so frequently, ‘Why do they hate us’?

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The Chinese Communist government has long suspected cultural diplomacy of having hard characteristics. In 2012, President Hu Jintao wrote in the magazine Qiushi (Seeking Truth) that ‘we [Chinese] must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields,’ he said are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration … We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarm and remain vigilant and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond. (quoted in Wong 2012)

President Xi Jinping has taken well-documented ‘forceful measures’ in response to this perceived threat, calling for a ‘cultural renaissance’ to rejuvenate Chinese values, strength, and moral superiority over Western values, and to renew what he has called ‘cultural self-confidence’ (Chen 2016). Seen most powerfully in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo (Wang 2013), this has become the basis of the ‘China Dream’ that, along with the One Belt, One Road initiative, is set to define the Xi Jinping era. The China Dream allows the Chinese to project and celebrate an inevitably bright future, while also understanding the contribution of the past: the China Dream connects yesterday and today. In an interview with the Liberation Daily, Zhang Jigang, the deputy director of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, explained the spectacle’s aim: ‘I really hope,’ he said, ‘that the people of the world can get to know the Chinese culture … to get to know China, to understand China, to love China, and to desire China. This Olympics is the best opportunity.’6 Other contributors to this volume discuss these initiatives in much more detail. What I find particularly interesting is the duality at the heart of China’s cultural diplomacy and the government’s response to foreign culture. Chinese programs are designed to change the global conversation about China. Zhao Qizheng, former Director of the State Council Information Office (SCIO) and China’s most visible and vocal advocate for public diplomacy, has observed how ‘the image of China in world opinion is seriously inconsistent with the actual situation in

6 ‘Interview with Zhang Jigang, Deputy Director of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony,’ Liberation Daily, August 1, 2008, quoted in Callahan (2010, 4).

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China’ (Zhao 2012, ii). This has encouraged China to devise communication programs to ‘present an accurate picture of itself to the world’ and ‘help foreign publics learn about the real China’ (People’s Daily, 30 March 2007). Wang Guoqing, the Vice-Director of the SCIO explained to the World Economic Forum in 2010, ‘What is on our top agenda is to find a way accepted by other nations to tell China’s story and help the international community understand China’ (quoted in Shambaugh 2013, 11). So cultural diplomacy—one strand of China’s international communication strategy—helps correct alleged distorted understandings of the country and seeks to project more positive narratives about China than are offered by ‘western’ news organizations. (Lin 2012, McGiffert 2009). The Belt and Road initiative is one example of the confident and progressive themes pursued in China’s outreach, introducing consistency in policies pursued and their communication. In his opening remarks to the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017, Xi promised China ‘will improve our capacity for engaging in international communication so as to tell China’s stories well, present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China, and enhance the country’s soft power.’ Under Xi Jinping, China has stepped into fill the soft power vacuum created by Donald Trump’s election as US President in November 2016: while Trump advocates ‘America first’ and has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and the UK and Europe remain mired in talks about Brexit, Xi talks about the value of globalization and reiterates China’s commitment to tackling climate change. At the same time, under Xi Jinping the belief in the threat of wenhua shentou—cultural infiltration—continues to be an integral part of the official national security strategy and is included in Xi’s ‘comprehensive national security perspective’ of 2014. While China’s cultural engagement with the world expands, the government is becoming ever more reactionary in terms of cultural products flowing into China so that Xi’s ‘China dream’ can be realized. A number of prominent musicians have been prevented from performing in China or have been intimidated while doing so, including Justin Bieber, Elton John, Maroon 5, and Oasis. These high-profile cases have been explained by China’s cultural bureau with reference to the need to ‘purify the Chinese performance environment,’ preventing artists from threatening ‘national unity’ and violating ‘religious policy or cultural norms.’ The treatment of these and other Western artists is juxtaposed quite strikingly with that offered Chinese

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artists, such as the boy-band TFBoys who, conforming to the trend of cultural policy, have released a song called ‘We are the heirs of Communism.’ In her 2018 Foreign Affairs article, ‘Life in China’s Asia: What regional hegemony would look like,’ Jennifer Lind describes how China is ‘playing hardball for soft power’: Hollywood studios regularly seek Chinese funding for their projects, as well as distribution rights in China’s vast market. Wary of offending the CPC, studios have started preemptively censoring their content. Censorship has also begun to infect the publishing industry. To gain access to China’s vast market, publishers are increasingly required to censor books and articles containing specific words or phrases (for example, “Taiwan,” “Tibet,” and “Cultural Revolution”). Prominent publishing houses, including Springer Nature – the world’s leading academic book publisher – have succumbed to Beijing’s demands and are increasingly self-censoring. (Lind 2018, 79)

The most prominent example of such attempts to censor academic discourses occurred in 2017 when Cambridge University Press (CUP) first agreed and then, under pressure from the international academic community, refused to censor The China Quarterly for the Chinese market. China’s Global Times responded to CUP’s reversal thus: China has blocked some information on foreign websites that it deems harmful to Chinese society. This is for the sake of China’s security and is within the scope of China’s sovereignty. China is also trying to strike a balance between opening itself up and preventing harmful external information from penetrating into Chinese society, to realise steady and sustainable progress. Western institutions have the freedom to choose. If they don’t like the Chinese way, they can stop engaging with us. If they think China’s Internet market is so important that they can’t miss out, they need to respect Chinese law and adapt to the Chinese way.7

The boundaries between culture and politics—and economics—remain blurred, with the Chinese clearly believing, despite claims by Xi Jinping and others, that economic power and market access will always be far more important than culture. 7 China Quarterly Debate a Matter of Principle. Global Times, 20 August 2017. http:// www.globaltimes.cn/content/1062304.shtml.

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Clearly, China does have a strong capacity for cultural diplomacy and cultural relations, and successive governments have deployed cultural assets on a routine basis to reinforce a national agenda focused on encouraging familiarity and changing the global conversation about China. However, the defensive attitude to foreign (particularly ‘western’) cultural products that challenge the nationalism of the China Dream, together with domestic controls on expression and creativity, is a serious impediment to further success. Cultural diplomacy and cultural relations work best when the cultural industries are left alone to produce appealing and sometimes challenging works of art.

The Limits of Cultural Diplomacy Does cultural diplomacy come down to an ‘act of faith’ as Frank Ninkovich (1966, 58) suggested? Clearly, it is a mistake to place too much confidence in the ability of cultural diplomacy to ‘move the needle’ and change opinions and attitudes about, and behavior toward, the source. First, we must accept that the ‘mutuality’ and ‘reciprocity’ rooted in the more idealist approaches to cultural diplomacy are often absent, something that Berger et al. (2008) noted when referring to the need for a ‘culture of dialogue’ rather than a ‘dialogue of cultures.’ Nicholas Cull (2008) is correct to emphasize the importance of listening in public diplomacy—and, I may add, not just listening but also actively hearing. However, we must accept that sometimes we are neither heard nor communicating in such a way that hearing is easily encouraged. As Milton C. Cummings (2003) noted, cultural diplomacy and relations ‘can … be more of a one-way street than a two-way exchange, as when a nation concentrates its efforts on promoting the national language, explaining its policies and point of view, or “telling its story” to the world.’ One might suggest that in creating a global network of Confucius Institutes (established by the Ministry of Education to teach Mandarin and communicate Chinese culture), some of which in the US have closed after criticism of their alleged propaganda function, and in trying to correct an apparent distorted picture of their country among Western audiences, Chinese programs of cultural diplomacy are stuck on a one-way street that limits genuine exchange. Second, it is unclear how much culture can overcome negative images of governments and policies among foreign publics. Consuming American cultural products does not necessarily translate into growing acceptance or

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sympathy for US government behavior, especially when the US is engaged in unpopular military interventions overseas (Iraq 2003) or when the American president refers to the French as ‘surrendering cheese-monkeys’ (Bush Jr.) and to African nations as ‘shitholes’ (Trump). In other words, culture cannot compensate for mistaken, poorly judged, or even illegal government activity. Rather, as I have argued elsewhere (Rawnsley 2018), the first responsibility of governments is governance—getting the right policies right is essential and makes their positive communication far easier. Third, as noted above, cultural diplomacy risks being seen as something other than benign. Audiences can interpret cultural diplomacy in an entirely different way from how its creator or source intended. The purpose may be mutual understanding and respect, but recipients may see the motivation in a very different light. In other words, the outcome of any program of strategic communication, including cultural diplomacy, ‘is more in control of the subject than is often the case with hard power’ (Nye 2008, xiii). This means there is no guarantee that cultural interest will translate into tangible outcomes; there is no necessary correlation between consuming a cultural product and a change in opinion or behavior toward the source (McConnell 2008; Watanabe 2008). Fraser (2003, 229) reminds us that after the end of the Second World War, ‘Many French intellectuals liked American jazz music, but politically they embraced the slogan ‘Yankee Go Home!’ For the French, America was at once fascinating and repugnant.’ However, the bottom line is that culture is a highly subjective phenomenon, and what may appeal to one member of the audience may be rejected outright by another member of the audience—not necessarily from political conviction, but perhaps because they do not emotionally engage with the cultural product. The fourth limit to cultural diplomacy follows from the third: how to identify and measure success. It is (relatively) easy to count the number of international visitors who pass through China’s airports, how many foreign students are studying in China’s higher education system, or how many viewers watched a movie made in China at an international film festival. But this information is not so useful in measuring the impact of cultural diplomacy. What is far more valuable, but certainly more challenging to measure, is the qualitative response of individuals who encounter China in a cultural mode. Have their opinions about, or behavior toward China changed as a consequence of engaging with

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Chinese culture? (Some of the key issues around evaluation and measurement are discussed in section 2 of Chitty et al. 2016). In addressing these points—especially the important issue of impact—I quote at length John Brown, a member of the US Foreign Service from 1981 until 2003 specializing in press and cultural affairs. ‘Of course,’ he writes, ‘I would never claim that [arts diplomacy] is a panacea for the low esteem held towards America overseas …’. Arts diplomacy … will not suddenly move the needle of global public opinion in favor of the US or its foreign policy in the way gasoline makes a motor move. Foreigners will not instantly begin to drink Diet Coke or eat pounds after pounds of US frozen chicken if they know more American poetry. Nor is it self-evident … that art … will necessarily lead to virtue abroad as we American see it – for example, to less anti-Americanism in countries that “hate us”. How many terrorists will automatically embrace American values after reading Moby Dick or listening to Negro spirituals? Very few, if any, is the answer to this question, often posed by those who think the taxpayer –supported promotion of art is a waste of time and resources.

However, as Brown argues in his chapter, this does not mean such cultural or art diplomacy should not be practiced. When we live in ‘interesting times,’ with the daily potential for discord, conflict, and extreme forms of political rhetoric and nationalism intent on dividing ‘us’ from ‘them,’ perhaps the need for cultural bridges is at its greatest.

References Arndt, Richard T. 2005. The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century. New York: Potomac Books Inc. Berger, Maurits, Els van der Plas, Charlotte Huygens, Neila Akrimi, and Cynthia Schneider. 2008. Bridge the Gap or Mind the Gap? Culture in Western-Arab Relations. Clingendael: Netherlands institute of International Relations. Brown, John. 2009. Arts Diplomacy: The Neglected Aspect of Cultural Diplomacy. In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, eds. N. Snow and P.M. Taylor, 57–59. London: Routledge. Callahan, William. 2010. China: The Pessoptimist Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlin, Peter A. 2016. Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

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Channick, Joan. 2005. The Artist as Cultural Diplomat. May/June: American Theatre Magazine. Chen, Hongjun. 2016. Introduction to Cultural Self-Confidence. International Journal of Arts and Commerce 5 (9): 75–80. Chitty, Naren, Li Ji, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Craig Hayden (eds.). 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power. London: Routledge. Coombs, Philip H. 1964. The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural Affairs. New York: Harper & Row. Cull, Nicholas J. 2008. Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616 (1): 31–54. Cummings, Milton C. 2003. Cultural Diplomacy and the United States Government: A Survey. Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture. Delores, Jacques, et al. 1996. Education: The Treasure Within. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Fraser, Matthew. 2003. Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire. New York: Thomas Dunne. Freeman, Donald. 2003. Cultural Policy-Making in the Free Trade Era: An Evaluation of the Impact of Current World Trade Organization Negotiations on Audio-visual Industries. International Journal of Cultural Policies 9 (3): 285–298. Hong, Euny. 2014. The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Its Pop Culture. London: Simon & Schuster. Iriye, Akira. 1997. Cultural Internationalism and World Order. New York: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kim, Hun Shik. 2017. The Korean Wave as Soft Power Public Diplomacy. In The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power, eds. Naren Chitty, Li Ji, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Craig Hayden, 414–424. London: Routledge. Klaic, Dragan. 2007. Mobility of Imagination. Budapest: Centre for Arts and Culture, Central European University. Lee, Shin-Wha. 2011. The Theory and Reality of Soft Power: Practical Approaches in East Asia. In Public Diplomacy and Soft Power in East Asia, eds. S. J. Lee and Jan Melissen, 11–32. New York: Palgrave. Lin K. 2012. Gonggong waijiao zaizhong guoheping jueqizhong de gongneng fenxi [A Functional Analysis of Public Diplomacy Within China’s Peaceful Rise]. In Guoji Guancha [International Observer], February, 72–79. Lind, Jennifer. 2018. Life in China’s Asia: What Regional Hegemony Would Look Like. Foreign Affairs, March–April, 71–82. Mattern, Janice B. 2005. Why “Soft Power” Isn’t So Soft: Representational Force and the Sociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics. Millennium—Journal of International Studies 33 (3): 583–612. McConnell, David L.M. 2008. Japan’s Image Problem and the Soft Power Solution. In Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and

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the United States, eds. Y. Watanabe and D.L. McConnell. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. McGiffert, Carola (ed.). 2009. Chinese Soft Power and Its Implications for the United States: Competition and Cooperation in the Developing World. Washington, DC: CSIS. Melissen, Jan. 2005. The New Public Diplomacy: between Theory and Practice. In The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations, ed. Jan Melissen, 3–27. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mitchell, J.M. 1986. International Cultural Relations. London: Allen & Unwin. Ninkovich, Frank. 1966. US Information Policy and Cultural Diplomacy. New York: Foreign Policy Association. Nisbett, Melissa. 2013. New Perspectives on Instrumentalism: An Empirical Study of Cultural Diplomacy. International Journal of Cultural Policy 19 (5): 557–575. Nye, Joseph S. 2006. Think Again: Soft Power. Foreign Policy. February 23. http://foreignpolicy.com/2006/02/23/think-again-soft-power/. Nye, Joseph S. 2008. Forward. In Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States, eds. Y. Watanabe and D.L. McConnell, ix–xiv. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Pamment, James. 2016. British Public Diplomacy and Soft Power: Diplomatic Influence and the Digital Revolution. London and Santa Monica, CA: Palgrave Macmillan and RAND Occasional Paper, RAND. www.rand.org/pubs/occasi onal_papers/OP134/index.html. Rawnsley, Gary D. 2015. To Know Us Is to Love Us: Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting in Contemporary Russia and China. Politics 35 (3–4): 273–286. Rawnsley, Gary D., and C. Ngac. 2017. Vietnamese Cultural Diplomacy: An Emerging Strategy. In The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power, eds. Naren Chitty, Li Ji, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Craig Hayden, 425–440. London: Routledge. Rawnsley, Gary D. 2018. Challenging the Snake-Oil Salesmen: A Critique of British Approaches to Soft Power. The Journal of International Communication 21 (1): 1–17. Rivera, Tim. 2015. Distinguishing Cultural Relations from Cultural Diplomacy. CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy. https://www.cultureinexternalrela tions.eu/2015/01/20/distinguishing-cultural-relations-from-cultural-diplom acy/. Rose, Martin, and Nick Wadham-Smith. 2004. Mutuality, Trust and Cultural Relations. London: Counterpoint. Rothkopf, David. 1997. In Praise of Cultural Imperialism. Foreign Policy (Summer).

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Shambaugh, David. 2013. China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. London: Polity. Tuttle, Gray. 2015. China’s Race Problem: How Beijing Represses Minorities. Foreign Affairs, May/June: 39–46. US Department of State. 2005. Cultural Diplomacy: The Linchpin of Public Diplomacy. Report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy. Washington, DC. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/54374.pdf. Varma, Pavan. 2007. Culture as an Instrument of Diplomacy. In Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, eds. A. Sinah and M. Mohta. New Delhi: Academic Foundation. Wang, Jian. 2013. Shaping China’s Global Imagination: Branding Nations at the World Expo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Watanabe, Yasushi. 2008. Revisiting Soft Power. Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. http://www.cpg.org/articleswindow.php. Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf Jr., Charles, and Brian Rosen. 2004. Public Diplomacy: How to Think About It and Improve It. Santa Monica: Rand. Wong, Edward. 2012. China’s President Lashes Out at Western Culture. New York Times, 3 January. Zhao, Qizheng. 2012. How China Communicates: Public Diplomacy in a Global Age. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

CHAPTER 3

Xinjiang in China’s Public Diplomacy in Central Asia: Case Study of Almaty Ondˇrej Klimeš

Introduction Central Asia (CA) is among the highest diplomatic priorities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) due to its core position in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a major foreign policy strategy announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, which has since been strongly impacting global international relations. A sizeable amount of scholarship exists on politics, security, trade, finance and investment, energy and natural resource cooperation, infrastructure and communications construction, and other aspects of Sino-Central Asian relations (e.g., Peyrose 2016; Eder 2014;

The additional research for this chapter was funded by the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship of the Czech Academy of Sciences; the chapter is also a result of the Oriental Institute’s Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order research platform. O. Klimeš (B) Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_3

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Mariani 2013). Less attention has been devoted to China’s public diplomacy and national image building in the region (e.g., Exnerova 2018; Laruelle 2018, 97–169; d’Hooghe 2015, 195–198). The following chapter seeks to partially fill the knowledge gap by presenting a case study on the PRC’s public diplomacy in Kazakhstan. It understands the PRC’s public diplomacy as ‘engagement and communication with foreign publics for the sake of communicating certain narratives and images of the country to promote its soft power and thereby national interests’ (Hartig 2016, 656). While listening, advocacy, exchange, and psychological warfare have also been grouped among public diplomacy activities (Cull 2009), this research mainly analyzes two other PRC endeavors to influence Central Asian publics. These are information activities that make use of the press (Cull et al. 2003, 327) and the Internet (Cull 2009, 21) and cultural diplomacy, i.e., publicizing its cultural resources and achievements (Cull 2009, 19). This research complements Vˇera Exnerová’s study of transnational actors and networks of China’s public diplomacy in Central Asia presented in the following chapter. The present chapter focuses on how the vast and resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR; also known as East or Chinese Turkestan) located along the PRC’s northwestern border with CA, as well as its major trans-border Turkic Muslim nationalities—namely Uyghurs and Kazakhs who also inhabit the neighboring Central Asia Republics (CARs)—feature in China’s public diplomacy in CA. The research draws firstly on Chinese official and academic statements, news reports, and other sources intended for a readership inside the PRC. Secondly, it refers to Russian-language sources issued by the PRC’s public diplomacy apparatus or by local actors, which are disseminated to Central Asian publics. Thirdly, observations of and interviews about China’s cultural diplomacy in Almaty conducted during research trip together with Vˇera Exnerová (see the following chapter) in January and February 2016 and during additional research in September 2019 are used. The city was chosen because, even after the relocation of Kazakhstan’s capital to Astana in 1997, it retains the status of an important political, economic, social, and cultural hub, which, moreover, has numerous linkages to Xinjiang.

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China’s Central Asian Policy The role Xinjiang and its major Muslim nationalities play in the PRC’s public diplomacy in CA derives partly from multiple geographical, demographic, cultural, and other ties of the PRC’s northwestern flank to greater Central Asia, and partly from the geopolitical importance of Central Asia, which makes the region one of the top priorities of the PRC’s foreign policy. Broadly speaking, China’s relations with CA are shaped by two main dynamics. China’s Central Asian borderland has firstly functioned as a bustling conduit for the exchange of populations, goods, faiths, ideas, and other assets, which have positively influenced China’s evolution—for instance, by traffic along the ancient Silk Road during the Han (206 BCE–210 CE) or Tang dynasties (618–907). Secondly, the northwest has posed a perennial security risk to Chinese empires due to its potential to channel destabilizing political influences and military invasions, which, moreover, have often synergized with the aspirations of local communities and actors for independence on China, as was the case with the Xiongnu wars with the Han dynasty from the second century BCE to the first century AD or with Yaqup Beg’s invasion of Qing-administered Xinjiang in 1864–1877 in the wake of Muslim rebellions in northwestern China (Millward 2007; Perdue 2005). In the modern era, Soviet influence in Republican Xinjiang in the 1920s and 1930s turned the province into a de facto Soviet protectorate over China’s strategic rear (Norins 1944; see also Forbes 1986), while uprisings of Xinjiang Turkic nationalities wrestled political control over significant parts of the province from the local government, leading to the proclamation of the East Turkestan Republic in 1933–1934 and 1944–1949. During the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s–1980s, crossborder ties were forcefully severed as Xinjiang became the locus of a potential military conflict between the two superpowers (Millward 2007, 255–257, 272–273). Cross-border contacts were only reestablished in the late 1980s following perestroika in the Soviet CARs and Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in China. Xinjiang functioned as a vanguard in the revival of SinoSoviet ties as the first agreements and contracts were reached between the province and the Soviet CARs (Sadovskaya 2012a, 88–89; Khodzhaev 2009, 11–13). The intertwining dynamics of beneficial exchange and looming security threat have continued to shape the PRC’s relations with the independent CARs. Their opening and China’s economic rise throughout

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the 1990s gradually translated into the growth of Sino-Central Asian trade and cooperation in energy, finance and investment, transportation and communication building, factory construction, hydroelectric power projects, agriculture, and other areas. The renewal of China’s ties with the CARs also built on Beijing’s launch of the Great Opening of the West (xibu da kaifa) development strategy plan in 1999, which aimed to improve the material conditions and governance in Western provinces and autonomous regions of the PRC, including Xinjiang. Xinjiang’s function as China’s bridgehead to CA further grew in importance after inter-ethnic violence in Urumchi in July 2009, which led the central government to retort, besides upscaling the repressive policies targeting Uyghurs, by strengthening the region’s position as a hub of cross-border exchange and cooperation. The ties were also aided by the cross-border business of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (also known as the bingtuan), a quasi-military organization directed by the PRC central government and a major economic player in Xinjiang’s economy in the 1990s and 2000s (Dillon 2004, 142–155; Zhu 2010, 111–137; Sadovskaya 2012a, 91–92; 2012b, 92–97; Mariani 2013; Eder 2014; Li 2016). The importance of Central Asia in China’s foreign policy further grew after Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012 and commenced a more assertive PRC foreign policy. On a state visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013, Xi announced the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB, sichouzhi lu jingjidai) initiative, which was to link China with the rest of Eurasia through Kazakhstan by investment, infrastructure building, and other development projects (Xinhua 2013b). After announcing a similar plan of bonding with countries in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean (named 21st Century Maritime Silk Road; 21 shiji haishang sichouzhi lu; Xinhua 2013c), both sections subsequently became known as the One Belt One Road (OBOR; also known as the New Silk Road) or the BRI. The Xi leadership declared that it seeks to achieve ‘five-fold connectivity’ (wutong ) with the participant countries, i.e., in policy, infrastructure, trade, finance, and ideas. Xinjiang is a vital section of the SREB and, moreover, connects the two BRI branches via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Zhao 2018a). It has been pointed out that China’s expansion into CA should be understood as a part of a larger and older effort ‘to secure and stabilize its backyard’ (Sadovskaya 2012a, 91). Immediately after the collapse of the USSR, the PRC’s diplomatic priorities in CA were unresolved border issues and the threat of what the CPC terms the three forces (sangu shili).

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This concept nominally refers to East Turkestani/Uyghur ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorism, but which, in fact, denotes all other forms of discontent or non-compliance with state policies. The escalation of ethno-political unrest would destabilize not only Xinjiang, but the overall economic performance, energy security, territorial integrity, and political identity of the PRC. Therefore, since 1991 China has managed to enlist the support of local governments in ousting or disabling exile Uyghur organizations in CA, in blockading Xinjiang Uyghurs from seeking asylum in CA, and in preventing the rise and spread of Islamic militancy to Xinjiang. A multilateral mechanism to enhance Sino-CARs security cooperation was the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) founded in 1996, which evolved into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001 (National People’s Congress 2001; Zhao 2007, 139–141, 197–199; Clarke 2011, 98–170; Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 97–98; Liao 2012, 39–43; Shichor 2018). Xinjiang thus functions both as a security issue, and, consequentially, as a ‘bargaining chip’ for multilateral cooperation through the SCO and other platforms (Sadovskaya 2012a, 85).

Transnational Muslim Nationalities of the PRC’s Northwest and the CARs The above overview clarifies that the multiple cross-border ties of Xinjiang’s Muslim nationalities generate potent dynamics within the PRC’s relations with the CARs (Zhao 2007, 163–164). Chinese experts view the trans-border Muslim ethnic groups as natural links between China and the CARs because they represent a historically constituted and stable community with a common language, habitat, economic life, and psychological constitution manifested in a common culture.1 These attributes are, nevertheless, subordinate to the ‘grand-identity’ (da rentong ) of the ‘political category’ (zhengzhi fanchou) of the ‘Chinese nation’ (Zhonghua minzu): ‘Cultural identity and the narrow concept of national identity cannot exceed boundaries of political identity’ (Li 2003, 9). Therefore, the trans-border Muslim nationalities can also be 1 Although not acknowledged in the source, the definition was put forth by Joseph Stalin in his 1913 pamphlet Marxism and the National Question (Lenin and Stalin 1970, 66–68), which is still regarded as the authoritative conceptualization of nation by PRC academia and ethnic policy-makers today.

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conducive to China’s economic growth, energy security, and building ties with Central Asia, as well as to the PRC’s ‘external cultural exchange’ (duiwai wenhua jiaoliu; Li 2013, i) and public diplomacy, by ‘promoting China’ (xuanchuan Zhongguo; Li 2013, i–iv). After the Sino-Soviet chill in the 1960s and 1970s, Xinjiang’s transnational communities rebuilt ties between the PRC and the Soviet Central Asian republics in the late 1980s as individual traders relying on trans-border relatives and contact networks (Li 2013, 30; Sadovskaya 2012b, 107–109). On the other hand, the cross-border religious, cultural, and ideological connections of Xinjiang’s transnational ethnic groups to Central Asia and the wider Islamic world are viewed by China’s policy-makers and academics as factors potentially endangering national security (guojia anquan) and Xinjiang’s social stability (shehui wending ). The potentially hazardous ethno-cultural and political linkages across Xinjiang’s borders are also seen as susceptible to exploitation by ‘international anti-China forces’ or drug traffickers (Li 2013, i–iv; Li 2003, 161–199). The most numerous transnational ethnic group linking China with CA are the Uyghurs, Turkic Muslims residing largely in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where they numbered slightly over 12 million in 2015 and thus officially constituted around 46% of Xinjiang’s population (XUAR Statistics Bureau 2017). Tens of thousands of Uyghurs have migrated from Xinjiang in several stages to Western Central Asia since the eighteenth century, most recently in the wake of the CPC’s collectivization and political campaigns in the 1950s and early 1960s (Roberts 1998, 511–514). In the early 1990s, Xinjiang Uyghurs constituted the majority of the businessmen trading between the PRC and Central Asia. They have, however, lost this privileged function to bigger state actors on both sides, as well as Central Asian and Han businessmen, partly because they are perceived to have political motivations that threaten both the PRC and CARs (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 98–103). The second most numerous community are the Kazakhs, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group living mostly in Kazakhstan and in the neighboring CARs. Since 1992, Kazakhstan has repatriated almost a million ethnic Kazakhs from other countries, among whom the returnees (Kaz. oralmandar) from China constitute around 14.3%, or some 136,000 persons, according to Kazakh authorities (RFE/RL 2015). In Xinjiang, Kazakhs constituted the second-largest non-Han group, numbering around 1,850,000 in 2015 (XUAR Statistics Bureau 2017). After 2000,

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Table 3.1 Population of Xinjiang origin in CARs estimated according to official data of respective countries, PRC statistics, and other sources (Li 2013, 9)

Country

Total

Kazakhstan

495,600

Kyrgyzstan

101,000

Uzbekistan

70,000

Tajikistan Turkmenistan

15,000 2000

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Nationality

Number

Uyghur Kazakh Hui Han Uyghur Hui Han Uyghur Hui, Han, etc. Uyghur Uyghur

321,600 100,000 50,000 4000 50,000 50,000 1000 45,000 25,000 15,000 2000

Xinjiang Kazakhs started to play a more significant role in cross-border ties as intermediaries and translators in business or as Chinese language teachers (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 113–118). Nevertheless, in recent years they have been increasingly outmaneuvered in pursuit of teaching opportunities by Chinese native speakers proficient in Russian.2 The third major Muslim transnational ethnic group are the Chinesespeaking Hui, referred to as Dungans (alternately spelled as Tungans, Donggans, etc.) in Central Asia and China’s greater northwest. The Central Asian Dungan communities mostly migrated to CA after the Qing army suppressed their large-scale rebellions in the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in 1862–1877. Due to their Chinese-language skills, they are prominent actors in the CARs’ China trade or tourism. Some of their commercial activities involve PRC state entities and often include, or, in some cases, have evolved from, cross-border cultural activities, such as Chinese language instruction, martial arts, or tea culture (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 103–111). Besides Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Dungans, smaller populations of transnational Kyrgyz (approximately 225,000), Tajiks (50,000), and Uzbeks (27,000) resided in Xinjiang in 2015 (XUAR Statistics Bureau 2017), who do not play a significant role in Sino-Central Asian ties (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 111–113). The approximate population of China’s larger transnational Muslim ethnic groups in CARs is shown in Table 3.1.

2 Interview with informant, Almaty 2016.

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Despite the lack of more reliable data,3 it is obvious that none of the above communities hailing from China makes up more than 2% of any CAR’s total population. Correspondingly, with the exception of the Uyghurs, the almost 2 million Kazakhs, who constitute some 7% of Xinjiang’s population, and of the 10.6 million Hui, who make up about 0.8% of the total population of the PRC, all other transnational ethnic groups (Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uzbek, and Tatar) constitute no more than 1% of Xinjiang’s population. Although many Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Huis born in the PRC acquired local citizenship upon their relocation to CARs, China still perceives them as Chinese nationals living abroad. Specifically, they are considered either ‘Huaqiao,’ i.e., a citizen of the PRC living abroad, or a ‘Huaren,’ i.e., a naturalized citizen of a foreign country with family background in China. Both groups are viewed either as China’s minority nationality (shaoshu minzu) or as a transnational (kuaguo) or trans-border nationality (kuajie minzu; Li 2013, 1–12). Northwestern non-Han transnational Huaren or Huaqiao living in Central Asia are considered members of the multiethnic ‘Chinese nation’ (Zhonghua minzu), which is regarded as a ‘cultural concept’ (wenhua gainian; Li 2013, 4), not as an ethnic category.

Official Conceptualization of Xinjiang and Its Muslims in the PRC’s Public Diplomacy Chinese official and academic sources are often specific about how Xinjiang and its transnational ethnic groups can function in the PRC’s Central Asian foreign policy and public diplomacy. Xinjiang is considered the ‘core region’ (hexinqu) and the ‘forefront’ (qianyan) of the BRI and the ‘pivot’ of China’s Central Asian strategy due to its essential role as a transportation and commercial hub and venue for cooperation and exchange in security, economy, business, technology, education, and culture (Xinhua 2015; Zheng 2017). The region should draw on its favorable geopolitical location in strengthening international educational exchange, researching the BRI and Central Asia, and promoting Chinese language and founding Confucius Institutes abroad (Zhao 2014b). Xinjiang’s public diplomacy should firstly service the BRI, secondly 3 The Kazakhstani total exceeds the stated subtotals of respective communities by some 20,000, which is unexplained by the author. It is also not clear how the table relates to the above-quoted returnee statistic (RFE/RL 2015).

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consolidate China’s territorial integrity and security, and thirdly advance Xinjiang’s economic and social development by creating a ‘favorable cultural atmosphere’ (lianghao wenhua qifen) and soliciting ‘supportive public opinion’ (yulun zhichi; Zhao 2018a). This approach accords with the general function of China’s international broadcasting, which should, according to Chinese scholars, aim to ‘create a national image of a harmonious and stable, peacefully developing, equal and responsible country, and thereby to counter the false or even distorted propaganda by the anti-China forces’ (Li and Yang 2015, 68). According to other Chinese experts, the PRC’s public diplomacy should aim at shaping a favorable public opinion and reception of China’s presence in CA and at building an image of its ‘politics as active and friendly, diplomacy as fair and just, companies as honest and trustworthy, products as reliable and superb, history as objective and positive, and culture as completely amenable’ (Zhao 2018b). Culture is seen as having the capacity to complement political, economic, military, and other avenues in expanding China’s ‘strategic space’ (zhanlüe kongjian) in Central Asia. Therefore, Xinjiang’s ethnic and cultural assets should be used to develop ethno-cultural exchange and cooperation between Xinjiang and the CARs. Specifically, China’s cultural broadcasting to CA must be globally attractive, convey the ‘cultural essence of universal values’ (pushi jiazhi de wenhua jingsui), and also rely on a ‘Central Asian localization’ (Zhongya bentuhua; Li and Yang 2015). This specifically entails ‘linguistic localization’ (yuyan bentuhua), which means building TV and radio outlets which broadcast in Xinjiang languages used also in surrounding countries. Besides explaining China’s stance, ‘content localization’ (neirong bentuhua) should consider the needs of the target countries and their relationship to China, understand differences between respective countries, and follow a ‘separate policy for each country’ (yiguo yice) principle. Local language and cultural assets should also be drawn upon by ‘personnel localization’ (renyuan bentuhua) and ‘operational localization’ (yunying bentuhua) of information efforts in Xinjiang’s neighborhood (Zhao 2018a). Islam should be theoretically also used as an asset of the PRC’s Central Asian public diplomacy. One specific proposal suggests disseminating through translations into relevant local languages the content of the white paper on the The Situation of the Freedom of Religious Belief in Xinjiang (‘Xinjiang de zongjiao xinyang ziyou zhuangkuang ’ baipishu; Zhao 2018a), which details the allegedly full implementation of citizens’

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right to the freedom of religious belief in Xinjiang in accordance with the PRC laws, thereby enabling Xinjiang to promote dialogue and exchange among various religions and civilizations on the principles of equality, friendship, and mutual respect (PRC State Council Information Office 2016). The Islamic religious affiliation, transnational identity, and culture of Xinjiang’s Muslim population, as well as the ‘diverse yet inclusive, secular, and progressive modernization and development model,’ is even perceived as a potential inspiration for the CARs and other Islamic countries to follow, as a means of fostering bilateral ties based on ‘equality, inclusiveness, and common development,’ and thus also as a tool for increasing China’s soft power (Zheng 2017).

Actors and Message of China’s Public Diplomacy in Almaty Chinese experts realize that, as in other parts of the world, China’s public diplomacy in CA lags behind that of the US, Russia, Turkey, or Iran in that Central Asian publics are insufficiently familiar with China. This is partially due to deficiencies in China’s tactics and methods. As the CA publics are mostly informed either by domestic reporting or by Russian, US, or European channels, China lacks the direct means to cultivate a positive national image instrumental for Sino-CA economic, resource, and security cooperation (Li and Yang 2015). Therefore, in line with its media and information ‘going-out’ policy from the early 2000s (Marsh 2018, 143) and echoing Xi Jinping’s appeal at the National Propaganda and Thought-Work Conference on 19 August 2013 to improve China’s national image and soft power by innovative techniques of propaganda, namely by ‘explaining Chinese stories and broadcasting Chinese voice’ (Xinhua 2013a), China conducts numerous media and publishing activities in Central Asia. Xinjiang functions as China’s venue for establishing publicity and media cooperation with CA countries by organizing exchange events such as the News Department Heads Forum at the China-Eurasia Expo in September 2016 in Urumchi (PRC Government 2016). The abovementioned linguistic localization tactics have been applied, for instance, by broadcasting some Xinjiang programs in local languages to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan since 2004 after the massive broadening of state radio and TV coverage in remote regions of Xinjiang in 2000 as part of the Great Opening of the West (Zheng 2017). In general, media diplomacy is an

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important part of the BRI, as revealed by numerous PRC initiatives, such as the annual Media Cooperation Forum on Belt and Road held since 2015, or the SREB Countries’ Media Representatives’ Seminar held in July 2018 in Beijing (Xinhua 2018). A major actor in the PRC’s information activities abroad is the China International Communication Center (CICC, Wuzhou chuanbo zhongxin), a unit under the State Council Information Office (see also the final chapter of this volume). The CICC is involved in producing and disseminating a variety of foreign language audiovisual materials and books. One of these is the book Stories about China and Kazakhstan (Zhongguo he Hasakesitande gushi), published as an outcome of the series We and You (Women he Nimen) which, since 2015, has promoted the PRC’s bilateral ties with various countries by model episodes of historical friendship and cooperation of China with the particular country. The Kazakhstani version was published in 2016 in Chinese and Russian, featuring chapters by both Chinese and Kazakh authors. Its message promotes favorable relations between the two countries and their cooperation within the framework of the PRC’s SREB and Kazakhstan’s Bright Road4 initiatives (Wuzhou chuanbo 2015). The CICC also published the Russian edition of the Chinese popular history Xinjiang’s Past by Tian Weijiang. The book introduces the region now called Xinjiang from prehistoric times down to the ‘liberation’ by Chinese Communist troops in 1949. Its narrative devotes modest attention to local events and processes tied to greater Central Asia, which constituted the main dynamics throughout the region’s history (Millward 2007, 1–234). Instead, the book provides a China-centered view of Xinjiang’s history by amplifying the region’s connections to the Chinese empire and the brief periods during which the empire controlled parts of modern-day Xinjiang, thus underlining the integration and unification with the motherland which Chinese historiography generally regards as the dominant theme (zhuliu) of Chinese history (Bovingdon and

4 Announced by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev in November 2014, the

Bright Road (Kz. Nurly Zhol ) plan seeks to stimulate the country’s development by means of projects in infrastructure, transportation, IT, and other areas. Its similarities to China’s SREB stimulate mutual cooperation, but also raise the risk of Kazakhstan’s projects being subsumed into the BRI, thereby strengthening China’s influence (Pantucci and Lain 2017, 44).

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Tursun 2004, 353–363). By representing Xinjiang as a multiethnic region inhabited by a number of nationalities confessing to various religions, the book downplays the role of Turkic nationalities and Islam in the region’s history. It also portrays the region as ‘dynamic and open’ (Tian 2015, i– ii). The book is distributed free of charge by the Confucius Institute (CI) at the leading Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KazNU). The successful governance of Xinjiang by the CPC is the main theme of another publication by the CICC, the Russian edition of 60 Years of Xinjiang’s History: Facts and Figures, 1955–2015, authored by Liu Xianghui, Liu Junyou, and Li Xinping and published in 2015.5 Besides conveying similar values to Tian’s book, it details the CPC’s accomplishments in the economy, social affairs, and environmental protection. The dynamics of Xinjiang’s complex inter-ethnic relations are said to have evolved toward ‘mingling and integration’ (Liu et al. 2015, 9). The book also describes at length the socialist legal system’s guarantees of minority nationalities’ rights, including language and cultural rights, as well as the allegedly complete freedom of religious observance (61–82) and the claimed cultural and intellectual flourishing of Xinjiang’s ethnic groups (191–214). The book presents the BRI as a new development opportunity for Xinjiang’s nationalities (249–250). In sum, the narrative’s message eulogizes Xinjiang’s ethno-cultural diversity and vibrant development under the CPC’s patronage. The book is also distributed free of charge by the CI at the KazNU. A more localized PRC publication effort is the Good Neighbor (Youlin, Kz. Korshi) magazine published jointly by the Xinjiang External Cultural Exchange Association (Xinjiang duiwai wenhua jiaoliu xiehui) and Kazakhstan National Library Spiritual Heritage Association since 2006. The magazine is a monthly in the Kazakh language and carries articles and photos about Xinjiang’s and China’s culture, history, nature, and customs and other topics, including coverage of Xinjiang’s Kazakh-related topics. Its aim is to improve knowledge about Xinjiang and China in Kazakhstan and to boost Sino-Kazakhstani ties and cooperation (Sina 2006). It is distributed free of charge by the National Library in Almaty and other cultural institutions. The PRC’s information activities are aided by some Kazakhstani intelligentsia, who present views similar to those found in Chinese narratives. 5 The XUAR was formed in 1955 by the conversion of Xinjiang province into an autonomous region.

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One example is research funded by the Kazakhstani government on China’s development and its significance for Kazakhstan. The researchers of the Department of Oriental Studies of the prestigious KazNU view Kazakhstan’s cooperation with China as almost exclusively beneficial and observe that in Central Asia, China seeks to project its global influence, culture, values, and views (Aldabek et al. 2014, 278). The book also notes the growing ‘sub-regional’ cooperation of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan with the XUAR in cultural affairs and humanities between trans-border nationalities, but without further specification (Aldabek et al. 2014, 279). The authors also note that the PRC seeks to transform Xinjiang into an engine of China’s economy, and that this factor can strongly contribute to Kazakhstan’s socioeconomic growth. In order to use Xinjiang’s potential to its advantage, the Kazakhstani government should, therefore, closely cooperate with Beijing in implementing infrastructure, transportation, and logistics projects in Kazakhstan and Central Asia (Aldabek et al. 2014, 305). The study relies heavily on official Chinese sources and contains no critical evaluation of problematic aspects of China’s domestic and foreign policy relevant to Kazakhstan. Similarly, a study by a Kazakhstani Sinologist, Konstantin Syroyezhkin, considers Uyghur separatism and related terrorism as a major issue in contemporary Xinjiang which can negatively impact Sino-Kazakhstani relations (Syroyezhkin 2015, 293–299). He argues that the specific causes of the inter-ethnic Xinjiang conflict are the existence of ethnic myths (such as the Uyghurs’ alleged indigenousness to Xinjiang), contradictions in solving the national question in multiethnic polities such as the USSR and the PRC, the growing Islamization of Xinjiang, the growing competition on the Xinjiang labor market, the resentment of the Han population due to the central government’s extensive economic support of Xinjiang, and the global increase in ethnic antagonisms, which in the case of the Xinjiang conflict is exploited and supported by global powers, namely the US and NATO, against the PRC (Syroyezhkin 2015, 107– 117). Syroyezhkin does acknowledge the infringement on the Uyghurs’ rights as one of the conflict’s causes, but simultaneously regards the curbs on their religious freedom as ‘in many ways a necessary response to the politicization of Islam and religiously-motivated terrorism, which are, furthermore, implemented strictly according to legal norms regulating the activities of religious organizations in Xinjiang’ (ibid., 110).

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The issue of Uyghur separatism, extremism, and terrorism is also a prominent topic in the PRC’s official communication in Kazakhstan. The Astana embassy’s website features the Russian and English versions of an interview with the chairman of the Xinjiang regional government Shohrat Zakir, who in October 2018 presented a complex justification for what the PRC calls the ‘de-extremification’ of the Xinjiang Muslim population (PRC Embassy in Kazakhstan 2018), thus reacting to mounting international criticism of increasing repression of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Xinjiang Muslims, including their detention in political reeducation camps, which China calls ‘vocational training centers’ (zhiye jineng jiaoyu peixun zhongxin; Zenz 2019; Zenz and Leibold 2017). Similarly, the website of the PRC Almaty consulate features the PRC consul in Almaty Zhang Wei’s arguments in favor of the ‘vocational training centers’ (PRC Consulate General in Almaty 2019). The statements were issued shortly after Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev announced he would resign from his post on March 19, 2019 and after the PRC State Councilor Wang Yi thanked Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Beibut Atamkulov for his country’s support on Xinjiang’s ‘deextremification’ during his visit to Beijing on March 29, 2019 (Reuters 2019). The urgency with which China is seeking to shape Kazakhstani public opinion on the Xinjiang crisis is further underlined by the interview China’s ambassador to Kazakhstan, Zhang Xiao, granted to local media in early April 2019, in which he dismissed as fabrications the international criticism and testimonies of the victims of the Xinjiang crackdown, who are often of Kazakh ethnicity (Global Times 2019). Besides information activities, the PRC also performs cultural diplomacy in CA, which its officials understand as a means of furthering its overall policy in the region (PRC History 2015). As in other countries, Confucius Institutes (CIs) are important sponsors of China’s cultural events. There are five CIs in Kazakhstan, of which the one in Almaty is the oldest. Its predecessor was established in 2002 as a Chinese language center co-founded by the KazNU and Lanzhou University, which boasts strong Central Asian Studies expertise and links to Central Asian academia. In 2007, the center was incorporated into the Confucius Institute network directed through the PRC’s Ministry of Education and the State Office of the Leading Small Group for International Promotion of Chinese Language (Guojia Hanyu guoji tuiguang lingdao xiaozu bangongshi, abbreviated as the Hanban and officially translated into English as the Office of Chinese Language Council International )

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by the CPC’s propaganda apparatus (Klimeš 2017, 139–141). Similarly to other CIs approached, e.g., in the chapters of Jens Damm, Vˇera Exnerová, and Tomáš Petru˚ in this volume, its mission is instruction in the Chinese language, administration of the Chinese Proficiency Test (Hanyu shuiping kaoshi; HSK), training of Chinese language teachers, or organizing quiz shows and China-knowledge competitions. For the Lunar New Year on February 8, 2016, the CI Almaty also organized a cultural performance on its premises at the KazNU. The show was localized by featuring Kazakh, Uyghur, Uzbek, Tungan, and Han songs, dances, and music, thereby seeking to emanate an impression of China’s multicultural diversity and to underline the similarities between the two countries in shared ethnic, cultural, dietary, and other attributes of the transnational ethnic groups.6 A similarly localized cultural event was the celebration of the Lunar New Year organized for Almaty’s Chinese community by the local PRC consulate in a Chinese restaurant on January 28, 2016. The performances featured songs, dances, and music by transnational ethnic groups along with speeches by the PRC Consul General and other PRC and Kazakh luminaries predominantly from business circles. Overall, the message of the event emphasized China’s ethno-cultural diversity, and hence its closeness to Kazakhstan.7 The PRC consulate in Almaty also organized a Lunar New Year gala concert held in Almaty National Theatre and Opera House, which featured the Xinjiang Art Theatre Troupe (Xinjiang yishu juyuan gewutuan), an elite ensemble from Urumchi, XUAR. The hosts mentioned the fact that both China and Kazakhstan share a number of features, such as the trans-border communities and their cultures. To underline this argument and to accommodate the mostly Kazakh audience, the Uyghur-nationality host delegated by the PRC side spoke first in Uyghur and only subsequently in Chinese. On the Kazakhstani side, Kazakh was the only language spoken. Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz folk songs and dances performed by the troupe’s artists made up a significant part of the program, while the troupe’s Uyghur and Kazakh artists also performed a number of Han folk songs in Mandarin.8

6 Personal observation, Almaty 2016. 7 Personal observation, Almaty 2016. 8 Personal observation, Almaty 2016.

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Liabilities of China’s Public Diplomacy in CA Chinese researchers have previously pointed to several generic limitations of China’s public diplomacy, such as insufficient coordination among the involved actors, the shortage of skilled professionals, the absence of a single public diplomacy institution, its overly top-down character, the lack of involvement of civil society, the lack of credibility of China’s broadcasting, and the low attractiveness of China’s values and contemporary politics (summary in d’Hooghe 2015, 125–128). A foremost PRC expert has more recently argued that China’s cultural diplomacy suffers firstly from excessive government involvement and lack of input from nonstate actors, who should play the main role in the process. Secondly, traditional culture is overemphasized at the expense of contemporary popular culture. Thirdly, cultural exchange is overly elite-oriented while being insufficiently accessible to broader society. Fourthly, the PRC’s efforts insufficiently incorporate foreign communication methods and perspectives on China (Zhao 2014a). Similarly, Xinjiang’s public diplomacy toward CA is seen as suffering from excessive governmental direction and should be improved by greater involvement of enterprises by organizing business forums and exhibitions, of social organizations by holding academic conferences and seminars, and of individuals by involving local celebrities and foreign sympathizers. Overall, the diversification of actors of Xinjiang’s public diplomacy would allegedly boost the ‘connectivity of people’s hearts’ (minxin xiangtong ) along the BRI and the innovation and credibility of China’s external discourse (Zhao 2018a). However, the greatest shortcoming of China’s public diplomacy— which is particularly clear in the case of Central Asia and Kazakhstan—is the inconsistency of its message with the PRC’s factual policies. Despite (or perhaps precisely due to) China’s growing presence in Central Asia and its growing influence over local economies, resources, governments, and some political and economic elites since the 2000s, the public perception of China in the respective Central Asia countries has been ambivalent or negative (Clarke 2010, 214). In responding to China’s influence, the CAR governments are obliged to strike a balance between dependence on Chinese funds and commodities and wariness of China’s expansion (Sadovskaya 2012a, 97). Similarly, the responses by local populations to

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related migration from the PRC have varied from acceptance to xenophobia, often depending on whether the migrants hailed from the Han or one of the Muslim ethnic groups (ibid.). In Kazakhstan, researchers have noted both low public awareness about China and the prevalence of negative attitudes due to fears of Han population influx and excessive leverage over local affairs, as well as due to Chinese actors’ lack of transparency, exclusive reliance on an imported Han workforce, and lack of willingness to share technology, information, or experience (Sadovskaya 2012a, 97–99; 2012b, 109, 114–115, 121–128). Negative perceptions of China are also revealed by coverage in Kazakhstan’s private Kazakh- and Russian-language newspapers, which convey concerns regarding the Chinese migration into the country or negative stereotypes of China and its people (Burkhanov and Chen 2016, 2143–2144). A potential land lease to China also sparked a significant public backlash in Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2016 (Sadovskaya 2012b, 121; Pannier 2017). Within the broader CA region, influential academics and public figures have viewed Beijing as a potential despot and an economic power interested mostly in resource extraction and export of its own products, contributing little to the development of local economies and industries (Khodzhaev 2009, 17–18, 21–279 ). Besides being factually inconsistent with the PRC’s push into CA, the message of China’s CA public diplomacy also stands in sharp contrast to the PRC’s domestic policies. After the appointment of Chen Quanguo as the XUAR party secretary in August 2016, Beijing launched the policy of so-called de-extremification (qujiduanhua) of Xinjiang Muslim minorities, which includes unprecedentedly radical measures, such as the incarceration of over one million Muslims in political reeducation camps, mass surveillance and propaganda campaigns, the mobilization of up to one million civilians to settle in Uyghur households, and the eradication of indigenous linguistic, religious, and cultural practices (Zenz 2019; Zenz and Leibold 2017; Klimeš 2018; Byler 2018). The policy thus undermines—to put it mildly—the credibility of China’s painstakingly constructed national image of a country protective of religious freedom and ethno-cultural diversity (e.g., the above-mentioned Liu et al. 2015, 79; PRC Government Information Office 2016), as well as its

9 Also interviews with informants, Almaty 2016.

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specific defensive reactions to the international backlash (e.g., the abovementioned PRC Embassy in Kazakhstan 2018, PRC Consulate General in Almaty 2019, Global Times 2019, etc.). Moreover, the credibility of China’s claims is compromised by a number of accounts of witnesses who hail from the transnational Muslim ethnic groups and who were able to publicize their testimonies due to their cross-border links. Besides targeting Uyghurs, who are the majority Muslim nationality in Xinjiang, the campaign has also been directed at Kazakhs. An illustrative example is that of Kayrat Samarkand, a Xinjiangborn Kazakh, whose travels to Kazakhstan were the sole basis for his detention and political reeducation in November 2017. He testified that he was only released and allowed to leave for Kazakhstan after the authorities had confiscated his house and savings (Pannier 2018a). Another case is Sayragul Sauytbay, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh teacher, who confessed to having been coerced into working in one of the reeducation camps for four months from November 2017. After her husband and two children fled from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan, she was threatened by the Xinjiang authorities and also fled to Kazakhstan (Vanderklippe 2018). The negative implications of the PRC’s ethnic policy in Xinjiang for its national image in Kazakhstan are amplified by the fact that besides targeting ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang, the campaign is also aimed at Kazakh returnees born in Xinjiang and later naturalized in Kazakhstan. For the Xinjiang authorities, relatives and/or frequent travel abroad constitute reasons for imprisonment and this is specifically applicable to individuals with ties in Kazakhstan (Human Rights Watch 2018, 4). This was the case for Omir Bekali, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh who resettled and became a Kazakhstani citizen in 2008. Bekali traveled to Xinjiang on a business trip and was illegally detained for over seven months. He reported being held without access to a lawyer or notification of the Kazakhstani authorities, and was subjected to physical and psychological coercion (Shih 2018). Two other publicized cases of Xinjiang-born Kazakhs with Kazakhstani citizenship swept up the Xinjiang crackdown are those of Orynbek Koksebek and Asqar Azatbek (Bunin 2018). According to the Kazakhstani Foreign Ministry, China has detained 33 Kazakhstani citizens in the crackdown as of March 4, 2019, twenty of whom have since been released and allowed to return to Kazakhstan (Standish and Toleukhanova 2019). The Xinjiang issue is also straining official Sino-Kazakhstani ties. Kazakhstani authorities eventually started raising the problem with Beijing in

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May 2018 (Pannier 2018b) and have since successfully lobbied China for the release of a number of their nationals from the Xinjiang detentions (Standish and Toleukhanova 2019). In August 2018, a Kazakh court refused to extradite Sayragul Sauytbay to China and instead gave her a suspended sentence for crossing the border illegally during her flight (Vanderklippe 2018). In January 2019, Chinese authorities also allegedly granted permission for some 2000 ethnic Kazakhs to leave Xinjiang for Kazakhstan (Kang 2019). Overall, however, Kazakhstani authorities remain devoted to preserving amiable relations with China and are keeping a lid on Xinjiangrelated activism. Although the above-mentioned Sayragul Sauytbay was not extradited, she had her citizenship application repeatedly turned down. Witnesses, lawyers, and activists have also reportedly been pressured in Kazakhstan by both local and Chinese actors into stopping their campaigning (Standish and Toleukhanova 2019). An illustrative example is the detention of Serikjan Bilash, a Kazakh returnee from China, the founder of the NGO Atazhurt, which collects testimonies from ex-detainees or relatives of persons confirmed or presumed to be held in Xinjiang and campaigns for their release to both Kazakhstani and PRC authorities, thus functioning as a vital link between the events in Xinjiang and the international community (Bunin 2019a). After repeated harassment by local authorities, Serikjan was detained in early March 2019 and charged with ‘inciting national discord or hatred’ (RFE/RL 2019). It is not unlikely that Kazakhstani authorities were acting upon a direct request by China’s officials. Nevertheless, the compliance of the Kazakhstani authorities with China’s interests in Xinjiang at the expense of the rights of their own citizens or ethnic brethren across the border continues to raise discontent among the Kazakhstani public, whether of Kazakh or Uyghur ethnicity (Grishin 2018). Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang have long stirred resentment among Central Asian Uyghurs, many of whom—or whose ancestors— emigrated from the PRC for political reasons (Sadovskaya 2012a, 97) and who, therefore, do not see themselves as representatives of the PRC and are not interested in acting as mediators of Sino-Kazakhstani ties. Even during the 2016 field research in Almaty before the mass crackdown in Xinjiang commenced the following year, all Kazakhstani Uyghur informants from various walks of life communicated their strongly negative views of the PRC as an oppressive and inhumane regime and their distrust

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of China’s public diplomacy and Central Asian policy in general.10 The PRC Chinese New Year gala in Almaty on February 9, 2016 featuring Uyghur artists performing Mandarin Chinese folk songs lauding, among other virtues, the pleasures of consuming tasty alcohol, was insensitive to the Kazakh and Uyghur Muslim audience, and, when pondered in the broader context of China’s persistent repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, made a highly distasteful impression.11 China’s public diplomacy proclaiming the country’s respect for religious freedom is thus viewed by significant parts of the Kazakhstani public as untruthful. As in the Kazakhstani context, Kyrgyzstani authorities and some media and public intellectuals have so far supported the PRC position on the detention of ethnic Kyrgyz in Xinjiang. However, as many of the interned and disappeared Xinjiang Kyrgyz have cross-border ties, the issue has provoked a backlash among the Kyrgyzstani public (Bunin 2019b). The extension of the anti-Muslim crackdown by the PRC authorities to other Islamic communities beyond Xinjiang (Yang 2019) and officially inflamed or tolerated Islamophobia in majority Chinese society (Luqiu and Yang 2018) might also negatively affect perceptions of China by Central Asian Tungans, whose function as mediators of Sino-Central Asian ties and exchange has so far been unimpeded by the ethno-political repression endured by the Uyghurs and Kazakhs.

Conclusion This chapter demonstrates that Xinjiang and its transnational communities of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Tungans are closely integrated into Central Asia by historical, demographic, religious, cultural, and other linkages. The PRC thus regards Xinjiang and its Muslims as potential mediators of relations and exchange with Central Asia and, to a certain degree, incorporates them into its information activities and cultural diplomacy aimed at local publics. The research found that the PRC’s public diplomacy efforts are localized, i.e., they represent features and attributes which are allegedly shared by both China and the CARs, such as the transnational communities of Xinjiang and their religion and culture.

10 Interviews with informants, Almaty 2016. 11 Personal observation, Almaty 2016.

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The chapter further identifies that the PRC’s public diplomacy in CA seeks to construct a national image of ethno-cultural diversity, religious freedom, historically grounded inter-cultural contact, opportunities for dynamic development, openness, reliability, peacefulness, and other positive values. The localized message thus conforms to generic public diplomacy objectives, which, according to Xi Jinping, should portray China as a civilized country featuring a rich history, ethnic unity, and cultural diversity; as an Eastern power with good government, a developed economy, cultural prosperity, national unity, and beautiful scenery; as a responsible country that advocates peace and development, safeguards international fairness and justice, and makes a positive contribution to humanity; and as a socialist country which is open and friendly to the world and full of hope and vitality (Brady 2015, 55). The article also posits that China’s public diplomacy benefits from the fact that some Kazakhstani intelligentsia hold and publish views which represent Xinjiang, its transnational Muslim nationalities, and related issues very similarly to the PRC’s actors. This finding thus corroborates arguments underlining the importance of transnational actors for China’s public diplomacy in general and in Central Asia specifically (the following chapter by Vˇera Exnerová; Exnerova 2018). However, the PRC’s public diplomacy efforts have been assessed by the above chapter as hampered by the fact that the party-state simultaneously regards Xinjiang and its transnational Muslim communities as a security threat due to their potential to generate and channel violent unrest sparked by domestic or international motivations. It has previously been shown that the PRC’s international propaganda is conducted with close regard to the CPC’s domestic political objectives (Edney 2012). The above findings, however, illustrate that the domestic political dimension can also impact China’s international communication in an unintended and opposite way. In the era of modern information and communication technologies, the credibility of China’s public diplomacy in Central Asia is limited, because international audiences can easily observe and assess how the party-state ‘uses power on its own people’ (Li 2009, 9)—in this case, on Muslims in Xinjiang. The result is a significant contradiction between China’s ambitions and rhetoric, and the reality (Rawnsley 2015, 468)— specifically, between its ambition to acquire a positive national image in Central Asia by representing itself as a country espousing religious

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freedom and ethno-cultural diversity and the reality of its harsh repression of its Muslim population in Xinjiang, which has close transnational links to the very audience it seeks to address with its public diplomacy. The PRC thus fails to live up to its declared political values and therefore, according to Joseph Nye, cannot command soft power (Nye 2015). Although the PRC has so far still been able to advance its strategic interests with Central Asian political and economic elites, its public diplomacy efforts are being neutralized by its domestic ethno-religious repression of transnational Muslim nationalities. As one Xinjiang expert remarked about the impact of China’s Xinjiang policy on its image abroad: ‘Nothing shreds soft power abroad like coils of razor wire at home’ (Millward 2018). In sum, the above case study reveals a continuing ineffectiveness of the PRC’s public diplomacy. Previous research has asserted that in Central Asia the PRC faces a contradiction between its leverage over local governments and the mixed perceptions of China by local publics due to the situation in Xinjiang (Clarke 2010, 221–224). Because they are seen as a security liability, Uyghurs’ potential as mediators of cross-border contact has been understood as limited (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2009, 94–103). It has also been illustrated that Xi Jinping’s China can hardly excel at adopting global techniques of public diplomacy as long as the CPC regards the free flow of information as a threat to its power monopoly (Klimeš 2017, 143–144). This chapter also shows that the PRC’s resolve to use Xinjiang and its transnational Muslim ethnic groups as assets and actors of its public diplomacy in the neighboring CARs is contradictory to the PRC’s simultaneous domestic representation and treatment of this very community as a security threat. Although the resulting repression of Muslims at home and pressure on their communities abroad might not immediately impact the PRC’s relations with key political and economic actors in the CARs, it does damage China’s national image and perception by Central Asian publics and could eventually compromise the PRC’s Central Asian policy as a whole.

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CHAPTER 4

China’s ‘Silk Road’ Public Diplomacy in Central Asia: Rethinking the ‘Network’ Approach to the Study of Public Diplomacy and Its Instrumentalism Vˇera Exnerová

Introduction This chapter shows how the Chinese government’s foreign policy agenda offers opportunities and benefits to public and cultural actors in Central Asia through the ‘Silk Road’ initiative. It begins by contextualizing the ‘Silk Road’ public diplomacy strategy in terms of the general debates on soft power and the public diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It analyzes the conceptual framework for studying peopleto-people exchange and the involvement of local actors and notes that the Chinese state and its policies are mostly studied as imposed, topdown, and thus inauthentic initiatives. The chapter then uses the ‘network approach’ to public diplomacy (Hocking 2005) as well as debates on the instrumentalism of cultural policy (Nisbett 2013) to introduce a new perspective into the debate. The approach is illustrated using examples of

V. Exnerová (B) Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_4

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dynamics within the academic and cultural networks in the major cities of Almaty (in Kazakhstan) and Tashkent (in Uzbekistan). In the conclusion, the chapter suggests adopting insights from transnationalism to study public diplomacy and, specifically, explores how the scope of the study of the ‘new public diplomacy’ might be conceptually broadened in the future. In recent years, promoting the rebirth of the Silk Road has become probably one of the most visible manifestations of the efforts of the contemporary Chinese government to improve its image abroad and its ‘soft use of power’ (Li 2008) in world affairs. The Chinese leadership introduced a number of geopolitical and economic initiatives linked to the idea of the Silk Road, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The ‘Silk Road’ terminology started to appear in the regional policies of China and exchanges with Central Asia from 2013—notably, following a speech Xi Jinping gave in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana in September 2013 entitled ‘To develop friendship between nations, together create beautiful future.’ In this address to the Kazakhstani leadership and elites at Nazarbayev University, he claimed it was necessary to ‘use new models of cooperation,’ and ‘by joint efforts to form the ‘Economic Belt on the Silk Road.’ Xi Jinping proposed five specific measures in order to move in this direction: constant exchange of ideas on economic development strategies; one transport infrastructure from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; strengthening of trade ties; strengthening of currency flows; and further strengthening of ties between people. In this final point, Xi explained that: ‘relations between countries are based on close relations between people. Regional cooperation should gain support from people of all countries, strengthen friendly exchange between nations, contribute to mutual understanding and traditional friendship.’ He specifically mentioned that the cooperation must be based on aspirations of people (Syroyezhkin 2014, 69–70). Similar goals have been discussed and promoted in regional exchanges with Southeast Asian countries under the name of the Maritime Silk Road (see Jakub Hrubý and Tomáš Petru˚ in this volume). In 2015, in his speech to the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, for example, Xi Jinping indicated that the Belt and Road Initiative will ‘promote inter-civilization exchanges to build bridges of friendship for our people, drive human development and safeguard peace of the world’ (Winter 2016).

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The topics of people-to-people exchange and cultural cooperation have recently represented the cornerstone and main source of China’s potential for soft power (Li 2008, 25). The theme of economic exchange that is at the heart of the ‘Silk Road’ narrative is in line with the overall design of China’s public diplomacy too (Rawnsley 2009, 285). Furthermore, the use of the idea of the rebirth of the ‘Silk Road’ as a metanarrative about China’s ascent in international relations resembles a strategy that has been adopted by the Chinese state earlier. Since 2003, in an effort to ‘talk back’ and counter the international, and particularly Western, narratives about China, the Chinese government has announced different ‘big ideas,’ focusing on the concepts of ‘harmonious world’ (hexie shijie) in external relations, as well as on ‘peaceful rise’ (heping jueqi), ‘peaceful development’ (heping fazhan), and ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) in the national context (Wang 2011, 8, see also Jens Damm in this volume). From 2006, the Chinese leadership also started to debate the concepts and practice of ‘soft power’ and ‘public diplomacy’ in more depth with the goal of improving China’s image in the world and serving China’s foreign policy objectives and its domestic development (Li 2008; Zhao Qizheng 2012, 42; d’Hooghe 2015, 99–100). The ‘Silk Road’ theme fulfills the criteria of authenticity in the eyes of the Chinese leadership. In China, many different actors of cultural diplomacy suggest relying on traditional culture due to its potential to provide alternative values in solving international problems. In particular, they have in mind the cultural value of ‘harmony’ (he), which is regarded as a basic value and ‘the fundamental spirit of Chinese culture’ (Leung 2008; d’Hooghe 2015, 121).1 Many Chinese scholars and practitioners, however, realize the challenges of promoting Chinese culture and translating it into soft power. Some argue that it is difficult to find general concepts that the international public likes nowadays and draw attention to the fact that China only imports many concepts, or that there are too many backward aspects to traditional culture (Li 2008, 26). In this context, the ‘Silk Road’ theme provides an interesting alternative that the

1 Zhao Qizheng and others argue that in public diplomacy the PRC ‘wants primarily to seek common ground by conveying the above-mentioned idea of ‘he er bu tong ’ (harmonious but different; harmony without suppressing differences, Li 2008, 25). The full saying means ‘living in harmony without demanding agreement, seeking common ground while setting aside differences’ (Zhao 2012, 28; d’Hooghe 2015, 125).

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Chinese leadership tries to promote as their own and that captures the type of people-to-people exchange that China is looking for. It is important to note what the PRC’s leadership markets as specifically ‘Chinese’ about the Silk Road. It is usually a claim about the crucial role that China played in linking the different cultures and civilizations of the East and the West. Importantly, the emphasis and the description of the ‘Silk Road’ that Chinese institutions and representatives describe associate the specific place of origin and date of the journey exclusively with historical China. There are usually no references to other existing sources on the past and present of the Silk Road. Chinese authors and representatives invoke values of people-to-people relations, friendly exchange, mutual understanding, and strengthening of traditional friendships and imply that the basic condition for regional development and the development of international relations is to re-establish and live in such a harmonious environment. Finally, Chinese authors often repeat that friendships established along the ancient Silk Road two thousand years ago remain unhampered and that nations can easily build on them today (for similar argument used by China toward Arabic nations see, for example, Ptackova 2018), thus effectively rewriting histories of conflict and war over the past centuries and millennia (Yuan 2014). An example is the photographic book Novyi Shelkovyi putˇ: zanovo projdionnyi marshrut (Yuan 2014, New Silk Road: A Newly Traversed Road), published in China and distributed through Confucius Institutes (CI) or cultural centers in Central Asia. In the introduction of the book, the author explains that more than 2100 years ago an envoy of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian, was sent to Western countries to extend the route from Chang’an (Xi’an) via Gansu and Xinjiang to Central Asia and West Asia to create connections with the Mediterranean. Today, this road is known as the ‘Great Silk Road.’ The book thus implies that China played the fundamental role in initiating the history of the ‘Silk Road.’ The book further describes the interconnection of cultures by describing the sound of the bells of the caravan and the role of China in mutual exchange. The text continues with Xi Jinping’s ‘famous’ speech in Astana in Kazakhstan in September 2013 announcing ‘the grandiose concept of creating the Great Silk Road Economic Belt.’ The author further states that ‘Thousands of years ago, nations from different countries formed the history of friendship that was passed from generation to generation’ (2014, 7). According to Yuan, the Silk Road represented the values of trust, cohesion, mutual benefit, equality, respect, and tolerance; and it

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was a mutually beneficial cooperation that led to reciprocal peace and common development, just as it does (even) today. The ‘Silk Road’ concept is used and presented similarly in other contemporary Chinese publications and in the texts available in Central Asia’s CIs and cultural centers. The narrative links several elements into the overall image of the rebirth of the Chinese-led ‘Silk Road’ that thereby becomes a ‘symbol’ of the friendship and harmony that allegedly stayed latent over the centuries and millennia and now only needs to be reactivated. Viewed from beyond China’s borders, however, the ‘Silk Road’ concept is not a purely ‘Chinese’ idea. On the contrary, the fact that it is not exclusively associated with China only opens up a space for other countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to draw on their ‘own deep histories in the crafting of contemporary trade and political relations’ (Winter 2016). Central Asian societies do not stand out in this respect. In Uzbekistan, the theme of the rebirth of the Silk Road has become an integral part of governmental efforts to build a nation since the early 1990s, when the first President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, called for the revival of the ‘Great Silk Road.’ Karimov envisaged breathing new life into this concept using current technologies, techniques, and means of transporting cargo (Khodjayev 2016, 3). Gradually, the ‘Silk Road’ and its heritage have become the main theme for tourism in Uzbekistan too. After the death of Karimov in 2016 a new ruling group, led by President Mirzoyev, accepted this program and has since been working to develop it further. In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced the ‘New Silk Road’ project with the aim of reviving the historical role of the Silk Road as a way of facing the challenges of the third millennium. Nazarbayev first presented his idea at a meeting of the Foreign Investors’ Union on May 22, 2012, where he called for Kazakhstan to become a ‘distinctive bridge between Europe and Asia’ and thereby revive its ‘historical role’ (Nazarbayev 2012).2

2 In November 2014, Nazarbayev also announced the new economic policy ‘Nurli Jol,’ which largely corresponds to the PRC’s plan to develop the ‘Silk Road Economic Zone.’

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Conceptual Approach to Studying ‘Silk Road’ Diplomacy The scholarship on different aspects of Chinese public and cultural diplomacy has for years now incorporated, at least to some extent, debates on trans-border cooperation and social exchange. This research has been associated with the concept of the ‘new public diplomacy’ (Melissen 2005). In the studies of the new public diplomacy of China, substantial attention has been given to analysis of the Confucius Institutes. Confucius Institutes are most often studied as joint ventures with diverse educational institutes abroad, mostly universities, but could also be operated by China, or licensed by the PRC (Starr 2009, 70). Authors define them, for example, as ‘non-profit educational organizations promoting the teaching of Chinese language outside China, training language instructors and strengthening cultural exchange and cooperation between China and other countries’ (Tang 2010). According to scholars, this setup supports the idea of diversity and goes against the fully controlled public and cultural diplomacy initiatives. As some authors posit, it ‘encourages a network-based form of public diplomacy, as foreign partners become engaged in developing ways to unlock China’s culture for a global public’ (d’Hooghe 2015, 176). In public diplomacy, a ‘network’ is defined, for example, as: ‘a set of relatively stable relationships, which are of a non-hierarchical and interdependent nature linking a variety of actors, who share common interests with regard to a policy and who exchange resources to pursue these shared interests acknowledging that cooperation is the best way to achieve common goals’ (Stone 1997, cited in Hocking 2005). Hocking (2005) counterposes a ‘network’ approach to public diplomacy to a ‘hierarchical’ approach. The latter encourages scholars to observe the arrangement of actors within public diplomacy and focuses mostly on the state/governmental attitude toward public diplomacy. ‘While not denying the importance to understand the dynamics and changes in the official diplomatic strategies, ‘network’ approach – provides a fundamentally different picture of how diplomacy works in the twenty-first century and, thereby, the significance of its public (as well as private) dimension,’ writes Hocking. What he means are ‘highly fissile, multidirectional flows’ of information (ibid., 38), that have not previously been explored in hierarchy-focused studies of public diplomacy.

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Within this focus on networks, scholars study the collaborations in the context of what Zaharna calls ‘strategic stakeholder engagement’ (Zaharna 2010, 201; Hartig 2012, 260). According to her, the setup of the Confucius Institutes creates a sponsor-stakeholder relationship, ‘when the stakeholders take over responsibility for engagement from the sponsor’ (Zaharna 2010, 219). So far, scholars have documented this dynamic using examples of different Confucius Institutes in local contexts (Germany, Australia, etc. Hartig 2012). Other scholars have tangentially explored the role of network diplomacy in Chinese leadership discussions (e.g., d’Hooghe 2007). As is evident from the published literature, however, the main theoretical dilemma of public diplomacy scholarship on China remains the relation of public diplomacy instruments and tools to the type of regime and governance in PRC, or the apparent top-down imposition of PRC public diplomacy. Some scholars discard the Confucius Institutes and other public diplomacy activities as propaganda (Chey 2008). Others first analyze these instruments of public and cultural diplomacy with reference to the concept of ‘soft power’ instead of Chinese propaganda.3 In their conclusions, however, these authors link their research results to the authoritarian political system in the country (Hartig 2012), related attitudes toward China (Gil 2009), or a perceived ‘push’ for soft power ‘that cannot be bought by money, intimidation, rebuttal, but must be earned’ (Shambaugh 2015). The central question of the credibility of China’s public diplomacy also dominates in the broader scholarly literature, whether scholars are studying CIs (cf. also Paradise 2009; Starr 2009), Chinese media such as CCTV (Rawnsley 2015), or other aspects of Chinese public diplomacy. In a way, the authors posit that by being ‘attached’ to other policies, or political and economic priorities, cultural and public diplomacy loses its real meaning and value, impact, or ability to ‘earn soft power.’ As a result, the scholarly debate remains policy oriented and inherently caught between the critical and applied approaches. Indeed, this scholarly dilemma is very close to what is being discussed in the discipline of cultural policy studies. Scholarship in this discipline asks questions about cultural production and cultural consumption with the goal of addressing issues associated with the best form of culture policy making and, more broadly, the question of what culture is for. 3 Thus noting a space for diverse actors within the PRC’s cultural diplomacy, such as MFA, Embassies, etc. (cf. d’Hooghe).

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Within this scholarship, there is a specific debate on ‘instrumentalism.’ This concept is adopted to study the tendency ‘to use cultural ventures and investments as a means or instrument to attain goals in other areas’ (Vestheim 1994, 65, cited in Nisbett 2013, 559). Within this debate, instrumentalism has begun to be viewed as some sort of top-down imposition that coerces culture and the cultural sector into taking on big problems (Bell and Oakley 2014).4 For example, Gray (2002) argues that this trend attaches culture to other policy priorities, and in this way loses sight of the ‘intrinsic’ value of culture. In this field, there are, however, new voices suggesting alternative ways forward. The authors take a conceptually new approach mostly based on field research. Specifically, Nisbett (2013) finds out, using the example of British museums, that cultural institutions and actors ‘attach’ themselves proactively to ‘non-cultural’ domains. Some might argue that they do so only for strategic advantage or that they have internalized the values or logics of world politics (McGuigan 2005; cf. also Zaharna 2010 above). Nisbett, to the contrary, proposes rethinking instrumentalism to acknowledge that the cultural actors have power and agency in the policy process and seeks to explore how instrumentalism is used by the cultural sector. This chapter argues that this is what we need to do conceptually in regard to studies of China’s public diplomacy too. In the case of ‘Silk Road’ diplomacy, it shows that diverse public and cultural—including foreign and local—actors, often use ‘instrumentalism’ for their own interests and have their own agency and power in public and cultural diplomacy processes. Based on research carried out between 2016 and 2018 focusing on the academic and cultural networks around Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Tashkent (Uzbekistan), it analyzes why different local actors become drivers of China’s public diplomacy associated with the ‘Silk Road.’ In the conclusion, based on the resulting findings, the chapter explores why current scholarship on China’s public and cultural diplomacy remains focused on the debate on the ‘credibility’ and/or ‘instrumentalism’ of China’s policy and suggests ways forward. Conceptual implications of the findings are considered in relation to general debates on China’s public and cultural diplomacy and the ‘new public diplomacy.’ The aim is to contribute to enhanced conceptual clarity when 4 Others claim that policy is always instrumental, and that it is a misunderstanding to expect that cultural policy would be different in any way. The aim is to achieve change. It is an ‘ordinary’ rather than an ‘exceptional’ domain of policy making (Vestheim 2012; Hesmondhalgh 2005).

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scholars aim to study people-to-people exchange and the involvement of local actors in authoritarian contexts where cultural policy is perceived as inauthentic, controlled, or top-down. The aim of this chapter is also to contribute to the growing literature on the ‘Silk Road’ diplomacy of the PRC in different Asian regions. Scholarly research on this subject in areas such as Southeast, Southern, and Central Asia has only just started. In general, and in the case of China and Central Asia, experts prefer to analyze the geopolitical and economic goals of China in the region both in the past and in the present (Karrar 2010; Dwidedi, 2006; Swanstrom 2005). Recently, scientists have become interested in the different social aspects of Chinese foreign policy strategies in the region too (Laruelle and Peyrouse 2012; Exnerova 2018; Nursha 2018; Laruelle 2018). This primarily reflects the growing internal debates on the ‘Chinese question’ in different Asian countries, rising Sinophobe and pro-Chinese groups, as well as the presence of Chinese minorities, and their relationship to the people-to-people exchange initiated by China. This chapter complements this scholarship and suggests ways of studying the complex dynamics more holistically and with theoretical support.

Academic Network in Tashkent One of the major academic networks in the exchange on China in Central Asia revolves around the activities and actors associated with Chinese Studies at the Faculty of Chinese Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The network is politically and financially supported both by the PRC and the government of Uzbekistan.5 In 2017, there were five departments (philology and language, history and politics, economics, Center of Oriental Manuscripts,6 and the Confucius Institute). The faculty had 400 students and among the teachers there were five teachers from

5 The Uzbek leadership has signed a strategic partnership with the PRC and, given the development of China in the last thirty years, is interested in studying diverse political, economic, and social aspects of contemporary China. In 1990, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Oriental Institute at Tashkent State University was created, and in 1991 it was reorganized into the Tashkent State Oriental Institute. The number of departments and specialisms grew, yet it struggled with a lack of funding, students, and teachers. 6 Previously the Oriental Institute at the Academy of Sciences; independent again since 2017, transferred back to the scheme of the Academy of Sciences.

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the PRC (three present and two on their way).7 Faculty students and professors travel annually to study at Chinese universities. The PRC’s embassy in Uzbekistan has supported the opening of a library at the faculty with more than 3000 volumes. In order to secure employment for graduates, the faculty has cooperated with companies and organizations such as the Uzbek-Chinese society ‘Friendship,’ ‘Uzbek-Chinese firm,’ ‘Uzbek-Chinese Confucius Institute’ (UCCI), etc. (Interview with the Faculty Dean, October 2016).8 The Uzbek-Chinese Confucius Institute was established under the name of the Chinese center based on cooperation with Lanzhou University in 2004. It was actually the first Confucius Institute pilot set up in the world (Hartig 2012, 271). While it was small at first, in 2016 around 600 students took courses at the CI each semester. The Uzbek dean of the faculty and other heads of department have conceptualized the Confucius Institute as part of the whole faculty and praised the Uzbek government for providing a new building for the UCCI. In this network, the UCCI, along with the PRC’s Embassy in Tashkent, financially support the publication of the annual proceedings of the conference of the Faculty of Chinese Studies.9 Professors, assistants, PhD students, and students from the given disciplines, as well as experts on the national economy, representatives of the PRC’s embassy in Uzbekistan, and other different organizations attend this conference. The edited collection from this conference is entitled ‘Khitoyshliklikning dolzarb masalalari: filologiya, falsafa, tarikh, iqtisod va madaniyat, ilmiy-amaliy konferentsiyasi materiallari’ (Current Topics of Sinology: Materials from the Scientific and Practical Conference on Philology, Philosophy, History, Economics, and Culture), cf. Karimov 2012; Karimov and Nazirova 2015; Karimov 2016). The annual proceedings have represented a valuable means of assessing the participation of diverse Chinese and local actors in the initiative linked to the ‘Silk Road’ in recent years.

7 Among other things, representatives of the PRC’s embassy cite as factors that make it difficult for Chinese teachers to move to Uzbekistan low salaries and unfavorable climatic conditions, but also the Uzbek government’s refusal to issue visas (the Uzbek regime controls the influx of foreigners). 8 There are clubs in different departments, such as the ‘Club of admirers of Chinese culture’ (in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture) and the ‘China club’ (in the Economics Department). 9 Some of the Chinese teachers are also allowed and invited to present their own research findings.

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In the formal introductory speeches from the Faculty dean, PRC Embassy, or UCCI in 2015 and 2016, the ‘Silk Road’ has played an increasingly important role (Karimov and Nazirova 2015, 10–20; Karimov 2016, 5–15). Indeed, both the Chinese and Uzbek representatives have previously, for example in 2012 (Karimov 2012, 8–15) used references to cultural and historical linkages between the two regions in their introductory speeches, yet they were not related to the ‘Silk Road’ theme. While in the official proclamations this might look self-evident, a closer look at the particular contributions in the proceedings provides a more interesting insight. The cultural studies contributions directly reference the ‘Silk Road’ in their introductions or titles without a single further reference to the ‘Silk Road’ theme in the text. The article ‘Yazykovaya kartina Velikogo Shelkovogo Puti’ (Linguistic Image of the Grand Silk Road) is introduced using a portrayal of the ‘Silk Road’ as a place of friendship and cooperation. The text itself contains expert analysis in the field of semantics without a single further reference to the ‘Silk Road’ theme (Karimbekov and Maksumova 2016, 63–71). The article ‘Izucheniye nauchnogo naslediya Mahmuda Zamakhsahri v stranakh Velikogo Shelkogo Puti’ (Study of the Scientific Heritage of Mahmud Zamakhasari in the Countries of the Great Silk Road) is also titled and structured in this way (Mirziyatov 2016, 446–449). Zamakhshari came from Khorezm (1075–1144) and was the author of a grammar of the Arabic language. The ‘Silk Road’ is not mentioned in this article. Such references would not make sense unless the authors wanted to make their work look (more) important. One can infer that no one has forced the authors to do so: they want to be seen as instrumental and they do so by voluntarily ‘attaching’ themselves to the existing political narrative.10 The economically focused contributions that have recently dominated in the proceedings in regard to the subject of the ‘Silk Road’ often directly adopt and reproduce the values promoted by the Chinese leadership in their public diplomacy strategies (cf. Karimov and Nazirova 2015, Karimov 2016). This cannot necessarily be interpreted as demonstrating that the authors share common interests with regard to policy and 10 It feeds in to both the Uzbek narrative of the Silk Road and the Chinese message. In these publications, the term ‘Silk Road’ or ‘Great Silk Road’ becomes a toponym (place name)—a trend that we can observe in other publications by authors from Central Asia not primarily financially supported by China (Sadovskaya 2014).

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exchange resources to pursue these shared interests. This is described as a fundamental principle of global public policy networks (Reinecke 1998, 2000) that Hocking (2005, 37) uses to explain the ‘network approach’ to public diplomacy. One also cannot say only that the authors participate in the PRC’s public diplomacy effort in this way where ‘stakeholders take over responsibility for engagement from the sponsor’ (cf. Zaharna above). Rather, I would suggest that referring to China’s narrative on the ‘Silk Road’ could serve the authors as a way of creating and strengthening networks and building their personal identities in the eyes of foreign sponsors and partners, as well as the Uzbekistani government and the Tashkent academic community. It shows that they want to be perceived as relevant scholars and as having a ‘diplomatic role.’ One point that supports this interpretation is the fact that authors do not find it necessary to add references to the existing scholarly resources on the ‘Silk Road.’ In Uzbekistani popular sources and textbooks, the territory and history of current Uzbekistan are often presented as a center through which routes traveled in different directions, and where the beginnings of trade exchanges can be traced. In the academic book of Ablat Khodjayev entitled Velikiy Shelkovyi Put’: svyazi i sud’by (The Grand Silk Road: Ties and Destinies ), the author, based on archaeological findings, estimates that the history of trade relations stretches back four to five thousand years. Specifically, Khodjyaev uses Chinese and Uyghur materials to point out that the history of the journey goes much further back than the second century BC, when Central Asia was first visited by the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian (described as the founder of the ‘Silk Road’ in the Chinese sources and in general; see Hrubý 2019, 104–106). He also emphasizes the movement of products from Central Asia to China, the active operations of the ‘ancestors of Uzbekistan’ and their positive influence on Chinese culture, rather than vice versa.11 As the leading specialist on China in Uzbekistan and former adviser of the Uzbek President, Khodjyaev thereby draws attention to both positive and negative geopolitical aspects of the revival of the ‘Silk Road’ led by the PRC. His books are displayed in the best places at Tashkent bookstores and could

11 During the personal conversation Khodjayev underlined that: ‘I do not agree that

they consider that the first Chinese ambassador Zhang Qian opened the Grand Silk Road, it is not correct. He opened it for China (emphasizes), but until then surrounding nations of Turks, traders started to go to China, there is a lot of evidence for this… those who work because of science they can find out, assure themselves. Those who work for politics they might not agree.’

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be conceptualized as representing the official views of the Uzbek regime. However, those authors mentioned above do not cite such academic sources, which could lead one to assume that they find them irrelevant for their actual academic argument, which is primarily aimed at a Chinese audience.

Cultural Networks in Almaty and Tashkent There are complex networks related to China in both Almaty and Tashkent around cultural events and cultural diplomacy. Organizers and participants in the different cultural events are, for example, the Confucius Institutes, the PRC’s Embassy or Consulate, Chinese cultural ensembles, musicians, etc., and also local cultural associations, businessmen, universities, public libraries, and exhibition halls. As the Chinese director of the CI in Almaty explains, many of these activities happen outside of the plan of the PRC’s Embassy or Confucius Institutes. Indeed, the empirical data suggest that there is competition, or that ‘the market’ is determined by competition between the different actors, in both Almaty and Tashkent. Cultural actors, businesses and other stakeholders compete not only for access to funds, but also to gain the ‘diplomatic’ role, and, indeed, even take over the role from official Chinese actors before they can get started. One example is the businessman and leader of one of the Dungan Associations of Kazakhstan in Almaty, An Husei Daurov. Dungan is a term used to describe Muslims of Chinese descent who moved to the territory of today’s Kazakhstan and Central Asia at the end of the nineteenth century. In 2009, there were officially 51,944 Dungans (0.3% of the total population) living in Kazakhstan, mainly in Almaty and the Jambul region (Jiménez-Tovar 2016, 389).12 Husei initially worked at the Assembly of Nations of Kazakhstan, a public organization established to represent and promote the cultures and languages of national 12 In recent years, Chinese government included the Dungan in the ‘overseas Chinese ethnic minority’ category. This term aims primarily to extend Chinese culture and identity beyond the political boundaries of mainland China (Barabantseva 2011; Jimenez-Tovar 2016). In books published in China and distributed in Almaty or Tashkent, Dungan culture is promoted as one of the cultures of national minorities in the PRC (Ying and Wang 2009). Different diaspora-oriented research shows that members of this ‘group’ mostly regard Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries as their homeland and associate China with their historical homeland.

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minorities, as the representative of the Dungan Cultural Center. Due to a lack of financial support for the center, he decided to leave this position and established his own private Association of Dungans. This organization organizes different cultural and language activities for Dungans. The main activity of this center, however, revolves around cooperation with Chinese companies and institutions. An Husei explains: ‘We offer them to cooperate, they act as organizers. For example, last year we organized a big caravan from Xian,’ and adds that it was allegedly the ‘first caravan in hundreds of years.’ What An Husei had in mind was the ‘ChinaKazakhstan Caravan of Friendship and Co-operation: Tea Culture of the Great Silk Road’ that he and his association, together with the Chinese company from Xian, organized in September 2016. The caravan traveled for more than a year from Xian ‘along the Great Silk Route’ to finally arrive in the ancient city of Taraz to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the Kazakh khanate.13 An Husei implicitly states that the renewal of the ‘Silk Road’ and advertising for the Belt and Road Initiative is the main goal of his association, and according to him it is the reason why various Chinese companies and organizations want to work with his organization. This trend, whereby different actors have strived to be perceived as instrumental for China’s actors, has been evident in regard to the form and content of other cultural events organized in Almaty and Tashkent. Notably, despite the rich and often common cultural history, these actors sold cultural exchange predominantly as being associated with the ‘Silk Road’ and its rebirth in recent years. Actually, the ‘Silk Road’ has become a means of convergence for other interests, with the actors and participants mentioned above seeking to attain their own goals. This ‘Silk Road’ diplomacy has played a ‘key role in the realization of the international ambitions of the organizations,’ and their domestic interests, with no evident tension existing between the two (cf. Nisbett 2013, 562).

Conceptual and Theoretical Implications These examples show a gap between how we study the major dynamics and dilemmas determining public and cultural diplomacy today—particularly in authoritarian countries such as China—and the realties on the ground. Besides the obvious role of both Chinese and Central Asian 13 According to An Husei, Taras is the oldest town on the Silk Road, with more than 2000 years of history.

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governmental actors in public and cultural diplomacy, diverse foreign and local actors in the two Central Asian cities of Almaty and Tashkent actively (and often opportunistically) initiate events and generate narratives related to exchange on the ‘Silk Road.’ They have used the idea of exchange on the ‘Silk Road’ and the Chinese initiative for their own benefit, to gain increased status in their society of origin, etc.14 Thus, the Confucius Institutes, CGTN, PRC embassies, etc. are not the only actors and sole drivers of the PRC’s public and cultural diplomacy. It is evident that theoretically we need to go a step further, extending the conceptual framework as I have suggested elsewhere (cf. Exnerova 2017). Specifically, the analysis suggests that we need to step outside of critical or applied approaches and outside of the question of how to make public diplomacy work better (the concern of governments). Public diplomacy not only needs a ‘new’ name or perception, but also needs to incorporate all relevant actors into its analysis, which demands a ‘new’ and broadened conceptual framework. The ‘network’ approach to public diplomacy is already the first step. This framework shows that flows are multidirectional. The approach is, however, informed by a common understanding of networks as a subset of governments’ tools to gain power. Such analysis conceptualizes the distribution of power, interests, and resources as monocentric, stemming from China (or from the government). This study shows, as Fosler-Lussier found when studying America’s musical diplomacy during the Cold War, for example, that it is hard to say who initiates what within the public and cultural diplomacy frameworks (Fosler-Lussier 2015). The analysis in this chapter documents that there is a looseness around what is being done and why, and that the diverse actors often share only some interests. These actors often adopt instrumentalism, or want to sell their contributions as the ‘Silk Road’ or be seen as part of the ‘Silk Road’ agenda, for their own benefit. Key here is the idea of agency, or activeness toward the government/policy of the Chinese institutions, that the existing scholarly literature (largely) fails to look for, and identify. In other words, the diverse actors involved in these trends cannot be explained by seeing the distribution of sources and interests as extending from the center to the periphery, or from China to Central Asia, only. 14 We can even say that some manipulate it to stay alive, or to be able to perform their profession.

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In practice, one can observe a much more complex picture of public and cultural diplomacy that demands a different treatment of foreign actors, and the idea of their agency and activeness. The challenge is, however, to develop an appropriate conceptual framework that is not dependent only on ‘China’ (or the nation-state), and its success or failure, as a unit of analysis or reference (our assumptions). Here, studies of public and cultural diplomacy could benefit considerably from transnationalism studies and recent conceptual developments in that discipline. In the following part, I will hint at a few major points proposed within the theoretical literature on transnationalism and why they might be relevant for the study of public diplomacy in the future. Transnationalism studies take issue more broadly with how different disciplines manage their units of reference, measurement, and analysis. From the perspective of scholars of transnationalism, ‘the world consists of multiple sets of dynamically overlapping and interacting transnational social fields that create and shape seemingly bordered and bounded structures, actors and processes’ (Khagram and Levitt 2008, 25–26). This approach is inspired by many theoretical and empirical studies, of which Castells’s work on ‘network society’ (1996) and discussions on the ‘decoupling of space and time in modern experience’ (Harvey 1990; Marcus 1995, cited in Molina et al. 2012, 7) have been considered the most significant. These scholars began to theorize social networks and social phenomena in an alternative way. For this study, the findings of Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) on ‘methodological nationalism’ have also been important. They analyze our tendency in the social sciences to blind ourselves to numerous phenomena by conceptualizing social phenomena around the boundaries of the nation-state. This has reminded scholars of the political project behind studying diverse phenomena by referring (only) to the nation-state (Khagram and Levitt 2008). Transnational scholars have identified alternative units of reference, but also worked to develop them into theoretical concepts. Among the most well-known have been ‘transnational social fields’ (Glick Schiller and Fouron 1999) and ‘transnational social spaces’ (Pries 2001). For example, Pries (2001, 18) introduces the concept of transnational societal spaces that describes ‘configurations of social practices, artifacts and symbol systems that span different geographic spaces in at least two-nation states without constituting a new ‘deterritorialized’ nation-state.’ This concept allows for a polycentric approach to the study of the distribution of power, interests, and resources, but also includes the geographical aspect

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in an understanding of transnational societal spaces. Both these concepts, as well as transnationalism studies in general, do ‘not assume away the importance of the global and local, or the nation-state system form’ (Khagram and Levitt 2008, 25) as some might fear. The extended analytical framework still includes people associated with the state, non-state, civil society, or other ‘gifted’ categories or units traditionally ‘taken for granted.’ Yet these categories do not already and solely serve as tools for explanatory or interpretation purposes when analyzing different aspects of public diplomacy. Here, governmental success or failure (alone) is not crucial for the selection of the units of measurement. Changing the unit of reference could allow one to change the unit of analysis, and thus to assume more and different ‘localities.’ The goal is to no longer focus only on the Confucius Institutes or other PRC actors abroad that have been analyzed in detail by other scholars already. Indeed, once we change the unit of reference, the ‘localities’ of exchange on the ‘Silk Road’ do not necessarily have to be linked to the particular state (China, Kazakhstan, or Uzbekistan in this example). Rather, the units of analysis are ‘sites’ understood as localities of both arrival and departure of the message which one needs to analyze within the global hierarchies of power. They can capture flows, linkages, or identities that cross or supersede other spatial units or the phenomena and dynamics within them (Khagram and Levitt 2008, 28). Other scholars suggest conceptualizing these localities as ‘sites’ (cf. Richter 2012). Adopting the lenses of transnationalism for studies of public diplomacy and adopting a different unit of analysis might, among other things, help one to explore the significance of a specific locality. In the example discussed in this chapter, we can posit that given the fact that both Almaty and Tashkent are major cities, there are more networks and ‘sites’ of exchange, and the flows and linkages are more intensive. In other words, one needs to take into account and add the perspective of scale of exchange based on the specific locality. As Glick Schiller and Ca˘glar note: ‘Scale theory allows one to take locality into consideration but within the intersection of hierarchies of power, which extend across the borders of nation-states’ (Glick Schiller and Ca˘glar 2008, 44; see also Lefebvre 1991; Smith 1995). Often, conclusions about public diplomacy could be drawn based on examples from large cities or large events. Truly, in these cities exchange on the ‘Silk Road’ or the ‘Chinese’ rebirth of the ‘Silk Road’ offers connections to people ranging from Chinese institutions to foreign Chinese fora and political leaders who are important in local, national, or

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global arenas (including national leaders). As I demonstrated above, they can develop their careers as culture brokers (Glick Schiller and Ca˘glar 2008, 58) who can represent the needs or interests of particular Chinese actors. One should, however, be careful to generalize and look for variation: we might find other methods of incorporation in smaller cities or at other ‘sites,’ for example, that are not so interlinked and explore the variation in more detail.

Conclusion In this chapter, based on the results of the study of networks in Central Asia, I have shown how China’s public and cultural diplomacy can enable different actors in Tashkent and Almaty to generate income, improve their social standing, and forge partnerships. The analysis suggests that these actors are not necessarily interested in making China’s public diplomacy initiatives ‘work’ (i.e., are not motivated by its success or failure), but wish to be perceived as a part of it. The aim of the chapter is also to show how it is possible to analyze issues that have so far been under-researched or under-theorized. Specifically, this chapter suggests finding a way forward by ‘unlocking’ studies of China’s public and cultural diplomacy from the debate on the ‘instrumentalism’ (and credibility) of China’s policy. It promotes the adoption of the transnational approach within the study of public diplomacy. Among other things, this conceptual framework focuses on other units of analysis beyond ‘China’ or the ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ actors associated with it. It explores different ‘localities’ or ‘sites’ of transnational social space— whether these are academic networks, or cultural exchanges aimed at improving the image of the PRC abroad. The chapter also documents that such an approach offers more than just an acknowledgment that the initiatives taking place across or beyond borders exist. It shifts attention to more complex questions associated with interests, power, and resources (beyond the ‘Chinese institutions’ unit of reference and analysis) and their distribution. The approach draws attention to processes rather than content. On the one hand, this chapter documents that the idea of exchange on the ‘Silk Road’ and rebirth of the Silk Road is, currently, often the only link between the PRC and Central Asian societies in public and cultural diplomacy. It is intended to erase the other less positive aspects of mutual PRC and Chinese-Asian history from the public discourse and replace them

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with values of ‘harmonious development’ and ‘traditional friendship’ that could—allegedly—be easily reactivated. On the other hand, the chapter documents that the ‘Chinese Rebirth of the Silk Road’ is only a site of convergence for other interests. The emphasis could change in the future, but the logic might well remain the same.

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CHAPTER 5

Establishing a Common Ground—Admiral Zheng He as an Agent of Cultural Diplomacy in Malaysia Jakub Hrubý

On May 1, 2012, a group of Chinese naval cadets sailing a training vessel named Zheng He visited the Zheng He Memorial Gallery in Malacca ‘to cherish the memories of the great achievements of the great maritime pioneer and messenger of peace and friendship’ (Chinese naval servicemen 2012). Malaysia was but one stop on a long journey during which the ship was scheduled to visit ten more countries in five months before completing its ‘harmonious mission’ of circumnavigating the globe (Zhang 2012), ‘consolidating and developing the relations between China and various countries’ and ‘enhancing mutual trust’ (Li and Cao 2012). Yet, choosing Malacca was no coincidence, for this historically important city can claim an intimate connection with Zheng He’s voyages and thus represents the close ties that bind China to maritime Southeast Asia in general, and Malaysia in particular.

J. Hrubý (B) Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_5

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Starting with the early commercial activities along the Maritime Silk Road during the first millennium A.D., China has always maintained close contacts with Southeast Asia, gradually establishing a long-lasting presence in the region. Numerous communities of Chinese descent are to be found in all major settlements along the historical trade routes, being a result of several waves of Chinese migration that might vary in terms of their history, place of origin, and language, as well as their degree of integration into local society.1 Yet, as a whole they remain one of the defining features of the region and represent a strong, tangible connection with China, which perceives Southeast Asia to be of a great geostrategic importance, especially in view of the security of the southern borders of the PRC and its interests in the South China Sea (Ott and Hao 2018; Parameswaran 2019). While Beijing tends to pursue Chinese claims in the area ever more assertively,2 it tries hard to reassure neighboring countries of its friendly intentions and allay their fears by presenting China as a good neighbor and trustworthy and responsible economic partner, whose rise to power does not have to be feared (d’Hooghe 2007; Hartig 2016). The revival of the Maritime Silk Road within the One Belt One Road initiative, presented as a legacy of ancient friendly and mutually beneficial commercial ties, seems to be quite efficient in winning the goodwill of several ASEAN countries, including Malaysia, as it partially caters to their own interests and development plans. During the premiership of Najib Razak (2009–2018), a new perception has emerged among the then ruling UMNO (United Malays National Organisation) party of China as a leading regional power whose rise might bring fresh economic opportunities (Kuik 2013, 448). China has become Malaysia’s strategic partner on several levels (Rosli 2019; Ngeow 2017) and the Malaysian government has been actively seeking a strengthening of friendly relations between the two countries, hoping

1 In case of Malaysia, there are various historical communities such as Baba Nyonya, Cantonese, Hokkien, or Teochew living side by side with later, twentieth-century Chinese migrants. For discussion of periodization and different waves of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, see Wang (1992). 2 Following 2016 China had installed missiles on the Spratley Islands and in 2018 organized week-long naval drills in the South China Sea, parading its large flotila including an aircraft carrier (Le 2018). For an overview of different aspects of Chinese activity in South China Sea see Storey and Lin (2016).

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for further economic incentives and Chinese investments.3 The Malaysian Chinese are encouraged to participate in commercial and economic exchanges between the two countries and are involved in both investing in China and executing Chinese investments in Malaysia. But, apart from the economy, the possibilities of other engagement of the local Chinese community in Malaysia-China relations are limited by the peculiar standing of the Chinese minority within Malaysian society (Yow 2016, 837). Historically, the Malaysian Chinese were very much China-oriented and even though this attitude has changed with the establishment of the PRC and subsequent social upheavals in China (Cho and Park 2013, 80), their wholehearted support of the emerging Malaysian nation-state was repeatedly questioned, especially in view of the PRC’s erstwhile backing of the Communist insurgency in Malaysia (1968–1989).4 Despite the fact that nowadays Malaysian Chinese identify themselves fully with the state as loyal citizens of Malaysia (Chang 2018), a certain sense of mistrust still lingers—a fear that the PRC might possibly want to use the Malaysian Chinese as the proverbial fifth column (Thirumaran 2007, 195–196).5 Thus, the very presence of the local Chinese community in Malaysia imposes limits on the possibilities of the PRC’s cultural diplomacy. First, the popular features of Chinese culture, such as calligraphy, Chinese chess, or martial arts, have been a part of the Malaysian culturescape for decades. As the Malaysian Chinese represent an officially recognized element of the multicultural makeup of present-day Malaysia, any display of Chinese culture is not necessarily associated exclusively with the PRC but rather seen as a part of Malaysian cultural heritage. More important still is the fact that any attempt to involve, let alone employ, local Chinese in promoting China can become a potential liability to the PRC’s diplomatic effort. The distrust of Chinese influence makes Malaysian politicians and the population at large rather sensitive to any attempt at what may be 3 For details of the China-Malaysia relationship under Najib’s government see the chapter of Tomáš Petru˚ in this volume. 4 For the evolution of China-Malaysia relations and Chinese involvement in Malaysian politics, see Thirumaran (2007, 195–196). For the complicated position of the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia in regard to the nation- and state-building efforts of the Malays, see Yow (2016, 837, 846–848). 5 Concern about rising influence of China in Malaysia was certainly one of the factors leading to the fall of Najib Razak and his government in Spring 2018 (Malhi 2018). The new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad announced a shift of Malaysian stance towards China which should ‘not to be anti-China but more pro-Malaysia’ (Ignatius 2018).

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perceived as meddling in the internal affairs of Malaysia on part of the PRC.6 The practice of Chinese cultural diplomacy in Malaysia is thus very much determined, in both its content and forms of engagement, by ‘domestic structures.’ Generally understood as ‘the political institutions of the state, societal structures, as well as the policy networks linking the two’ (Exnerova 2017, 192), the domestic structures in case of Malaysia denote above all the ethnic and cultural makeup of the country characterized by the institutionalized political dominance of the Malay majority vis-à-vis ethnic minorities, including the Malaysian Chinese. However, there are fields where the respective interests of the PRC, Malaysian Chinese, and Malaysia as a nation-state happen to converge. One area of common ground is derived from memories of the historical voyages of Zheng He represented as a starting point of China-Malaysia relations. The figure of the intrepid Ming dynasty eunuch-admiral stands as much for past friendly cultural exchanges as it does for new commercial opportunities brought by the ‘peaceful rise’ (heping jueqi) of China. As such, it becomes a nexus of diverse interests of various actors, both state and non-state, who are for their own reasons willing to adopt and perpetuate the Chinese narrative of a glorious and peaceful naval enterprise bringing benefits to everyone concerned, thereby contributing to the PRC’s cultural diplomacy effort. In order to highlight the complexity of the issue of Chinese cultural diplomacy and to trace all the intersecting and converging interests involved the chapter will focus on selected sites of transnational societal spaces connected with promotion of Admiral Zheng He and his voyages. These may be real places, institutions, or certain activities of transnational networks transcending the borders of respective nation-states (Exnerova 2017, 193–196; 2018; and also Exnerová in this volume), which intentionally contribute to the dissemination of the Chinese story of the voyages. This approach will help us to track down various actors, both state and non-state, involved in improving the PRC’s image and their international ties and relations, and it will also enable us to capture their often dynamic interaction in its entirety. 6 A case in point is the reaction to a controversial proclamation of the PRC’s ambassador Huang Huikang in Malaysia in September 2015 (Chinese envoy must apologize 2015) or his financial support of the local Chinese communities’ schools in Malaysia. For detailed discussion, see the chapter of Tomáš Petru˚ in this volume.

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The Appeal of Zheng He’s Voyages The historical Zheng He was a eunuch admiral who served Ming dynasty Yongle Emperor and his successors during the first half of the fifteenth century. Originally a war captive from a Muslim family, he eventually managed to attain high command, leading seven naval expeditions to the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433, and visiting all the important ports along the Maritime Silk Road from Southern Vietnam to the eastern coast of Africa. While Western historians tend to agree that the main aim of Zheng He’s voyages was to display the cultural and military superiority of the Ming Empire in order to impress local rulers and make them acknowledge the universalistic claims of the Ming emperors,7 the official PRC narrative views and portrays the voyages in a very different light. First and foremost, Zheng He is celebrated as a navigator and explorer who ventured into the unknown, considerably expanding the horizons of mankind long before the European ‘age of discovery’ even began.8 But unlike the Western explorers, who, according to the PRC narrative, brought nothing but violence and exploitation, oppressing the peoples they encountered and colonizing their lands, Zheng He allegedly embarked on a peaceful mission of friendly and mutually beneficial cultural and commercial exchange which initiated the economic growth of the region.9 Zheng He is invoked as an envoy of peace—a harbinger of civilization introducing advanced technologies and spreading Chinese culture to the outside world (Li 2005). As such he has become a symbol of peaceful and harmonious cooperation within a larger community of shared interests and his maritime enterprise is presented as proof that China is a good neighbor whose peaceful rise to power should not be feared but embraced as an opportunity for further development.10

7 For a summary of the known facts about Zheng He’s life and a balanced overview of the voyages see Dreyer (2007). 8 For example, see a statement of Li Jinming from the Department of World History,

Fudan University, quoted in Li (2005). 9 For example, the PRC state councilor Dai Bingguo quoted in Murphy (2010). 10 For an example of this kind of narrative turning Zheng He into a useful tool of

Chinese cultural diplomacy see the speech given by the Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang at the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur on November 22, 2015 (Full text of Premier’s 2015).

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The voyage of the Zheng He training ship and its stop in Malacca is but one example of the various diplomatic activities revolving around the figure of the Ming eunuch. Already in 2005, when China celebrated the sexcentenary anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage, the ministries of culture of the PRC and Malaysia co-organized a traveling exhibition, Envoy of Peace from China. Opened by the then Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi as part of official celebrations, the exhibition ‘highlighted the spirit of peace and friendship embodied in Zheng He and expressed China’s wish to carry out dialogue and exchanges with all other countries in the world’ (Malaysian PM 2005). Much of the appealing Chinese narrative of a peaceful civilizing mission offering fruitful commercial cooperation seems to have found a receptive audience in at least some countries of Southeast Asia, where it resonates well with the specific needs and interests of various local communities. Local actors are often eager to adopt and perpetuate the Chinese narrative as a means of highlighting their own agenda. The rest of the chapter will therefore focus on several sites of transnational societal spaces where the respective interests of various state and non-state actors coming from different countries intersect and converge with the aims of Chinese cultural diplomacy. Pursuing their own political, commercial, or scholarly interests, these actors contribute to the PRC’s effort to promote an attractive image of China and her rising influence in the region. The selected activities either take place in or are connected to Malacca (a site of transnational societal space in its own right), a historical Malaysian city which has come to represent the close cultural and political ties between Malaysia and China. For Malacca’s very existence can be seen as a result of Ming Dynasty engagement in the region, when the emperor chose to support a refugee Malay prince in order to secure a strategic base in the Straits. Chinese protection enabled Malacca to develop into an important commercial entrepot and eventually a regional power to be reckoned with. Several Malaccan rulers visited the imperial court, often traveling on board of Zheng He’s ships, and the admiral chose Malacca as a sight for a fortified depot which served as a storage and assembly point of the fleets.11

11 For diplomatic relations with the Ming and Malaccan rulers’ visits to China see Wang (2005a) and (2005b) respectively.

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Zheng He Cultural Museum in Malacca The most visible site of transnational societal space connected with Zheng He in Malacca is the Zheng He Cultural Museum.12 It is a private museum founded and owned by Tan Ta Sen, a Singaporean scholar and businessman of Chinese descent, whose activities transcend the borders of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. Having been an assistant professor and later the head of Southeast Asian Studies at Nanyang University, Singapore, he left academia at the end of the 1970s and started a construction company. He has also become a developer specializing in heritage properties, running a boutique hotel. Since the 2000s, he has been active in promoting awareness of Zheng He’s voyages, founding the International Zheng He Society, participating in the organization of the 600th anniversary celebrations in Singapore,13 and producing a large coffee table book called Zheng He Epic, an English version of the ultimate encyclopedia of Zheng He published in China to commemorate its maritime hero (Meet the authors 2006).14 At the same time, Tan Ta Sen rejoined academic circles, and after acquiring a Ph.D. from the Universitas Indonesia he started to act as an established authority on the Ming maritime enterprise, publishing books and articles and organizing various talks and conferences. Early in the 2000s Tan Ta Sen bought eight traditional Malaccan shophouses and turned them into a museum, which opened in 2006. Claiming that it actually stands on the site of the fortified depot built by the Ming admiral for his fleet (Discovery of Zheng He’s), Tan Ta Sen stresses the historical importance of the place and the uniqueness of his museum, which is supposed to celebrate the diplomatic, cultural, and economic contribution of the voyages to Malacca and the whole region and actively promote Zheng He’s spirit (according to Tan Ta Sen [Tan 2014, 85], one of peace, equality, and racial harmony) by organizing a whole range of wider educational and cultural activities. This basic vision is reflected in the structuring and overall impression of the exhibitions, which aim to present the definitive narrative of the life and times of Zheng He, his 12 Called Muzium Budaya Cheng Ho in Malay and Zheng He Wenhua Guan in Chinese. See its webpage at http://www.chengho.org/museum/. 13 For the career and activities of Tan Ta Sen see Hong and Huang (2009, 300–301). 14 The Chinese original, called Zheng He shishi, was published in 2005 by Yunnan

Renmin Chubanshe.

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voyages, and his connection to Malaysia. Various thematic galleries also highlight Sino-Malay socioeconomic exchanges, the role of Malacca as a commercial center, and advanced technologies of Chinese shipbuilding and navigation.15 The message conveyed is that of a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship in which Zheng He’s diplomatic and trading activities facilitated the rise of the Malacca Sultanate. China is portrayed as a benign protector and civilizing influence whose support appears to be instrumental in transforming an obscure backwater into a vibrant and racially diverse emporium. Not only did the voyages bring various technical advancements which were eventually adopted by the locals but they also introduced an ethnic Chinese element into the region when some members of Zheng He’s crew allegedly settled down and intermarried with the natives (Lim 2017, 2–3). Given Tan Ta Sen’s past, the Zheng He Cultural Museum could be viewed as a profit-driven exercise in property development and promotion of heritage tourism.16 And indeed, the owner does not deny the high tourist potential of places connected to Zheng He (Lim 2017, 12), yet he also asserts that the commercial aspect was never his main incentive for opening the museum (Huang 2012, 233–234). It is important to realize that the commercial interests of a heritage developer obviously converge with other interests of Tan Ta Sen as a member of the Chinese diaspora. The museum display clearly shows that the general narrative of the voyages has been localized and related specifically to Malacca and Southeast Asia. Through Zheng He the overseas Chinese are able to link themselves to the glorious past of Ming China and, at the same time, improve their credentials as old local residents and symbolically enhance their role within the local society.17 15 Based on the author’s visit to the site in May 2015. For the details of the museum exhibitions, see also Tan (2014, 85–86) and the webpages of the Museum at http:// www.chengho.org/museum/. 16 And it has certainly been viewed like that. An example could be Indonesian scholar Johannes Widodo, who says that ‘The story of Zheng He in Melaka has been fantasized, distorted, and commoditized under the pretext of cultural promotion and for the sake of generating tourism revenue’ (Widodo 2008). For similar reservations of a Singapore-based historian, Geoff Wade, see Hong and Huang (2009, 297–304). 17 Up to a certain point, Tan Ta Sen seems to act with a motivation similar to An Husei’s, a Kazakhstani businessman analyzed by Vˇera Exnerová in her chapter in this volume. However, while An’s interest is to achieve a higher social standing through being simply a part of a high profile cultural diplomacy effort supported by the governments

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On the other hand, the resulting narrative of peaceful technological and economic development of the region, in which cooperation with the Chinese plays the major role, corresponds well with the present aims of Chinese cultural diplomacy in Southeast Asia and as such has not escaped Beijing’s attention. While the Museum is run as a private institution and has no official connection to the Chinese embassy in Malaysia nor any other Chinese government agency, several leading representatives of the PRC, including Prime Minister Li Keqiang, have made a point of visiting the Zheng He Cultural Museum and reiterating the message of peaceful development and good neighborliness.18 The special importance of the site lies in the fact that ‘it is a private initiative that has incorporated multiple stakeholders including academicians, private sector entrepreneurs, government officials/tourism authorities, and local community residents’ (Lim 2017, 5). While the possibility of associating itself with such an independent local institution definitely enhances the credibility of Chinese culture diplomacy, the official endorsement by the PRC’s top leaders might help to increase the number of visitors from China and fulfill the tourist potential of the museum.19

Publications and Activities of the International Zheng He Society That the motivation behind the Zheng He Cultural Museum is not purely commercial is further attested by the activities of the International Zheng He Society (Guoji Zheng He xuehui; IZHS), which was founded in 2002 by Tan Ta Sen and his friends and colleagues from Singapore, initially to restore historical buildings acquired in Malacca and manage the emerging museum as well as the Cheng Ho Cultural Research Centre. The Singapore-based society with no official connection to the

of both China and Kazakhstan, Tan Ta Sen identifies with the content of the Chinese cultural diplomacy narrative, aiming for something qualitatively different, the enhanced standing of the Chinese community in the region vis-à-vis the Malay majority. 18 These were Vice Premier Liu Yandong (Lim 2017, 10), the Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Jia Qinglin (Jia Qinglin visits 2013) and Li Keqiang (Li Keqiang visits 2015). 19 It seems that the exhibitions of the museum mainly target Chinese tourists. While there are also captions in Malay and English, much more information is provided in Chinese, especially in the section dedicated to Zheng He’s life (personal observation).

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PRC is comprised of esteemed members of the local Chinese community, intellectuals, and scholars (both active and retired), as well as businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and senior executives, and seems to be financially supported by Tan Ta Sen.20 The proclaimed mission of the society is: to unveil the historical facts relating to his (i.e. Zheng He’s) seven great voyages in order to bring to light the truth of his contributions not only to Imperial Ming … but also his deeds and acts of support for local people and rulers in the lands that he visited during his voyages. The Society also hopes to uncover the technological developments that his ships and manner of navigation that his fleet employed. It is hoped that, the fact that he was Chinese, though of Persian descent and a devout Muslim could become instrumental to bring about greater mutual understanding and appreciation among people of all ethnic groups in the Asian-African region. (About Our Society)

In order to achieve these goals, the society organized public exhibitions, talks, and seminars, as well as international conferences, in cooperation with various state and academic institutions in both Malaysia and Singapore21 and produced several books and academic publications authored or edited by its members. The first to appear was a book called Cheng He and Malacca, a rather modest volume written by Tan Ta Sen in 2005, which was enlarged and published in a revised edition under the new title Cheng Ho and Malaya in 2014 (Tan 2005, 2014). As both titles suggest, the book is as much about the life of Zheng He as the impact of his voyages on local society. Zheng He is portrayed as a navigator and explorer sent on a mission of peace and goodwill and an able diplomat and negotiator, as well as a harbinger of culture and a civilizing influence. Moreover, the book repeats the general narrative already encountered in the museum of a steep economic rise of the Sultanate of Malacca under the protection of the Chinese court. Tan Ta Sen claims that it was the act of investiture in which the Ming awarded a local prince the title of a king which constitutes the beginning of the Malay state. Subsequent relations are praised

20 See the society webpage (About Our Society, http://www.chengho.org/aboutus). For the membership see also Lim (2017, 12). 21 For the public-oriented activities, see the annual reports of the society on its webpage (only those up to 2012 are available).

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as ‘harmonious partnership … beneficial to both countries. In fact, it was a perfect win-win situation’ (Tan 2014, 64, 67). A similar story reappears in Tan Ta Sen’s second book, Cheng Ho and Islam in Southeast Asia, which is based on his dissertation defended at the Universitas Indonesia (Tan 2009). This time, however, it is sidelined by the main topic, which is Zheng He’s role in introducing Islam to the region and establishing overseas Chinese communities. Zheng He is seen as a faithful Muslim who used his voyages to help the Muslim Chinese settle down in the ports of present-day Indonesia, spreading the faith and initiating the Islamization of insular Southeast Asia (Tan 2009, Chapters 6–7). The conversion of Malacca, which later became an important center of Islamic learning, is also directly linked to Zheng He’s influence. This narrative of Zheng He as an apostle of Islam is set against the wider context of cultural encounters stressing the generally peaceful nature of his activities, which stands in stark contrast to later colonial aggression committed by the Western powers. To commemorate the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s maiden voyage, the IZHS produced a collective volume edited by Leo Suryadinata, director of the Chinese Heritage Centre at Nanyang Technological University and a founding member of the society, reprinting nine articles originally published from 1964 to 2005 and presenting an ‘Asian perspective’ on the voyages. The majority of the articles again deal with the Ming factor in establishing Malacca as a regional power and the role of the Chinese and Zheng He in particular in spreading Islam. On the whole, the articles’ arguments are consistent with the overall message promoted by the International Zheng He Society,22 which seems to have been the major factor in the selection process. By placing recent studies of the society’s members side by side with older articles by scholars of international reputation, the editors managed to enhance the academic appeal of their message and add more credibility to their own views on Zheng He.23 In order to engage with the wider academic world and stimulate discussion with scholars from outside the region, the IZHS, together with the 22 The association of respective authors with the IZHS is not always clear. While Wang Gungwu is an official advisor to the society and Chung Chee Kit is the director of the Friends of Admiral Zheng He (another Singapore-based group), Johannes Widodo from the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, has expressed deep reservations about the Zheng He Cultural Museum. See Widodo (2008). 23 For an assessment of the book see Ptak (2007).

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Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, organized the first international Zheng He conference, Zheng He and the Afro-Asian World, which took place in Malacca on July 5–8, 2009.24 The conference was co-organized by PERZIM (Perbadanan Muzium Melaka, Malacca Museums Corporation)—a state institution uniting various museums in Malacca—and the Melaka State Tourism Department’s Cultural and Heritage Committee. The governmental involvement added certain political overtones to the conference, the proclaimed aim of which was not only to contribute to the now almost customary better understanding of Ming-Malacca relations but also to reinforce the close ties established in the past and strengthen the continuing friendship between Malaysia and China (Chia and Church 2012, xx–xxi). Selected papers were later published—again, with the support of the Melaka State Government—in two hefty volumes as Zheng He and the Afro-Asian World, the English part having been edited by Sally K. Church from Cambridge University and Chia Lin Sien, former assistant professor of National University of Singapore (Chia and Church 2012).25 Similar to Suryadinata’s volume discussed above, it is a mixture of articles of varying quality ranging from meticulous research on technological details of the ships and possibilities of fifteenth-century navigation to articles extolling harmony and tolerance as a legacy of the ‘Zheng He spirit,’ mirroring the region-specific interests of their authors. The IZHS reportedly plans to organize another international conference.26 However, its most recent visible activity27 was the publication of a monograph called Zheng He’s Art of Collaboration. Understanding the Legendary Chinese Admiral from a Management Perspective by Hum Sin Hoon, the deputy dean of the Business School of the National University of Singapore and a member of the IZHS (Hum 2012). Published in 2012 together with ISEAS, an established academic publisher in Singapore, the

24 It should have commemorated the 605th anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage and the second anniversary of the designation of Malacca as a UNESCO-listed World Heritage City. 25 The second volume collecting the Chinese papers appeared as Zheng He yu Ya

Fei shijie and was edited by Leo Suryadinata, Kua Bak Lim, and Koh Hock Kiat. Unfortunately, I was not able to access this volume. 26 Mentioned by Tan Ta Sen in an interview with Lim Tai Wei without giving a precise date (Lim 2017, 6). 27 As the official webpage of the IZHS has not been updated since 2012 and the Facebook account since 2014 it is not entirely clear what the society does at the moment.

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book introduces a new business strategy in which the ‘zero-sum game’ approach traditionally associated with a famous Chinese classic—Sunzi’s The Art of War—is replaced by an effort to find all-win solutions based on the ‘Zheng He spirit’ of collaboration. The narrative of tolerance and peaceful and mutually beneficial coexistence keeps reappearing in all the works of the authors associated with the IZHS. Interestingly enough, it is often intertwined with Zheng He’s Muslim identity and his perceived role in introducing Islam to maritime Southeast Asia. Tan Ta Sen and his colleagues were not the first to suggest that the Chinese element contributed to the Islamization of the region and their works should therefore be seen as a part of a wider academic trend of questioning and revising established paradigms and bringing in a distinctive, regional view of global history. While in certain cases, it certainly appears to be a very legitimate endeavor,28 stressing the personal initiative of Zheng He seems rather farfetched and, in the end, resembles the PRC’s usual narrative of the admiral as an envoy of peace and harbinger of civilization. However, the motivation to promote Zheng He and his voyages in this way stems not so much from the effort to improve China’s image as from the peculiar situation of overseas Chinese communities. In the centuries following the voyages, Zheng He and some of his companions became special figures of identification—the spiritual links connecting the diaspora communities with their original homeland—and in this respect have been always much more important for the overseas Chinese than for China itself (Ptak and Salmon 2005, 20–21, 34). By invoking Zheng He and his legendary voyages, they are able to assert their distinct identity as members of the great Chinese civilization vis-à-vis the ethnically and culturally different majority. On the one hand, the connection to Zheng He also enables them, irrespective of the actual time of their migration, to project their presence in the region some six hundred years back into the past, claiming it as their ancient domicile. In this way, the overseas Chinese communities may be perceived not as outsiders, alien to the region and its traditions, but as a constitutive component of the local

28 For example, the role of the Ming factor in establishing the Malacca Sultanate and the contribution of Chinese Muslim communities to the Islamization of the region are becoming established facts. See, for example, Wade (2005) and Lombard and Salmon (1993) respectively. For a historical overview of these notions, see Wain (2017).

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societies and nation-states, which can be credited with the founding of cities, encouraging trade, and introducing various advanced technologies. Moreover, by depicting Zheng He as a pious yet tolerant apostle of Islam, who ‘distinguished himself by not imposing his own religious persuasion on people of other faiths’ (How the society), it is possible to present the Chinese minority as a major agent in the process of Islamization, which radically transformed both the political and religious makeup of insular Southeast Asia, eventually leading to the emergence of the Muslim nation-states of Malaysia and Indonesia. This narrative of belonging to the region and forming it into what it is today is important in terms of majority-minority relations. At the same time, it can be seen as an indirect appeal to the Muslim majority in both countries to practice the Islam of Zheng He, invariably construed as tolerant and inclusive.

Malacca Nowhere else is the historical connection between China and Malaysia as strong as in Malacca. The local actors, both state and non-state, are aware of its potential and willing to explore the possibilities of Zheng He’s legacy. The last part of the chapter will therefore focus on Malacca as a site of transnational societal space where the narrative of peaceful and fruitful cooperation with China gets promoted in connection with various local political and commercial interests. As we have seen, Malacca is viewed as the veritable embodiment of historical ties between Malaysia and China. It was the Ming Dynasty whose protection and influence helped turn Malacca into a regional power. Here, the narrative of the inherently peaceful nature of the voyages finds fertile ground, especially in view of the fact that the era of Malacca’s greatness was abruptly brought to an end by the aggression of the Portuguese, who in 1511 conquered the Sultanate, initiating a period of colonial rule which ended only with the declaration of Malaysia’s independence in 1957. While Zheng He is remembered as a maker of Malacca who gave it its independence,29 the Portuguese are invariably seen as

29 For an example of this view see Wong (2014) or quotations from a speech of the Governor of Malacca opening the 2009 Zheng He and the Afro-Asian World conference (Chia and Church 2012, xxii).

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foreign aggressors forcefully occupying Malay lands.30 Thus, the historical experience of Malacca seems to support the validity of the PRC’s narrative, for the rise of the first Malay state on the peninsula appears to be a perfect example of the win-win collaboration invoked by Chinese diplomacy. According to a senior Malaysian government representative, Zheng He’s voyages are ‘proof that the explosive development of the Chinese economy is never a threat to the world, but a golden opportunity to promote the overall development of Asia and even the world as a whole.’31 Malaysian government and other actors are willing to promote this narrative as a blueprint for the new economic rise of Malaysia within the scope of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road scheme, hoping that the history will repeat itself.32 The first to promote Zheng He’s legacy were local Malaysian Chinese. As early as the 1990s, the Malacca Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry commissioned a large statue of the admiral to be placed on Bukit Cina (Chinese Hill), where the first Chinese settlers in Malacca are supposed to have lived. However, it was only twelve years later, when Malaysia was commemorating thirty years of diplomatic relations with China, that the statue was officially erected in the courtyard of the Stadhuys, the main state museum in Malacca. It was to mark the opening of The Cheng Ho Gallery (Galeri Laksamana Cheng Ho), a new addition to permanent expositions showcasing Zheng He’s relations with Malacca (Hong and Huang 2009, 302–303). The fate of the statue, together with its new location, reflect the fact that it took years before the Malaysian government gradually became comfortable with the idea of promoting Chinese heritage (Thirumaran 2007, 202–203). While in the 1970s and 1980s Malaysia intentionally endorsed the Malay history of Malaysia and excluded the historical legacy of other ethnic groups (Worden 2003), this

30 For example, Dato Dzulkifli Abd Razak, a vice chancellor of the Universiti Sains Malaysia claims that ‘Zheng He’s voyages did not amount to the “gunboat” diplomacy generally associated more with the Europeans. Later, this turned into hegemony and colonisation in their war with Islam and working out of profit’ (Abd Razak 2005). 31 Vice Minister of Trade and Industry Mah Siew Keong, mentioned in Li (2005). 32 For example, Idris Haron, the chief minister of Malacca State has said in an interview

that ‘closer ties with China within the BRI and revival of the Maritime Silk Road is believed to bring development opportunities and economic benefits to the state’ (Jiang 2015).

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attitude underwent certain changes with the rise of China. The pragmatic effort to court China’s goodwill and strengthen friendly ties with Malaysia’s strategic partner means more space for the Malaysian Chinese past.33 In order to secure economic benefits, the state is obviously willing to promote the PRC’s narratives of Zheng He. The exposition in the Gallery consequently does not differ from the story narrated by Tan Ta Sen’s private museum, for it displays ‘the success of the voyages in fostering a brotherhood relationship between China and the African and Asian countries and opening doors for fair business’ (Galeri Laksamana Cheng Ho). One of the reasons for the government’s adoption of the Zheng He narrative is the fact that it fits well into the official national history discourse and as such does not present a challenge to national unity. The legacy of Chinese influence is inseparably bound up with the perceived beginnings of the Malay nation-state as the founding of the Malacca Sultanate represents the constitutive moment in the history of Malaysia. This message is clearly to be seen in the Museum of Malacca Sultanate (Muzium Kesultanan Melayu Melaka), another state museum in Malacca. Built as a replica of the sultan’s palace, the museum mainly displays the vestiges of the royal past, like tombstones and ceremonial insignia, but beside that it also highlights the importance of Malacca as a commercial emporium where international traders from East and West assembled to trade their merchandise. The largest hall is occupied by a court scene featuring life-size figurines representing an audience given by a sultan to emissaries from Java and a venerable Chinese envoy conspicuously clad in a Ming dynasty eunuch costume sitting beside the throne as a silent reminder of the Chinese might behind the rise of Malacca.34 Another important factor influencing the willingness of the government to promote Zheng He is the great tourist potential of Chinese heritage, which might lead to local development. Above all, Malacca tries to target Chinese tourists, who generally like to visit heritage sites connected with Chinese history or the history of overseas Chinese communities (Thirumaran 2007, 200–201). With Malaysia becoming 33 According to Thirumaran, another incentive for allowing more space for the Malaysian Chinese cultural heritage was the effort of the ruling UMNO party to win the support of the Malaysian Chinese constituency. For both see Thirumaran (2007, 192–197). 34 Personal observation during a visit in 2016.

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one of the top ten destinations for Chinese tourists, of whom 2.2 million visited in 2017 (Tourism Malaysia-Tencent 2018), various private investors are encouraged by the governments of both countries to tap this potential source of profit (see below). The Zheng He legacy looms large in these commercial projects, which tend to be joint ventures between Malaysian and Chinese partners. While the project of the Nanjing government and a Malaysian electronics company of building a replica of Zheng He’s ship—which should have been the largest handmade wooden ship in the world—encountered financial difficulties and came to a standstill (Plan to build 2014), there are others with a greater chance of success. One example is a historical adventure movie, Admiral (Dajiangjun), which should have been released in 2018, co-produced by Malaysian Mega Visual Sdn Bhd and Hong Kong Times Production Limited. It is supposed to feature Zheng He as essentially a man of peace who is nevertheless also capable of acting as a resourceful warrior, helping the Malaccan prince Megat Iskandar to establish a kingdom under Chinese protection when he is threatened by Chinese pirates and the ambitions of the Thais (Admiral—movie synopsis; FINAS aims for 2015). The film was supposed to be shot on location in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and above all in Malacca, where a movie town should have been set up together with a replica of the fleet. The project was fully supported by the Malaysian government for it possesses a ‘nation building element,’ as it promotes ‘strong values of trust and friendship between (people of) different backgrounds and cultures’ (Loong 2015). It is also hoped that it will eventually ‘encourage more Chinese to visit Malaysia, especially the exciting Movie Town that will be built in Melaka’ (Admiral, big budget 2015). A similar convergence of interests is to be found behind the Impression Melaka project produced by a Malaysian development company in cooperation with Guilin Guangwei Wenhua Tourism and Culture Company, the producer of the highly profitable Impression Liu Sanjie, a spectacular theatrical performance based on local legends and staged for several years in an open air theater in Yangshuo, Guangxi Province.35 Winning the

35 So far, the huge success of this tourist show has encouraged similar Impressions to be staged in eight other cities in China.

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support of both the Malaysian and Chinese governments,36 the developer is building the Impression City in Kota Laksamana.37 A part of this project is a special indoor theater for two thousand visitors where the Impression Melaka performance should be staged. Targeting both domestic and Chinese tourists, the storyline is written and directed by Zhang Yimou, widely acclaimed Chinese director, who was responsible for the original Impression Liu Sanjie. While some of his films stirred a controversy and were even banned by the PRC’ government (Yang 2016, 10) he became an ‘unofficial cultural ambassador of China’ (Albert 2018), eventually creating the choreography of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing (Keane 2010, 130), which has been interpreted as ‘an effort to project China’s national soft power’ (Wu 2018, 769). Impression Melaka should be based on the rich cultural ties between Malacca and China, focusing—among other things—on a legend according to which Zheng He came to Malacca to marry off a Chinese Princess, Hang Li Poh, to Sultan Mansur Shah.38 Aiming at 1.1 million visitors in the first year, the project should help to increase the number of tourists and turn Malacca into a popular tourist destination (Ho 2016).39 These efforts to attract visitors by commodifying the story of Zheng He’s voyages are again linked to nation-building activities and hopes of strengthening beneficial diplomatic relations. As such, they reflect the intricate complexity of intersecting interests converging in Malacca as a site of transnational societal spaces.

Conclusion The flexible use of history has recently become a hallmark of China’s cultural diplomacy in many parts of the world. The PRC is selectively mining history for examples of peaceful and harmonious cooperation

36 Xi Jinping chose to personally witness the signing of the agreement during his official visit to Malaysia in 2013 (Ho 2016). 37 See the official pages of the project at https://impression-city.com/. 38 For the promo of the performance see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqDCkr

v-rtA. 39 It is interesting to note chapter) economic interests role in their willingness to conspicuously absent in case

that while in Malaysia and Kazakhstan (see Vˇera Exnerová’s of the various transnational actors often play a substantial participate in China’s cultural diplomacy effort, they are of Berlin (see Jens Damm’s chapter in this volume).

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which could be seen as models to emulate and goals to strive for, trying to establish a common ground on which to build new and beneficial relations with neighboring countries. In the case of maritime Southeast Asia, these efforts are invariably connected with the early Ming voyages and their main protagonist, Admiral Zheng He. Portrayed as an intrepid explorer as well as an envoy of peace bringing the know-how of an advanced Chinese civilization, Zheng He is ideally poised to embody and convey the values the PRC wishes to propagate both internally and externally. Diverse aspects of Zheng He’s invented, multifaceted personality, stressing tolerance and peaceful relations, cultural exchange, and commercial development, have indeed found a receptive audience in the region. Various local actors, both state and non-state, seem eager to adopt the Zheng He narrative and promote it further for their own interests. We have seen that in the case of Malaysia the voyages coincide with a key event in its early history—the founding of the Sultanate of Malacca. Extolling Zheng He’s contribution to its rise as a Muslim regional power can therefore be seen as part of a wider effort to promote a national history narrative linking present-day Malaysia to the first Malay polity. By stressing the agency of the Chinese element in the process of establishing the nation-state, it is also possible to project alleged mutually beneficial relations deep into the past. Malaysia has readily adopted the message of friendly interchange and peaceful contacts, hoping for a deepening of the special relationship with China, which should bring economic cooperation and regional development. At the same time, the Zheng He narrative is apparently useful in aiding the nation-building process within multiethnic Malaysia, promoting cultural and ethnic diversity and the harmonious coexistence of various nationalities living side by side in mutual respect and tolerance of their respective cultures and religious beliefs. The chapter has also shown that the Zheng He narrative appears to be equally appealing to overseas Chinese long settled in the region. While the Malaysian government might be cautious about allowing the overall promotion of Chinese heritage, Zheng He’s voyages present a common ground which opens a new civic space in which they can assert their unique identity without jeopardizing their loyalty to the nation-state in which they live or operate. Moreover, stressing Zheng He’s agency in spreading Islam in maritime Southeast Asia and his role as the forefather of the Chinese diaspora improves the position of Chinese communities within a Malaysian society politically and culturally dominated by the Muslim Malay majority.

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The status of Chinese communities and their relation to the Malaysian government represent domestic structures which shape both the form and content of Chinese cultural diplomacy in the country. On the one hand, these structures delimit the range of cultural activities which can possibly be pursued under the circumstances dictated by the socio-political situation in Malaysia. On the other, the synergy of various local interests centered on Zheng He means that members of the overseas Chinese community are willing to adopt and further develop the original PRC narrative of peaceful exploration and cultural exchange. Even though it would be a mistake to perceive them simply as a tool employed by Chinese cultural diplomacy, their activities certainly account for an important factor contributing to the overall effort to promote a positive image of present-day China. In this sense, the existence of local Chinese communities presents a regional variation influencing the practice of Chinese cultural diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Focusing on selected sites of transnational societal spaces, with their lively interaction between various state and non-state actors, has provided us with a much clearer, if more complicated, picture of converging and overlapping interests and helped us to better understand the various factors shaping and influencing the practice of cultural diplomacy in a complex relationship in which the ethnic, social, and political conditions of the target country play an essential role. Revealing a peculiar role played by local Chinese communities in Malaysia and Singapore, as well as both the direct and indirect involvement of the Malaysian government in the promotion of the Zheng He narrative, this approach allows for a more balanced assessment of various activities connected with Chinese cultural diplomacy in the region.

References Abd Razak, Dato Dzulkifli. 2005. Admiral, Explorer, Diplomat. New Sunday Times, October 2. Admiral, Big-Budget Film Set to Shoot in Malacca. 2015. Star2.com. August 12. https://www.star2.com/entertainment/movies/movie-news/2015/08/ 12/admiral-big-budget-film-set-to-shoot-in-malacca/. Admiral—Movie Synopsis Overview. Times Production. http://www.timespl. com/en/coming-soon/item/226-admiral.

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Albert, Eleanor. 2018. China’s Big Bet on Soft Power. Council of Foreign Relations. February 9. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-big-betsoft-power. Chang, Peter T.C. 2018. Ethnic Chinese in Malaysia Are Celebrating China’s Rise—But as Multicultural Malaysians, Not Chinese. South China Morning Post, May 11. Chia, Lin Sien, and Sally K. Church. 2012. Zheng He and the Afro-Asian World. Melaka: PERZIM—International Zheng He Society. Chinese Envoy Must Apologise or Go Back to His Country, Utusan Says. 2015. Malay Mail Online. September 27. https://www.malaymail.com/s/977313/ chinese-envoy-must-apologise-or-go-back-to-his-country-utusan-says. Chinese Naval Servicemen Visit Zheng He Relics in Malaysia. 2012. PLA Daily, May 4. Cho, Il Hyun, and Seo-Hyun Park. 2013. The Rise of China and Varying Sentiments in Southeast Asia Toward Great Powers. Strategic Studies Quarterly 7: 69–92. Discovery of Zheng He’s Guan Chang in Melaka. International Zheng He Society. http://www.chengho.org/news/news8.1.php. Dreyer, Edward L. 2007. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty: 1405–1433. New York: Pearson Longman. Exnerova, Vera. 2017. Introducing Transnationalism Studies to the Field of Public Diplomacy. The Journal of International Communication 23: 186–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2017.1375419. Exnerova, Vera. 2018. Transnational Ties and Local Society’s Role in Improving the PRC’s Image in Central Asia. In China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact in Central Asia, ed. Marlene Laruelle, 126–134. Washington, DC: The George Washington University. FINAS Aims for Oscar with M’sia-Hong Kong Production. 2015. Cinema Online. August 10. http://www.cinema.com.my/Articles/news_details.aspx? search=2015.n_finasaimsforoscar_24899&title=FINAS-aims-for-Oscar-withM-sia-Hong-Kong-production#A5iEDJrExahwX4zJ.97. Full Text of Premier’s Speech at the 10th East Asia Summit. 2015. The State Council, the People’s Republic of China. http://english.gov.cn/premier/spe eches/2015/11/25/content_281475241888610.htm. Galeri Laksamana Cheng Ho. Perbadanan Muzium Negeri Melaka. http://www. perzim.gov.my/en/portfolio/galeri-laksamana-cheng-ho/. Hartig, Falk. 2016. How China Understands Public Diplomacy: The Importance of National Image for National Interests. International Studies Review 18: 655–680. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viw007. History. Muzium Budaya Cheng Ho. http://www.chengho.org/museum/web/ history.html.

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Ho, Wah Foon. 2016. Making an Impression in Malacca. The Star. December 18. Hong, Lysa, and Jianli Huang. 2009. Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)Lustre of Admiral Zheng He. South East Asia Research 17: 287–309. https://doi.org/10.5367/000000009788745822. d’Hooghe, Ingrid. 2007. The Rise of China’s Public Diplomacy. Clingendael Diplomacy Papers 12. Institute of International Relations Clingendael. https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20070700_ cdsp_paper_hooghe.pdf. Huang, Jianli. 2012. Heritage and History: The 600th Anniversary Commemoration of Zheng He Voyages in Singapore. In Zheng He and the Afro-Asian World, ed. Chia Lin Sien and Sally K. Church, 216–243. Malacca: Perbadanan Muzium Melaka (PERZIM)—International Zheng He Society. Hum, Sin Hoon. 2012. Zheng He’s Art of Collaboration. Understanding the Legendary Chinese Admiral from a Management Perspective. Singapore: International Zheng He Society—ISEAS. Ignatius, Dennis. 2018. Reset in Malaysia-China relations. https://dennisign atius.com/2018/05/16/reset-in-malaysia-china-relations/. Jia Qinglin Visits Malaysia’s Historical Malacca City. 2013. Xinhua. February 6. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/760566.shtml. Jiang, Tingting. 2015. Interview: Malacca Stands to Benefit from ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative. Xinhua. June 24. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-04/ 26/c_134185358.htm. Jinian Zheng He xia Xiyang 600 nian daxing huace ‘Zheng He shishi’ shoufa. 2005. China News. June 25. Keane, Michael. 2010. Keeping Up with the Neighbors: China’s Soft Power Ambitions. Cinema Journal 49: 130–135. Kuik, Cheng-Chwee. 2013. Making Sense of Malaysia’s China Policy: Asymmetry, Proximity, and Elite’s Domestic Authority. The Chinese Journal of International Politics 6: 429–467. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pot006. Le, Hong Hiep. 2018. New Wave of Chinese Assertiveness in the South China Sea? ISEAS—Yusof Ishak Institute. https://www.iseas.edu.sg/medias/com mentaries/item/7471-new-wave-of-chinese-assertiveness-in-the-south-chinasea-by-le-hong-hiep. Li Keqiang Visits Malacca, Indicating to Carry Forward China-Malaysia Peace and Friendship and Create a Future of Mutually Beneficial Cooperation. 2015. http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/lkqcxdyhz ldrxlhybdmlxyjxzsfw/t1318284.shtml. Li, Qinwei, and Jinping Cao. 2012. ‘Zheng He’ Training Ship’s Round-theWorld Navigation Boasts Four Features. PLA Daily. April 19. Li, Rongxia. 2005. Significance of Zheng He’s Voyages. Beijing Review. May 28.

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Suryadinata, Leo. 2005. Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies—International Zheng He Society. Tan, Ta Sen. 2005. Cheng Ho and Malacca. Singapore: Cheng Ho Cultural Museum—International Zheng He Society. Tan, Ta Sen. 2009. Cheng Ho and Islam in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Tan, Ta Sen. 2014. Cheng Ho and Malaya. Melaka: International Zheng He Society—Cheng Ho Cultural Museum. Thirumaran, K. 2007. The Politics of Tourism: Ethnic Chinese Spaces in Malaysia. In Tourism and Politics: Global Frameworks and Local Realities, ed. Peter M. Burns and Marina Novelli, 193–209. Oxford: Elsevier. Tourism Malaysia-Tencent Plan to Woo Chinese Visitors. 2018. MalayMail News. April 6. Wade, Geoff. 2005. The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 78: 37–58. Wain, Alexander. 2017. The Two Kronik Tionghua of Semarang and Cirebon: A Note on Provenance and Reliability. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 48: 179–195. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463417000030. Wang, Gungwu. 1992. Patterns of Chinese Migration in Historical Perspective. In China and the Chinese Overseas, ed. Wang Gungwu, 3–21. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Wang, Gungwu. 2005a. The Opening of Relations Between China and Malacca, 1403–1405. In Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia, ed. Leo Suryadinata, 1–25. Singapore: ISEAS—Yusof Ishak Institute. Wang, Gungwu. 2005b. The First Three Rulers of Malacca. In Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia, ed. Leo Suryadinata, 26–41. Singapore: ISEAS—Yusof Ishak Institute. Widodo, Johannes. 2008. Zheng He’s Visits and the Shaping of Cosmopolitan Cities in Southeast Asia—Melaka Case: Facts and Fiction. Academia. https:// www.academia.edu/8741000/Zheng_He_s_visits_and_the_shaping_of_cosm opolitan_cities_in_Southeast_Asia_-_Melaka_case_facts_and_fiction. Wong, Edward. 2014. Celebrating the Legacy of a Chinese Explorer. New York Times. December 18. Worden, Nigel. 2003. National Identity and Heritage Tourism in Melaka. Indonesia and the Malay World 31: 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/136 39810304447. Wu, You. 2018. The Rise of China with Cultural Soft Power in the Age of Globalization. Journal of Literature and Art Studies 8: 763–778. https:// doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2018.05.006. Yang, Yaling. 2016. Film Policy, the Chinese Government and Soft Power. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 14: 71–91. https://doi.org/ 10.1386/ncin.14.1.71_1.

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Yow, Cheun Hoe. 2016. The Chinese Diaspora in China-Malaysia Relations: Dynamics of and Changes in Multiple Transnational ‘Scapes.’ Journal of Contemporary China 25: 836–850. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564. 2016.1184896. Zhang, Xiaomin. 2012. Naval Training Ship Going Round the Globe. China Daily USA. April 17.

CHAPTER 6

Two Confucius Institutes and a Cross-Border University as Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Malaysia: The Limitations of ‘Domestic Structures’ Tomáš Petru˚

Introduction This chapter seeks to provide an analysis of the role of two Confucius Institutes (CI) and an overseas campus of a major Chinese university in Malaysia as primary transnational sites of China’s cultural diplomacy (CCD) in this Southeast Asian nation against the backdrop of the PRC’s economic and geopolitical rise in the past decade, accompanied by an intensive and multifaceted soft power campaign. In this chapter, I attempt to specifically look at the motifs, developments, and activities of major Chinese educational institutions in Malaysia during the latter part of the premiership of Najib Razak (approximately from 2015 until 2018), when the relationship between these countries arguably reached its historic

T. Petru˚ (B) Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_6

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peak, as a result of which it is frequently referred to as a ‘special’ relationship. The main reason I have chosen to inquire about the operations of two CIs and an overseas campus in Malaysia is twofold: Firstly, these institutions seem to be among the most visible and most focused projections of China’s proactive cultural diplomacy in the country during the studied time frame; secondly, the educational sector as a target of CCD in Malaysia has proven, according to my findings, to be a rather fertile field for such activities. On the other hand, other sectors usually targeted by cultural diplomacy in other countries, such as film or traditional arts festivals, are less dominant and the prevalent focus of CCD is rather on ‘shared histories’ or, more precisely, on the ‘flexible use of history’ as the preceding chapter by Jakub Hrubý demonstrates on the historic figure of Admiral Zheng He. This is the result of specific domestic structures— political, social, and ethno-religious ones—as will be explained below. The data used in this chapter are based on two dozen semi-structured interviews with leading Malaysian academicians and representatives from the Malaysian Chinese community conducted during our fieldwork1 in Malaysia in May 2016, ensuing correspondence with these personalities, online media reports and videos, and the available literature. Before I move on to the analysis of the development and activities of these institutions, it is worth explaining the circumstances surrounding China’s current rising interest in Malaysia, which encompasses a wide range of areas, including education, port facilities and other transportation infrastructure, the energy sector, and tourism. Despite its relatively small size, Malaysia is a major player and an emerging middle power2 not only in Southeast Asia but also within the whole East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region, which has been punching above its weight mainly due to its proactive diplomacy and visible engagement in regional and broader international affairs. It also represents one of China’s most important economic and geopolitical foreign partners. Due to its strategic position along the Straits of Melaka, one of the arteries

1 The fieldwork, which focused on interviewing representatives of Chinese Malaysian associations and academics, was conducted together with Jakub Hrubý, author of another chapter in this volume. 2 According to Ramasamy (2017), Malaysia can be identified as such not only because of its features, as explained by Eduard Jordaan’s theoretical framework of the emerging middle power (2003), but also because it fulfills the appropriate foreign policy behavioral patterns.

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of the PRC-promoted twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road project, Malaysia’s territory has proven to be valuable to Beijing as a vital gateway to the Indian Ocean (Custer et al. 2018, 28). The two countries boast a vibrant trading exchange, with China having been Malaysia’s biggest business partner globally since 2009 (Xinhua 2018), while Malaysia was China’s most important market in Southeast Asia from 2009 until May 2018.3 Furthermore, the Southeast Asian nation has a reputation as one of the friendliest countries toward China in the EAP (Custer et al. 2018, 28), and the mutual relations of entities preceding modern-day China and Malaysia boast a long history, dating back two millennia. They have seen ups and downs, though, including a period of amicable ties between the Sultanate of Malacca (1402–1511) and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), boosted by the expeditions of the Admiral-Eunuch Zheng He in the early fifteenth century (analyzed in Jakub Hrubý’s chapter in this volume), and a sharp drop in the early Cold War era, when Beijing supported a Communist uprising in Malaya. From 1974, when Malaysia became the first ASEAN country to acknowledge the Communist government of the PRC, their relationship began to flourish again. Arguably, their mutual ties have reached their historic peak during the 2010s and especially during the Najib Razak premiership (2009–May 2018).4 On the whole, China perceives Southeast Asia as a highly strategic region, which is of great importance for maintaining the security of China’s borders as well as securing robust economic relations (Percival 2007, 19; d’Hooghe 2014, 185–187), but it is Malaysia that has been receiving particular attention from China due to the aforementioned geostrategic interests. Given its location in the heart of Southeast Asia, it could also serve as a ‘conducive conduit for access to the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations’ (China.org 2019). In addition, Malaysia’s versatile workforce with its multilingual capability and multicultural exposure is also an asset for China to harness, especially in the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (ibid.).

3 From 2009 until May 2018, Malaysia was China’s number one trading partner in ASEAN but in 2018 it was surpassed by Vietnam (https://www.thejakartapost.com/sea sia/2018/07/27/vietnam-overtakes-malaysia-becomes-chinas-biggest-trading-partner-inasean-.html). 4 However, the 14th General Election in Malaysia in May 2018 triggered a political ‘tsunami’ on the domestic political scene, which also brought about a different paradigm— a ‘reset’—in Malaysia-China relations, which will be explained below.

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One of the Chinese strategies to ‘win the hearts and minds’ (Priyandita and Wijaya 2018) of Malaysians is to cultivate existing historic ties and offer a vision of a mutually beneficial partnership based on shared interests (Shambaugh 2013, 95–105; Suryadinata 2017). In order to reach out to important foreign partners including Malaysia, China has been exerting intensive efforts to increase its credibility and improve its reputation. It may be argued that China has been attempting to increase its soft power in world politics by operating in a multifaceted manner in a number of individual countries. The use of soft power is an age-old method to bolster a country’s reputation and, also, to convince others to want (and do) what the country wants, primarily by appeal and attraction. In other words, it is the power to cause emulation (Ingram, n.d.). For instance, the existing appeal of French, which became the primary language of (European) diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even became a court language among the ruling aristocracy of Prussia and Russia, was used by the French government after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War to repair the nation’s shattered prestige. This was achieved precisely by promoting the country’s language and literature through the Alliance française, established in 1883 (Nye 2004, 2). Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who is usually referred to as the first political scientist to conceptualize this phenomenon, defined his ideas in the book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, where he opined: ‘when one country gets other countries to want what it wants-might be called co-optive or soft power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants’ (Nye 1990, 153–170). While China has been using hard power, i.e., more coercive means, to gain influence, including the deployment of their naval fleets and the construction of artificial islands in disputed waters of the South China Sea on a large scale (Stashwick 2019), China’s use of soft power is just as important, since China also wants to engage its partners by enhancing and spreading its positive image, via means which underline its attractiveness. In addition, China is well aware of the significance of one’s image in state affairs—nation-branding in today’s political jargon—and does not wish to be misjudged by others internationally (d’Hooghe 2014, 2). In line with that, in 2014 President Xi announced the following ambition and objective: ‘We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s messages to the world’ (Biswas and Tortajada 2018). It is also worth noting that the official Chinese

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understanding of the soft power concept is also somewhat broader, as it encompasses—in addition to culture and values—various economic tools such as development aid and investments, or membership of multilateral organizations (Kurlantzik 2007, 6; Lai and Lu 2012). As a result, China exploits a wide array of soft power tools to charm its partners. This phenomenon has been given much attention and been elaborated upon by a number of authors, such as Joshua Kurlantzick, who proposed the idea of China’s ‘charm offensive’ (2007), or J. F. Paradise (2009), who analyzed the role of Confucius Institutes in bolstering China’s influence, to name but a few. And it is actually the network of CIs which draws on the activities of the aforementioned Alliance Francaise and its counterparts such as the British Council and Instituto Cervantes in order to enhance China’s influence—by the power to attract and inspire. Public diplomacy is an essential tool of soft power. The authors of a report on China’s diplomatic activities in the East Asia-Pacific region entitled Ties That Bind, published in 2018, distinguish five categories of (China’s) public diplomacy: informational diplomacy and cultural diplomacy are defined as push/one-way strategies; while exchange diplomacy, financial diplomacy, and elite-to-elite diplomacy are understood as pushand-pull/two-way interaction strategies (Custer et al. 2018, 3). It is evident that the workings of CIs and other educational institutions fall into the ‘category’ of cultural diplomacy. Therefore, it is noteworthy that despite Beijing’s recognition of soft power strategies such as cultural diplomacy, as an invaluable instrument of its ‘charm offensive,’ until the late 2000s China was not extremely active in this field in Malaysia, at least not in the sense that it has been in Europe.

The Impact of Domestic Structures Let me therefore attempt to clarify the factors affecting the political development in Malaysia in the late 2010s, affecting the current state of mutual China-Malaysia relations. In the first place, Malaysia is home to the second largest Chinese diaspora in the world (after Thailand), comprising almost seven million people. Accounting for 22.6% of the Malaysian population, Chinese Malaysians are the second most numerous ethnic group in the country (Sawe 2019). Since Malaysia has never imposed a policy of assimilation, first-time visitors to this Southeast Asian country may be struck by how successfully the Chinese population has preserved its identity here—in contrast to those in Thailand or Indonesia (Kent 2005),

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which did so only to a degree. As a result of multigenerational coexistence with this culturally vibrant community, other Malaysians have become well acquainted with many features of Chinese culture—from the Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn festivals to music and dragon dance, cuisine, religion, architecture, martial arts, and commercial practices. Due to this everyday familiarity with signature elements of Chinese civilization, there is arguably no special need for ‘introductory’ cultural diplomatic activities on the side of the PRC in Malaysia, seen in other parts of the world, as the ‘groundwork’ has been done by generations of Malaysians of Chinese origin (EIAS 2017, 8). Secondly, up until May 2018, Malaysian elites—notably Najib’s inner circle—were implementing, whether knowingly or not, what may be referred to as elite-to-elite diplomacy (Custer et al. 2018, 3). Being on very good terms, they and their Chinese counterparts would often underline their friendly ties by dubbing them a ‘special relationship’ (Tiezzi 2015). Generally, the intensive relations between the Malaysian former long-time ruling party UMNO5 and the Communist Party of China resulted in a form of party-based diplomacy, which has been developing since 1980s and intensified in the mid-1990s (Ngeow 2017, 58–61). This kind of cooperation also led intergovernmental ties to be elevated to a strategic and, later, to a comprehensive strategic partnership (2013). This is another reason why the PRC leadership did not feel a palpable need to launch a massive campaign of cultural diplomacy for a long time. Good elite-to-elite ties have, until recently, overlapped and been interconnected with financial diplomacy, and it is a well-known fact that Malaysian leaders have been intensively (and often far too personally) involved in robust economic collaboration with the PRC.

5 United Malays National Organization is now the main opposition party in Malaysia, but it was the country’s ruling party from 1955 (still under the British rule, which ended in 1957) until May 2018.

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Endorsement of Problematic Chinese Projects---Political End of Najib and the ‘Special’ Relationship However, this ‘financial’ cooperation was far from purely financial—and, indeed, far from pure. During the latter years of Najib’s government— that is, in 2015–2018—when economic collaboration between China and Malaysia intensified, rumors about financial ‘injections’ from Chinese state companies involved in BRI projects in Malaysia to the country’s top leaders were leaking abundantly but lacked evidence. However, according to minutes from a series of previously undisclosed meetings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, published in January 2019, senior Chinese leaders offered in 2016 to help bail out a Malaysian government fund at the center of a swelling, multibillion-dollar graft scandal, known as the 1MDB6 scandal, in which Prime Minister Najib Razak was personally involved. According to these documents, ‘inflated price-tags were to guarantee above-market profitability for PRC state-owned companies’ linked to the projects (Wright and Hope 2019). A part of these extra-high margins was then used to finance the scandal-ridden politicians in order to make them endorse projects such as the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL). As summed up by Sinopsis.cz, although the projects (and their financing) were ‘political in nature’—to shore up Najib’s government, settle 1MDB debts, and strengthen Chinese influence in Malaysia—it was imperative that the public see them as market driven (Hála and Jichang Lulu 2019). This model of combining low-intensity cultural diplomacy and tight economic-political cooperation, typical of Malaysia-China relations in the past decade under the Najib administration, ended practically overnight in 2018 when Najib’s long-term ruling coalition Barisan Nasional 7 lost the 14th General Election on May 9. What undermined Najib’s position and led to his political fall was a confluence of factors, which also determined Mahathir’s political manifesto in the run-up to the elections: his financial scandals, some of which were related to Chinese investments, the

6 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) is an insolvent Malaysian state-owned strategic development company. It has been under heavy scrutiny since 2015 for its highly suspicious financial transactions including embezzlement, fraud, and money laundering. Some of them have pointed to the former Prime Minister Najib, who is now facing prosecution on 42 charges in the historically biggest trial in Malaysian history. 7 ‘The National Front’ in Malay.

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previous government’s endorsement of the sale of national strategic assets to China, and the assignment of expensive contracts to Chinese companies, which further increased the country’s towering foreign debt. The issue of China’s growing influence in the country thus became a highly contentious matter during the campaign, a key factor in the vote against Najib (Hrubý and Petru˚ 2019, 122), and a strong weapon for the victorious Mahathir. Therefore, it came as no surprise that the new government of the (formerly oppositional) Pakatan Harapan 8 coalition opted for a different approach, aiming to streamline problematic Chinese investments and curb Najib-style corruption. At the time of writing, former PM Najib is facing a 12-year jail sentence after he was found guilty on all seven corruption charges brought against him in July 2020, which are related to the 1MDB scandal and some of the controversial Chinese investments (CNN 2020).

A New Approach to China Under Mahathir Generally speaking, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has proven to be one of the few Southeast Asian leaders in power today to acquire a reputation as a critic of excessive Chinese involvement in the region, be it economic, political, or geostrategic. While he has always been a great admirer of China’s economic and technological achievements, he now seeks to secure fairer and more equal treatment from China. During his first visit to China as reelected Malaysian PM in August 2018, he even warned of a new version of (Chinese) colonialism and added that ‘we (Malaysia) gain nothing’ from Chinese investments (Bloomberg News 2018). The Mahathir government’s political shift of 2018 led to temporary uncertainties, mainly in Beijing—for example, regarding the fate of some of the criticized Chinese projects in the spring of 2019. There was oscillation on the Malaysian side between the options of scrapping these projects completely (as in the case of the overpriced ECRL), reframing them, or giving them a green light. However, in spite of this, friendly cooperation between the two governments continues and the two economies remain tightly interconnected, while the Malaysian side has simply been trying to secure better terms. As of the time of writing,

8 ‘The Coalition of Hope’ in Malay.

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the situation is that the ECRL project has been resumed after a yearlong suspension and following a rare agreement to cut its cost by nearly a third to about 11 billion USD (RM45 billion, Channel News Asia 2019). So, Mahathir’s temporarily tough approach toward China has paid off, since Malaysia has been offered better deals while economic exchange continues on a massive scale, with China trying hard to appease Malaysia’s leaders and allay fears that it aims to gain control over Malaysia’s strategic economic assets. However, although it is evident that the previous pattern of cooperation between China and Malaysia during the last years of Razak’s era (2015–2018) revolved around government-to-government ties and generous ‘financial diplomacy,’ amounting to corruption in some cases, this is not to say that Chinese cultural diplomacy was completely nonexistent in Malaysia during the rule of previous cabinets. While it is difficult to enlist all existing forms of cultural diplomacy, there are arguably three main areas in which China traditionally attempts to burnish its image: Cultural Festivals, Cultural Centers, and Confucius Institutes. However, for the reasons explained above, in Malaysia numerous Cultural Festivals and Cultural Centers tend to be organized by associations of the various Malaysian Chinese communities, be they Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, or Hainanese, so they have not been regularly used as tools of stateorganized Chinese propaganda. However, the Confucius Institutes, two of which are based in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur, remain an important pillar of China’s cultural diplomacy in Malaysia. The CIs are sometimes likened to language- and culture-promoting organizations such as the Goethe-Institut or the British Council (Xin 2019, 1–2). They constitute a network of institutes, usually set up in collaboration with a Chinese university and a partner institution in the recipient country, whose official mission is to promote the understanding of Chinese language and culture, as well as develop friendly relations between China and other countries. However, in contrast to the European initiatives, CIs are not independent as they are affiliated with ‘Hanban’ (Guojia Hanyu guoji tuiguang lingdao xiaozu bangongshi; Office of Chinese Language Council International), which is directed by the Chinese Ministry of Education, which is in turn directed by the propaganda apparatus of the Communist Party of China. Importantly, the educational segment of cultural diplomacy has recently been boosted by yet another increasingly influential educational phenomenon—that of tertiary education, which will also be elaborated upon below.

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To sum up, the existence of a large, economically robust, and culturally active Chinese community and the exceedingly friendly relationship between Malaysian and Chinese leaders (until 2018) represent two sets of vital ‘domestic structures,’ which have provided an essential framework for their bilateral relations and have partially shaped them, creating somewhat limiting circumstances, but also bringing opportunities as Najib and his circle warmly welcomed various Chinese projects and activities, thus personally and structurally impacting China’s activities in Malaysia.

Education as the Essential Tool of China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Malaysia Due to the aforementioned factors and limitations, the educational sector has become the most visible and efficient field for the implementation of China’s cultural diplomacy in Malaysia. However, this is only a fairly recent matter and a new trend within the framework of China-Malaysia ties, which started in the late 2000s. The specific situation in Malaysia in relation to China’s cultural diplomacy may be best documented with the example of the Kong Zi (Confucius) Institute in Kuala Lumpur. According to Emile Yeoh, an associate professor at the University of Malaya (Yeoh and Mei 26, 2016), the Malaysian side was not initially interested in having such an institute established. He hinted that the reason for this was the existence of more than sixty Chinese schools across Malaysia, ranging from elementary schools to tertiary non-universitytype colleges, which provided, among other things, courses in Mandarin Chinese (putonghua) both to members of various Chinese communities and to non-Chinese Malaysians (mostly ethnic Malays). The Malaysian side also insisted that its name be Kong Zi Institute and not Confucius Institute because the name of Confucius allegedly evokes the religious subtext of Confucianism (although Confucianism is not a typical religion, but rather an ethical-administrative doctrine) and, according to some interpretations, too starkly underlines the veneration of Confucius as a religious idol, which is unacceptable for the Muslim majority in Malaysia, where Islam is the official religion. These circumstances explain why the negotiations concerning the establishment of the Institute at one of the most prominent Malaysian universities, the University of Malaya, took as long as five years.

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Once these issues had been settled, the Kong Zi Institute was coestablished by Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) and the University of Malaya at the UM campus. The official inauguration took place on November 1, 2009, with the Institute officially launched by the Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Li Keqiang. Li Keqiang regarded the opening of the first Kong Zi Institute established in Malaysia as another achievement of cultural and educational exchange between China and Malaysia (KZIUM, n.d.). We may therefore assume that China attributed great significance to the opening of the first CI in Malaysia, which was indicated not only by its willingness to agree to a name change but also by the fact that the launching ceremony was attended by China’s third highest representative. The Institute is located on the main campus of the University of Malaya, in a separate, specially designated building which occupies an area of 1415 m2 . It is a multifunctional venue integrating administrative sections, Chinese language instruction classrooms, a library, and space for exhibitions (ibid.). At the time of the fieldwork in Malaysia in May 2016, the Chinese Director9 of the Kong Zi Institute at the University of Malaya (KZIUM) was Chen Zhong,10 under whose leadership the Institute was expanding its activities and scope of operations beyond the boundaries of the capital city. The activities on offer have primarily targeted the majority Malay population, most of whom are familiar with Chinese culture as a result of the multicultural nature of Malaysian society and its wider cultural heritage, but do not speak Chinese and are interested in learning the language for various reasons, including business ambitions, career, travel, study, or friendship. The Institute also takes into consideration the Malaysian Chinese community, whose members often do not speak proper Mandarin Chinese as their mother tongue is one of the Southern dialects, which differ considerably (in spoken form) both from Mandarin Chinese and from each other.

9 Each branch of the Confucius Institute around the globe has two directors—a Chinese one, sent by the organizing institution, the Hanban, and a local director, who is a citizen of the host country. 10 It might be noteworthy that Chen Zhong is now the Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at the Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech republic, and that before his Malaysian posting, he had also served in Germany.

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While the main venue of language instruction and cultural activities is the building of the Kong Zi Institute within the campus of the University of Malaya, the KZIUM also operates outside the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. According to the information provided by the Institute’s Director, at the time of the interview, there were 28 certified language teachers, provided by the KZIUM, working at 11 public/state universities outside the capital, usually in the most prominent university of each state in Peninsular Malaysia.11 The fact that KZIUM-sponsored tutors teach outside Kuala Lumpur does not mean that the KZIUM runs regional branches, however. Rather, these courses serve to enhance local offers of Chinese language instruction—but still under the auspices of the Institute. In addition to regular courses, organized on a weekly basis—usually 120 minutes twice a week, including general Chinese courses as well as Business Mandarin courses aimed at students of University of Malaya and, generally, residents of Kuala Lumpur—the KZIUM also cooperates with a number of institutions in the field of Chinese Studies. One such program was the Smart Partnership Mandarin Authentic Learning Program, held at the KZIUM in conjunction with Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) for 24 students who came to Kuala Lumpur for a special seminar and consultations, which included mentorship of East Asian Studies program students from UM (Cheng 2017). We were also informed that the number of participants in the language courses was increasing at the time of our stay in Malaysia, for reasons ranging from the growing popularity of Chinese (linked to the rise of China as well as the students’ interest in Chinese culture) to the positive reputation of the Kong Zi Institute and information-sharing among peers via social media. In addition to language tuition, the Kong Zi Institute at UM also provides a range of courses including those in Chinese calligraphy, Chinese painting, the game known as go (or weiqi), and the Chinese zither qin. Equally popular are Mandarin singing contests. While attendance at these courses and participation in such contests were relatively low until recently, their popularity is now growing every year. The Chinese Lantern Festival decoration contest, held to commemorate the Mid-Autumn Festival, attracted as many as 300 participants. From 2016, the Kong Zi Institute at the University of Malaya also started to more intensively organize activities with a higher social prestige

11 Interview with the Director of the KZIUM, May 20, 2016.

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and academic impact. One such event was the International Conference on Teaching Mandarin as a Second Language in Malaysia, held on November 4–5, 2016, on its premises, the working language of which was actually Mandarin. Another similar event was the 1st Seminar on Chinese Language Teaching for Malaysian International Schools, co-organized on November 4–5, 2017, by the Kong Zi Institute at UM and the Confucius Institute of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, which was attended by four Chinese teaching experts from Singapore and 137 teachers from 28 local international schools and 30 Chinese teaching organizations (Kongzi Institute UM Facebook 2017). On a practical level, in addition to general language courses, the Institute organizes special Mandarin courses for civil servants, the police force, and managers of big companies such as Maybank and Petronas. This fact demonstrates the attraction of Mandarin within the Malaysian state and within the social and economic elites, whose institutions and organizations are intensifying their operations in China. They include banks, large trading companies, and even Islamic institutions, as Islam represents another channel of increasing collaboration since Malaysia, as a state with highly institutionalized religious structures, has much to offer to China’s large Muslim minority in terms of providing instruction and guidance about religious practices, Islamic banking, and halal certification (Ngeow 2017b). The profits raised from language tuition are then, according to the Institute’s Director, used to fund ‘more fun’ activities such as the aforementioned Lantern Festival, weiqi contests, and prizes for their winners, which include trips to China.12 The other Confucius Institute (this one was allowed to keep the original English name—a reflection of the Najib administration’s openness to China’s activities) in Malaysia was established at the Kota Damansara campus of SEGi University, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, in 2014 in collaboration with Hainan Normal University as its Chinese partner. The unique feature of this CI is that it was the first institute set up in the framework of collaboration between a private university in Malaysia and a local university in China (SEGi University 2016). The lecturers at the Confucius Institute at SEGi University are selected by Hainan Normal University to teach Mandarin, promote cultural activities, and organize students under the Confucius Institute scholarship. The CI activities

12 Interview with the Director of the KZIUM, May 20, 2016.

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include events such as the China Cultural Summer Camp Programme 2016, which receives sponsorship assistance from the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia and is aimed at giving Malaysian students an opportunity to experience Chinese culture on Hainan Island, where the partner university is situated. Another activity was the Training Program of Local Preschool Chinese Teachers, organized in May 2017 with support from the Confucius Institute, SEGi University, Hanban, and Hainan Normal University. These and related activities may be regarded as a form of ‘exchange diplomacy,’ also frequently employed by China as part of its wider public diplomacy campaign, which is evidenced by the participation of the PRC’s diplomatic mission in Malaysia. While the main mission of the CI at SEGi University is, like that of other CIs around the world, to implement China’s cultural diplomacy through language instruction and culture-related courses, contests, and events, the SEGi Confucius Institute has also embarked on the promotion of the China-sponsored Belt and Road Initiative—for instance, by organizing student excursions such as Trailing the Belt and Road Once Taken: A Trip to the UNESCO World Heritage City of Malacca, which was to highlight the shared historical links between Malaysia and China, habitually used as a precedent for ongoing infrastructure development projects such as the construction or enlargement of deep-sea ports. We may therefore conclude that cultural diplomacy, embodied by the Confucius Institutes, does sometimes serve to smooth the way for China’s grand development schemes.

Tertiary Education---Another Efficient Tool of China’s Public Diplomacy One of the most important findings gleaned from the fieldwork conducted in May 2016 in Peninsular Malaysia was that—in addition to the two existing Confucius Institutes, relatively small institutions but significant players in China’s cultural diplomacy in terms of impact and social relevance—tertiary education has become a major actor within the education sector. During three weeks of interviews in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Melaka in May 2016, it was disclosed to us as still-hot news that a brand new and impressive campus of a renowned Chinese university had just opened outside Kuala Lumpur. All the informants who, independent of each other, had shared this piece of information, perceived it as something sensational and groundbreaking, both within China-Malaysia

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relations and among the Malaysian Chinese community, where there was a lot of excited talk concerning the prestigious new school. As a matter of fact, the new Chinese university which our interviewees13 had in mind is a flagship of China-linked tertiary education since the talk was about the new Malaysian campus of Xiamen University (XMU). It was officially opened in Sepang (Salak Tinggi) in the state of Selangor on February 22, 2016, for 187 pioneer students. The opening of a large branch of a prestigious Chinese university in Malaysia represents a major historical milestone both within the Malaysian education sector and in Malaysian-Chinese relations, which is also evidenced by the fact that the opening ceremony was attended by Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to China. ‘China has not allowed and does not simply let its universities be set up overseas as they strictly maintain the institution’s quality,’ he was quoted as saying in his speech on the first day of classes at the university, adding ‘it is a privilege to have this institution set up in the country’ (The Star 2016). It is a well-known fact that Malaysia is a major regional educational hub, boasting highquality domestic and international universities and colleges and attracting tens of thousands of foreign students—mainly from neighboring Southeast Asian countries, but also from Iran and other Middle Eastern and African countries.14 However, Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM) not only represents ‘another big school’ but also the first university branch in Malaysia to have been set up by the rising Asian superpower. The significance attributed to the establishment of the campus by both parties is evidenced by the fact that the agreement between China Development Bank (as investor), Malaysia Sunsuria Group (as developer), and Xiamen University to build the branch campus in Malaysia was signed on October 4, 2013, in the presence of Xi Jinping, President of China, and Malaysian PM Najib. The Malaysian leader also personally attended the groundbreaking ceremony in Salak Tinggi on July 3, 2014. The ensuing construction has a total floor area of 470,000 m2 and the total investment

13 Namely representatives of the Malaysian Chinese Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur, a research center set up and funded by prominent Malaysian Chinese associations, professors of the University of Malaya (UM), some of whom were also researchers at the Institute of China Studies at UM, and several independent professionals. 14 As of 2017, Malaysia had 170 international schools with more than 71,000 students, not counting the domestic public and private universities and colleges with thousands of students from overseas (New Straits Times 2017).

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is about 310,000,000 USD. So far 13 buildings have been constructed (Maelzer 2016). It is also worth noting that the mother university XMU is directly administered by the Chinese Ministry of Education, so its Malaysian offshoot may be considered as an actor linked to official governmental circles of the PRC. XMU is highly rated nationally for subjects including journalism, chemistry, and economics (Times Higher Education, n.d.). The presence of Xiamen University in Malaysia is also historic as it is only the second Chinese campus abroad.15 The first, Soochow University Laos, was set up in 2011, but its campus is far more modest and does not attract quite as much attention as XMUM. Nonetheless, given the intensity of Chinese support for this form of cultural diplomacy and the media coverage XMUM has been given both in China and in the host country, it may be assumed that this is the beginning of a new trend and that more overseas campuses of top Chinese universities are to follow. The campus of Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM) is exceptional in many respects. In terms of size, it is the largest among the ten international branch university campuses in Malaysia (Jie 2018, 9). Its spacious and well-thought-out central complex consists of lecture halls and cabinets, dormitories, gyms, shops, and restaurants. Even a hi-tech media studio was built on the 60-hectare site as part of the brand new township of Sunsuria, boasting the status of a ‘smart city.’ The campus is situated in a ‘strategic’ location in Salak Tinggi near the administrative capital of Putrajaya, well connected to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and the center of Kuala Lumpur by Express Rail Line (ERL). Finally, the development has received considerable publicity from Malaysian leaders and journalists, as well as Chinese media outlets such as CCTV. The choice of Malaysia as a location for the first overseas campus of a renowned Chinese university reflects the ‘special’ relationship between the two countries, China’s awareness of Malaysia’s economic potential and strategic role within the BRI and the two countries’ mutual economic interconnectedness, and the existence of a vast transnational network, described above. Another reason for its selection is that Malaysia, as has been mentioned above, is a renowned international educational hub of the Asia-Pacific which attracts a high number of overseas students, who 15 Some Chinese sources overlook the existence of the Soochow University branch in Laos and celebrate XMUM as the very first overseas Chinese university campus, e.g., CCTV.

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by paying high tuition fees contribute considerably to Malaysia’s GDP. That is why the Government of Malaysia views education not only as one of the core catalysts for the country’s development but also as an important segment of the Malaysian economy. As a matter of fact, since 1990 Malaysia has been implementing a strategic plan called ‘the International Education Base of Asia,’ which was launched during the first Mahathir era of the 1990s when Malaysia strove to transform itself from a raw-materialexporting economy into a more sophisticated one, and education was seen as one of the new pathways that could help it to achieve this (Jie 2018, 9– 10). Accordingly, Mahathir’s government invited three Australian and six British universities to establish branch campuses across Malaysia. As these universities have rather high tuition fees (over 10,000 USD per year) and inexpensive national public universities have quotas for ethnic Malays and other Bumiputera 16 students, thus creating a barrier for non-Bumiputera, the existence of a new, high-quality yet affordable university (with fees not exceeding 6000 USD per year) in Malaysia was highly welcome on the domestic side—particularly in Malaysian Chinese circles. It also gives the Malaysian branch of Xiamen University an advantage in the otherwise highly competitive educational market in Malaysia. Rumors claiming the profit from the fees would be funneled back to China were denied by the XMU President Zhu, who gave assurances that surplus funds would be invested in the development of the XMUM campus (Zhao 2017). However, XMUM is attractive to not only Malaysian students of Chinese descent but also to students from the PRC, because, according to Guo Jie, all the Chinese students enrolled at XMUM actually are gaokao yibensheng (top-level students of the national entrance examination of China). According to local education experts, it is the first time in history that Malaysia has attracted this number of yibensheng from China, whose overseas study plans usually include only the United States, Britain, Australia, and other Western countries (Jie 2018, 9). It is also worth noting that this newly opened university is actually a branch of an institution which has strong historical links to Malaysia, as it was founded in 1921 by the philanthropist Tan Kah Kee (Chen Jiageng),

16 Bumiputera is an ethno-political category in Malaysia, which includes ethnic Malays and indigenous peoples of West and East Malaysia (Orang Asal ), and was coined in 1970 to appease racial tensions and reduce poverty among the Malays and other Bumiputera through acts of affirmative action in the form of quotas in universities, public services, and state companies, cf. Petru˚ (2017).

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a wealthy Chinese businessman, who had started his enterprises and made a fortune in what was then British Malaya, and continued to support the university until his death in 1961. As such, XMU was also the first university in China to have been established by an ‘overseas’ Chinese. This also explains the close ties the Chinese ‘mother’ university has had with University of Malaya and other significant institutions in Malaysia—for instance, the celebration of the ninetieth anniversary of Xiamen University was attended by representatives of Malaysian Chinese associations. By building the Malaysian campus, Xiamen University has also declared, in XMU President’s words, its wish to ‘repay a debt of gratitude to its founder, the late rubber magnate Tan Kah Kee, and to continue with his efforts to promote education’ (Yang and Deng 2018). The importance the mother university attributes to its operation in Malaysia can also be discerned in the fact that in 2016 XMU specially chartered a Xiamen Airlines plane to fly its 440 students from 14 provinces to Kuala Lumpur as the second batch to study at the Malaysian branch. As has been hinted above, all these new ‘arrivals’ scored top marks in China’s university entry exams and intentionally chose to be part of this pioneering educational venture (Maelzer 2016). Xiamen University Malaysia offers a wide range of programs, including English Studies, Journalism, International Business, Accounting, Digital Media Technologies, and Engineering, as well as innovative courses such as New Energy Science, and also two programs in Chinese, namely Chinese Studies and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The motives behind the establishment of such a top-quality and yet inexpensive Chinese university in Malaysia may be wide ranging, from an attempt to repay Malaysia for Tan Kah Kee’s generous gift by creating a cosmopolitan campus in which students from China, Chinese Malaysians, and non-Chinese students will share their cultural experiences and learn from each other, to spreading China’s values and influence in a strategically important country in Southeast Asia, which is also mostly welcoming, showing support and allegiance. Some of the ChineseMalaysian respondents suspected that this institution might be exploited as a tool of the state, given that the mother Xiamen University is under the direct supervision of the PRC’s Ministry of Education. As interviews with newly arrived students at the XMUM campus, presented on CCTV, revealed, these freshmen thought of themselves as envoys of a newly rising, peaceful China but also as representatives of the Belt and Road Initiative (CCTV 2016). It is impossible to know to what extent these

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young envoys really believed or understood what they were saying, but their manner and confidence hint that they had been carefully selected and well honed for this ‘mission.’ It may be concluded at this point that the motivation behind the establishment of XMUM probably derives from a combination of all the aforementioned factors. So, while the university branch might not have been set up primarily as a tool of a state-driven campaign of cultural diplomacy—unlike the Confucius Institutes, which are classical embodiments of it—the Xiamen University Malaysia does have strong impact in terms of cultural diplomacy, which is sometimes the by-product of such initiatives. Two years on, according to high-profile Chinese media, Xiamen University’s Malaysian campus serves as ‘a shining example for other Chinese institutions to go global’ (Yang and Deng 2018). At the same time, its existence has drawn some reservations from members of the Malaysian Chinese community, who expressed concerns that this institution will draw students from colleges and schools set up by them. This concern was downplayed by the University’s President, who was quoted as saying that XMUM is supposed to complement the existing system of Chinese language education, not to compete with it, while being highly committed to providing the best possible conditions for top talents. Successful models are often copied, and other countries in the region have started attempting to emulate Malaysia’s approach. Soon after the opening of the XMUM campus, Thailand invited Yunnan University of Finance and Economics to found Bangkok Business School in cooperation with Rangsit University in 2016 (Jie 2018, 9). Establishing new branches of Chinese universities overseas is thus both a result of local interest and the grand plan of China’s leadership to make their tertiary schools ‘go global,’ which is gradually becoming a reality. Epistemologically, there has been an important shift in scholarship studying the intended impact of various activities of public diplomacy. According to Sharp (2005) and Exnerova (2017), it is accepted by a number of scholars that while the main focus in the study of public diplomacy was previously on researching governmental efforts to influence foreign publics, currently scholars tend to analyze ‘the process by which direct relations with people in a country are pursued to advance the interests and extend the values of those being represented’ (Sharp 2005, 106). In other words, the ‘society-dominated’ focus is formulated in opposition to previous ‘state-centered’ research. Therefore, in line

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with Exnerova’s argument on ‘transnational societal spaces,’ large overseas campuses of renowned Chinese (or other, for that matter) universities precisely fit into this paradigm, where the interaction of mainland Chinese with Malaysian Chinese and other Malaysians creates a unique transnational space for cultural diplomacy, which may be originally state initiated but takes on its own individual society-dominated course, molded by the local environment, to which a number of influential individuals—representing all of the parties and their networks—contribute to facilitate a highly interesting exchange. In turn, this impacts not only the recipient society (here primarily Malaysian students), but also Chinese students and the international—but mostly Chinese—teaching staff. While the two Confucius Institutes and the branch of Xiamen University in Selangor may be similarly important and complementary to each other as tools for spreading China’s soft power, the XMUM campus is arguably more unique and illustrates the high level of attention China is paying to Malaysia as a partner country. In other words, while the two CIs are just a fraction among more than five hundred other Confucius Institutes the world over, the Xiamen University Malaysia Campus is only the second overseas campus of a Chinese university (after the Soochow University branch in Laos) and the first of a renowned and highly prestigious school to have been set up outside China. The choice of Malaysia as its location is, therefore, by no means incidental. Nonetheless, the XMUC fits well into the educational market of the Chinese Malaysians. Its future operation will greatly depend on the relationship between governments (Jie 2018, 10). Despite the aforementioned recent political changes, the new Mahathir government is supportive of such ventures/initiatives (unlike overpriced railroads, for instance).

The Role of Chinese Diplomats in Chinese Education in Malaysia In addition to the newly tapped field of university education as a site of China’s cultural diplomacy, another crossroad of interaction between Chinese official circles and Malaysian society is embodied in the so-called Chinese independent high schools, which are private schools providing tuition in Chinese and, on a smaller scale, in English (in the state of Sabah), and not in the national language, i.e., Malay. These schools are not funded by the Malaysian government but operate on fees and subsidies from Chinese associations in Malaysia. There are 61 of them across

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the country, including 23 in East Malaysia, and they have been serving the needs of Chinese-Malaysian communities since 1957. The then Ambassador of China, Huang Huikang, visited several of these schools during his term in Malaysia, which lasted from 2014 until late 2017, and initiated a collaboration between their coordinating body, the Dong Zong,17 the government of the PRC, Chinese national agencies, and the embassy itself, with the prospect of increasing Chinese support for these schools education of Malaysian Chinese. Apart from independent Chinese high schools, the embassy also gave support to ten Chinese primary schools and one high school in the Raub district (The Star 2017) in Pahang, to which ambassador Huang dedicated 50,000 USD. The individual schools received from 3000 USD to 12,500 USD, depending on their current state and most pressing needs. On a previous occasion, during a visit to the Paloh district in the state of Johor, the ambassador, accompanied by three members of the Malaysian parliament, handed over a check worth 10,000 USD to a local school there. With this gesture, Huang was fulfilling his mission of supporting Chinese education, although it may be questioned how much this effort reflected his personal ambition as a Chinese patriot and how much he was simply complying with official Chinese policies as China’s supreme representative in Malaysia. Nevertheless, during the three and a half years of his ambassadorship, he befriended many Chinese-Malaysian associations, which hailed this support. Less positive voices have suggested that with this ‘meddling’ China is indirectly showing that the so-called nationaltype Chinese schools, which only secure partial state support, are actually discriminated against by the Malaysian state, and that is why it is necessary to help them. Some media and commentators have even argued that Huang’s donation constituted ‘a slap in the face’ to then incumbent Prime Minister Najib Razak (now arrested and prosecuted on grounds of corruption) and his then ruling party UMNO, which, as is well known, boasts cordial ties with China’s leadership. Neither was it conducive to the political interests of the then Minister of Defense Hishammuddin Hussein, present at the ceremony, who was also a Member of Parliament for that district. The analyst Tang Ah Chai even concludes that the steps of then ambassador Huang were (meant) to be perceived as a ‘challenge’ to the Malaysian

17 For more information on the Dong Zong, see Dong Zong (2017).

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government expressing a Chinese willingness to ‘take over’ these activities and continue to support other Chinese schools across the country in a similar vein. Lam Choong Wah even hinted that if an ambassador of a foreign country provides financial gifts to any school in Malaysia, it shames the government, as the message of this act is clearly that the government is neglecting this type of education. According to Tang, the ambassador intended to make an impression on the Chinese community in Malaysia and win them over, as he is well aware that good education is a matter of great concern to the community but lacks full governmental support (Wong 2016). Malay nationalist circles perceived even these steps of the Chinese ambassador negatively, especially in connection with his earlier verbal intervention in the Kuala Lumpur Chinatown.18 On the other hand, it should be added that all Chinese Malaysians have the opportunity to study at government schools, fully funded by the Ministry of Education, where Malay is the medium of instruction, or at so-called SKJC schools, partially or fully funded by the government (depending on landownership), where the medium of instruction is Chinese (Lim 2017). However, many Chinese parents, like members of the Tamil community, prefer their children to be educated in community schools, better known as vernacular schools, where the medium of instruction is Chinese (or Tamil, respectively), by which, according to critical (mostly Malay) voices, they do not help reduce the ethnic polarization of Malaysian society. In spite of this criticism, for most members of Chinese communities, education in Chinese has always been a very important preserver of their ‘Chinese’ identity—an identity marker, so to speak. It also provides them with an opportunity to learn standard Chinese (whether we call it Mandarin or putonghua), since most of them speak as their mother tongue one of the Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese, Fujian/Hokkien, or Chaochow, and need to learn Mandarin to facilitate communication between various dialect groups across Malaysia and enable their businesses to conduct trade with mainland Chinese companies with greater ease.

18 In 2015, during a visit to KL Chinatown soon after a Malay ethno-nationalist demon-

stration against businesses was staged, Ambassador Huang was reported as saying that China would not sit idly by when there was ‘infringement on China’s national interests or violations of legal rights and interests of Chinese citizens and businesses.’ His remark sparked a controversy and some officials regarded it as ‘tantamount to interfering in Malaysia’s domestic affairs’ (Wee 2015).

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High-quality teaching of Mandarin—not only to non-Chinese Malaysians (as in the case of the Kong Zi Institute) but also to ethnic Chinese Malaysians—is therefore of great interest on the side of the government of the People’s Republic of China because it enhances the links of the Malaysian Chinese community to the Chinese ‘motherland.’ This explains why recently, entwined with the economic and geopolitical rise of China, Chinese diplomats have beefed up their campaign to deepen relations with Chinese diasporas (which they keep branding as ‘overseas Chinese’) and have become increasingly involved in their activities, from visiting schools to attending various festivities and receptions of their local associations, businesses, and guild chambers—and even congresses of their political parties. Ambassador Huang himself visited the states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, and Johor, and it appears that he also tried, in the framework of enhancing relations with the influential seven-million strong Chinese community in Malaysia, to gain support from the Malaysian Chinese for Chinese plans and strategies within the Belt and Road Initiative. This (as well as the interest of the Malaysian Chinese themselves) may also explain why the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia is more supportive of the BRI projects than the Chinese community in neighboring Indonesia, where ethnic Chinese circles seem more cautious toward these plans (Wong 2016). The use of the educational sector as a tool and ‘site’ of China’s cultural and public diplomacy has thus gained a markedly visible traction in Malaysia. It may be concluded that it has become more important in the past three years than ever before. This is a result of an admixture of factors, including Chinese universities’ strategy of ‘going global,’ Chinese communities’ wish to reach out to mainland China for trading links, and the loss of guaranteed strong governmental support from the Barisan Nasional after their election defeat in May 2018. Nonetheless, whatever the reasons for this development, its main objective is to spread Chinese values and language, with the ultimate goals of strengthening China’s international position and increasing Chinese influence in Malaysia. Having mentioned the argument that some segments of China’s cultural diplomacy in Malaysia are or might be pointless due to the presence of a large and influential Chinese community in the country, there are still plentiful opportunities for the Chinese diaspora to participate actively in Malaysia-China links. As Malaysian Chinese Studies is a popular and arguably sometimes overheated field of scholarship,

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numerous treatises have unsurprisingly been written by renowned scholars and commentators (Wang Gungwu, Leo Suryadinata, Lee Hock Guan, Joseph Liow, and Emile Yeoh, to name but a few) analyzing the position of the Malaysian Chinese in Malaysia-China relations against the backdrop of the rise of China. Nonetheless, it needs to be mentioned that during the 19th Communist Party Congress in 2017, Secretary-General Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s strategic policy of co-opting the Chinese diaspora into Beijing’s grand scheme to internationalize the ‘Chinese dream’ (China Daily 2017). And the world’s second largest, seven-million strong Chinese community in Malaysia is going to be part of that. However, while Malaysian Chinese do see hope and chances for themselves in China’s rise, their loyalty has changed over the last two generations. While they previously still considered China their homeland, today they proudly regard themselves as part of the greater Chinese civilization, but politically and otherwise their allegiance belongs to Malaysia, despite the not-so-favorable racial paradigm in the country (Petru˚ 2017, 13–17). Over several generations, they have evolved from migrant workers with strong links to mainland China to full-fledged Malaysian citizens. In other words, while they still embody the civilizational legacy of their ancestral land, they have also been transformed by the country where they were born and bred: Malaysia. As Peter Chang puts it, they are proud of China’s rise, though not as Chinese but as cosmopolitan Malaysians or ‘Malaysians with Chinese characteristics’ (Chang 2018, 5). A resurgent China’s attempts at projecting its power beyond its borders have, therefore, caused both hope and shock among overseas Chinese. A backlash originating not only from non-Chinese Malaysians but also from the Malaysian Chinese may press Asia’s giant to walk a finer line than so far and use a yet-softer approach in the sense of exerting more efforts in the field of cultural diplomacy to (re-)gain the trust and confidence of its partners in Malaysia and elsewhere. Given the recent, not-so-positive experience with Chinese cash diplomacy corrupting former Malaysian leaders at the backdrop of the consternating China’s economic and strategic expansion and interference in Malaysia, it is possible that China’s cultural diplomacy in Malaysia might play a bigger role in the future in order to show a more attractive face of China. The fact is that these activities were intensifying already before the political reversal of May 2018. For instance, in late 2017, the widely publicized first China-ASEAN film festival took place in Kuala Lumpur, while in February 2018 the ‘Cultures of China, Festival of

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Spring’ Malaysia-China Cultural Exchange was held in the Malaysian capital, attracting over 3000 spectators (Xiang 2018). However, with the resumption of the ECRL in late July 2019, to put it bluntly, all eyes now seem to be set on economic cooperation between the two countries, which has intensified ever since. Following the restart of the controversial, previously suspended rail line project, Malaysia has obtained access to the huge Chinese market to export its palm oil and frozen wholefruit durians in return for its support of the BRI projects such as the ECRL (New Straits Times 2019). In addition, numerous other contracts and projects, some of which are linked to the ECRL, have followed suit, transforming the former ‘special’ relationship between China and Najib’s Malaysia into a new era of mutual relations, which has been dubbed ‘high-quality’ cooperation.

Conclusion It is too early to judge whether this trend will become the hallmark of China-Malaysia ties under Mahathir in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Nonetheless, despite recent hints of a possible slight increase of CCDrelated activities, as of this writing deeper and tighter economic collaboration between China and Malaysia appears to be at the heart of their mutual relations, so we may conclude that education will, for the time being, remain the central field for China’s cultural diplomacy in Malaysia. Film festivals, exhibitions, cultural performances, language promotion, and participation in world expositions, as major tools of (China’s) cultural diplomacy, will surely continue and complement the aforementioned economic operations; however, due to deeply embedded domestic societal structures and the current economic and political pattern of collaboration, CCD in Malaysia is not likely to dominate the discourse of mutual Chinese-Malaysian relations. The one sector where China’s cultural diplomacy does play and will probably continue playing a visible and influential role in Malaysia is education, as I have demonstrated in this chapter. I have shown on the example of the two Confucius Institutes operating in the Malaysian capital and the new large overseas campus of the Chinese Xiamen University in Sepang in the Malaysian central state of Selangor that education may serve as an efficient yet well-accepted tool of China’s cultural diplomacy in a Southeast Asian country, which China needs to be on its side if its grand econo-strategic infrastructure scheme known as the Belt and Road Initiative should succeed. While it may be argued that

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these above-described entities reach out only to a rather limited segment of the Malaysian population, it may be also argued that they reach out to the country’s intellectual elite, who will surely include many a future decision maker.

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CHAPTER 7

Attracting the Arabs? Promoting ‘Muslim’ China to Boost Regional Development in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Jarmila Ptáˇcková

Introduction1 On September 24, 2016, a caravan of twenty motorized vehicles left Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, to drive 11,000 km along the Silk Road from China to the Middle East: ‘An event entitled Driving along Silk Road, a Journey of China-Arab States Friendship aiming at promotion of cultural exchanges between China and the Arab States’ (China.org 2016). This is only one example promoting Ningxia and its Muslim community as an important transnational hub for cooperation between China and the Arab world. For almost ten years, ‘China-Arab’ was Ningxia’s

1 the additional research for this chapter was funded by the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship of the Czech Academy of Sciences; the chapter is also a result of the Oriental Institute’s Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order research platform.

J. Ptáˇcková (B) Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_7

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brand label, standing for all activities of cultural or economic cooperation between the two regions. Relying on Chinese Muslims as mediators in relations with other Islamic countries has already been a part of China’s diplomacy for nearly a century (Haddad-Fonda 2015; 2019). China’s Muslims and their culture have also continued to play an important role in the context of contemporary, more proactive (Kurlantzick 2006, 2) and ‘outward-looking’ foreign policy dating to the early 2000s and relying on cultural and ideological appeals together with economic and financial incentives (Zhang 2010, 40, 57). China understood that many states were more receptive to cultural exchange and cooperation than to the direct promotion of Chinese policy and ideology (see also Ma 2010; Ptackova 2018, 118) and embraced soft power to strengthen its cultural as well as economic and political influence in a global context (see also Rawnsley 2015). The international attitude toward China should improve, in particular, through a strategy of cultural diplomacy aimed at ‘promoting favorable international image, repairing the damaged international image and building up a new international image’ of the country (Hu and Zhao 2016; see also Wuthnow 2008; or Xinhua 2007). The importance of establishing intercultural and international ‘connectivity of people’s hearts’ (minxin xiangtong )2 was also recognized, along with other initiatives, as one of the major strategies behind the successful implementation of President Xi Jinping’s core program, the BRI (NDRC 2015), which, in many respects, now acts as a substitute for general diplomatic relations. The Middle East became one of the strategic targets of China’s diplomacy (see Zambelis and Gentry 2008; or Yang 2015), predominantly for its economic potential not only as an oil supplier but also as an important export hub for Chinese products (Calabrese 2016; Alterman 2009), and within this Sino-Arab BRI connection, the ‘advancement of connectivity, production capacity cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges’ became the major pillars (FMPRC 2016). Among the tools enhancing the connectivity of people’s hearts is the promotion of common cultural similarities. In this context, China first selects those aspects of Chinese historical and cultural heritage and specific ethnic and minority cultural and religious peculiarities relevant for the targeted recipient countries (Liang 2014). Promotion of the cultural

2 Sometimes translated also as ‘people-to-people bonds.’

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China-Arab link is subsequently one of the public diplomatic strategies aiming at strengthening ties between China and the Middle East (see also Shichor 2013; Haddad-Fonda 2015; 2019; Ptackova 2018). To show its cultural proximity to the Middle East or Central Asia, for example, and its understanding of the Muslim heritage and the needs of believers in Islam, China adopted the image of a ‘Muslim China,’ bringing out its own Muslim population and causing those ‘otherwise so socially peripheral to become symbolically central’ (Stallybrass and White 1986, 5). With ‘pragmatic cooperation’ (China’s Arab Policy Paper 2016) in mind, the Chinese Muslim population has been moved to the forefront of the country’s political and diplomatic interests and economic negotiations (see also Klimeš in this volume). Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China was determined to be the new physical space that would host acts of mutual understanding and friendship as well as cultural and economic exchange between the Chinese and the Arabs. But rather than effectively attracting foreign cooperation and investments, in reality this brand encouraged a huge influx of funds from the Chinese state that were spent on local development. Ningxia is, of course, not the only Muslim region in China, and it could be argued that Xinjiang, which is culturally closer to the Muslim countries abroad, might be a better choice for the center representing Muslim China and intended to establish culturally linked cooperation. Ningxia, however, besides satisfying the urgent need for a promotion target within China’s Great Opening of the West development strategy (xibu da kaifa; see also Pant 2006), might also have attracted the central government as a more manageable center of Islam and Muslim culture in China. In general, the Hui Muslims, who are claimed to be ethnically related to the Han (see also Gladney 1991) and highly materially and linguistically acculturated (Lipman 1984, 289), and who distinguish themselves from the majority mainly through their religious belief, are seen by the central government as better integrated than, for example, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, who represent the danger of unrest (Xinjiang Review 2011) and among whom targeted investment into Islamic culture might—from the point of view of the central government—empower separatist tendencies. For this reason, in the twentieth century, Hui

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seemed better suited to represent China as a Muslim country in an international campaign (see also Haddad-Fonda 2019, 19).3 This chapter provides an example of the instrumentalization of Ningxia as the center of China-Arab friendship and cooperation, not only for the purposes of cultural diplomacy, but also in the context of local development, which experienced its boom between 2010 and 2017. The information provided is based on my study of the theory and implementation of Chinese development policies starting in 2007, as well as Chinese cultural diplomacy targeting the Middle East starting in 2015. Apart from the referenced documents, the data provided originate from observations, as well as interviews with state and non-state actors and members of the Hui community involved in or affected by the controlled transformation of Ningxia, collected during a research stay in Ningxia in August 2016 and May 2019.4 In the context of the pragmatic use of available cultural ventures to achieve certain cultural, economic, or political goals within public diplomacy (Nisbett 2013; or Exnerová in this volume), this chapter illustrates the instrumentalization of the cultural heritage of China’s Hui Muslim minority in order to improve the general image of China as a religiously and culturally tolerant country with a long and diverse cultural history, and also to boost the local and the national economy. It also emphasizes the discrepancies between the national rhetoric and the actual situation. The strong promotion of Muslim culture and its relation to the Arab world contradicted Xi Jinping’s harmonization and identity consolidation policies, which emphasize the common ‘Chinese’ heritage in order to strengthen people’s patriotism or, more precisely, their ‘love of the country’ (aiguo) and safeguard national stability. As a result, the state’s approach toward Ningxia and its Hui Muslim heritage as a link to the Arabs changed abruptly in 2017, after the meeting of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Further plans to ‘Sinicize’ Chinese Islam were discussed during the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 2018 (Haddad-Fonda 2019, 7). Current visitors to Ningxia thus won’t recognize the visual ‘Arabization,’ 3 In the 1950s, it was the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, particularly Urumqi, that was promoted as the ‘center of Islam in China’ in context of the Arab-oriented public diplomacy of China and during the organized tours for Arab delegates to China (HaddadFonda 2019, 26–27). 4 For security reasons, my informants in this chapter remain anonymous.

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described here as everything has been rebuilt to carry ‘Chinese cultural characteristics,’ as understood by the government of the Autonomous Region, whose task was to interpret the nationalistic policy of the central government. This chapter might therefore also serve as an example of the extreme changeability and inconsistency of China’s policies.

The Background of the China-Arab Friendship in Ningxia Muslims have been present in China since at least the seventh century (Lipman 1984, 289), when followers of Islam ‘entered China as soldiers, merchants and political emissaries from Arabia and Persia’ (Wang et al. 2003, 2; Wang 2015, 10). Later, more Muslims from the Middle East and Central Asia gradually reached China along the ancient Silk Road. The Muslims settled predominantly on the southeastern coast and in China’s northwest, including Ningxia (Gladney 1991, 37), and many of them intermarried with local Han women (Wang et al. 2003). During its dynamic history, the region of Ningxia was successively dominated by various factions. Its Muslim identity strengthened during the period of warlords, when members of the Hui Ma family ruled over Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai (see Lipman 1984, 290–291). In 1928, Ningxia was proclaimed a province, with Ma Hongkui as its governor from 1931 (Lin 2007, 119), and in 1958, it was granted the status of the only Hui Autonomous Region in China (Ding 2001, 77). Ningxia is the largest provincial-level administrative unit of the Muslim Hui minority in China. However, since the establishment of the PRC, it was not easy for the locals to remain in direct contact and exchange with other Muslim regions abroad. This situation is probably influenced by the fact that China was not always quite open for free and frequent exchange with foreigners, and also by the geographical location of Ningxia in the center of Northern China, which gives it no option to practice crossborder relations with other Muslim countries (as in the case of Xinjiang, for example). Nowadays, the presence of Arabs in China is most significant in Yiwu in Zhejiang Province. The local Arab community, amounting to 35,000, is the largest in China and came into being due to a combination of China’s economic reforms since the 1990s, which made Yiwu the largest wholesale market in the PRC in small commodities (Belguidoum and Pliez 2015), and the immigration restrictions imposed on Arabs by the

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US after 2001 (Shaery 2014). In the search for new markets, the Arabs turned from the US toward China and started to settle in Yiwu, where most goods exported to the Gulf are produced (Alterman 2013, 3). Yiwu thus became a center for Arabs to seek Chinese trade partners and order Chinese goods for export to the Arab world (Simpfendorfer 2011). Gradually, Arabs settled there and Yiwu became the most vital meeting point of the Chinese and Arabs, with growing Arab enclaves offering Arab schools, restaurants, and mosques (Belguidoum and Pliez 2015). The Arab presence in Yiwu and the resulting demand for suitable services subsequently attracted many members of China’s Muslim minorities to concentrate here as well, which turned Yiwu into a ‘key center for Islam in Eastern China’ (The National 2012). In Ningxia, on the contrary, the current label of ‘China-Arab cooperation center’ was invented rather artificially and not based on the existence of a significant Arab presence in modern times. Nevertheless, the ChinaArab link here should ideally exceed the individual trade level of Yiwu and encourage national discussions on China-Arab cooperation, investments, and exchange. But why Ningxia? In accordance with the state-induced wave of the Great Opening of the West development strategy, Wang Zhengwei, a Hui-nationality former chairman of the Ningxia government, appointed in 2007, was faced with the task of accelerating local development and encouraging specific funding from the central government to reach Ningxia, one of the poorest regions of the PRC. Encouraged by the intensifying relations between China and the Middle East, confirmed through the establishment of the Sino-Arab Cooperation Forum (Zhong A hezuo luntan) during the visit of the former President Hu Jintao to the League of Arab States in 2004 (China.org 2010; He 2011), Wang Zhengwei decided to take advantage of the unique status of Ningxia as the only Hui autonomous region of the PRC in order to attract additional state investments. Under its new designation as a China-Arab friendship and cooperation center, the economic potential of Ningxia would grow. The new label promoting the Hui Muslim cultural heritage would enhance the image of Ningxia not only within the national development strategy but also on an international level, possibly attracting foreign investments from culturally related regions, such as other Muslim countries (CPC 2012). The inaugural act of the emerging center for China-Arab cooperation in Ningxia was the organization of the first China-Arab Economic

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and Trade Forum in 20105 in Yinchuan, the capital of the autonomous region. The local objectives behind the promotion of Ningxia as the ChinaArab center were mainly to secure additional funds for local development and to accentuate the possibility of investing in local Muslim cultural-religious structures. From the national point of view, the development of Ningxia had the potential to draw in additional investments from abroad through the China-Arab label. The economic cooperation between Ningxia and the Arabs could then had have a positive impact on the general economy of the PRC. Moreover, China could finally improve its image as a suppressor of Islam (as it is sometimes perceived in the Muslim world through the issue of Xinjiang; see, for example, Lee 2015) and show itself instead as a supporter of Muslim culture. This was in accordance with the objectives of China’s cultural diplomacy, which identified Islamic culture in China as an important tool to promote China and improve its image in the Arab countries.6 During the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative and in the context of the aim to support and boost international economic relationships through cultural people-to-people bonds, the China-Arab label of Ningxia gained in importance. It embodied the rhetoric of strengthening (cultural) exchange and mutual understanding based on shared (Muslim) cultural features and provided an actual physical space where specific acts of cooperation could be realized. Under the BRI, Ningxia, as a meeting point for the Chinese and the Arabs and as a platform for cultural and economic exchange between these two regions, became one of the official transnational key sites (Exnerova 2017) visualizing and corporealizing China-Arab (public) diplomacy (see also BRFIC 2017). The Belt and Road Initiative turned out to stand for more than just international cooperation. On the national level, the BRI also incorporated the aims of the Great Opening of the West and Yu and, as an improved development strategy, embraced the original idea of Wang Zhengwei. Within the BRI, however, funding for local development in China’s western regions was not supposed to be received only from the central government and prosperous eastern provinces; China’s West was also supposed to flourish as a result of increased foreign investment. In

5 In 2013, it was renamed the China-Arab States Expo. 6 Personal interview with the Chinese Ministry of Culture, April 2016.

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this regard, the West of China is especially highlighted in the context of the Chinese connection to the New Silk Road. Among the major targets of this policy are Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang in the Northwest and Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangxi in the Southwest (Ma and Yu 2015). Their local economy should develop alongside the economies of states neighboring China, which are situated along the New Silk Road and participating in the BRI.

Ningxia Inland Opening-Up Pilot Economic Zone To provide the best conditions for fast (economic) development and to enable focused financial and administrative support from the central government, in 2012 Ningxia was granted the status of an Inland Opening-up Pilot Economic Zone (Ningxia nei lu kaifang xing jingji shiyan qu),7 the first of its kind in inland China (MOFCOM 2012). The motto of the new zone was in accordance with the local economic strategy launched by Wang Zhengwei and aimed at stimulating investments from and economic cooperation with the Middle East. This China-Arab focus was clearly reflected in the summary of preferential policies of the Inland Opening-up Pilot Economic Zone defined in 2013 by the major state institutions. With the aim of supporting the China-Arab concept, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission planned, for example, ‘support to build China Muslim Folk Culture Expo Park… and development of Hui medicine enterprises.’ Among the projects of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security were training of ‘inter-disciplinary Arabic trade service talents’ and support for the establishment of a ‘cooperation communication platform facing Arab countries and Muslim regions.’ The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development aimed to ‘take Ningxia-Arab Expo as a platform to vigorously carry out the development of exchanges and cooperation in the construction industry in Arab countries and Muslim areas’ as well as to ‘speed up the training of professionals and teams in market survey, design, cost consulting, project supervision and other engineering services for Arab States.’ The Ministry of Agriculture planned to accentuate the production of halal food and to ‘explore the establishment and improvement of Sino-Arabic high-level

7 Translation according to the English Website of the Ningxia Opening-up Pilot Economic Zone (see Xinhua 2012).

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exchange of…agricultural cooperation mechanisms and support SinoArabic fairs.’ The Ministry of Culture supported the organization of the ‘Arabian Culture and Arts Festival’ and similar activities in Ningxia by inviting ‘professional art troupes, artists and cultural officers from Arabian countries.’ On the program of the Administration for Industry and Commerce was the provision of support for ‘Ningxia to hold SinoArabic fairs and promote Sino-Arabic economic and trade cooperation.’ The National Tourism Administration wanted to support the organization of the ‘world’s Muslim traveling salesmen sessions.’ The State Administration for Religious Affairs planned to financially support ‘training classes for cadres in expounding classics of Islam’ and ‘work for hajj .’ Finally, the agenda of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development included ‘anti-poverty strategy communication and cooperation with Arab countries and Muslim areas’ and the aim of exploring ‘the operation-shed establishment on economy, trade and labor service of inland poor areas for the Arab countries’ (Xinhua 2013).

Creating the ‘Muslim’ Image of Ningxia Although contemporary studies show that Muslims in China are genetically and historically related to the Muslim communities of Central Asia (Wang et al. 2003) or, in the case of Hui, even to the Han and TibetoBurman populations (Yao et al. 2016), economic interests go beyond ethnic relations. The Arabs are, in general, perceived as the wealthier Muslims, and thus, they became the major targets of the Ningxia international Muslim cooperation project. As part of the promotion of the Arab link, and especially to attract attention in the Middle East, China presented itself not only as Muslim friendly, but sometimes even as a partially Muslim country. However, at first, there were not enough visual links in Ningxia to represent the cultural heritage of Islam shared with the Arab countries. In this regard, the politically endorsed acculturation of the Chinese Hui Muslims to Chinese society turned out to have some disadvantages. In many places, regions inhabited by the Hui minority do not appear significantly different from other Han regions at first glance. The appearance of mosques has often been strongly influenced by Chinese architecture and only crescent moons on the tower tops indicate their affiliation to Islam. In 2016, in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, besides the quite recently constructed Arab-style mosques, the only major Muslim

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attribute seemed to be the halal food in Chinese qingzhen restaurants. It was even difficult to identify the local Hui Muslim population as many of the urban male and female Huis there did not wear any head coverings and the rest of their garments and behavior perfectly matched the latest Chinese and global fashions. Due to the lack of public ‘Muslimness’ in Yinchuan to justify the promoted Muslim image, special new centers of Muslim culture showing the Hui traditions were established with the support of national funds. This implies that before Ningxia could be promoted internationally as the center of Muslim cultural heritage in China, globally understood Muslim cultural attributes had to be made visible there. This process included the revival or renewal of—and emphasis on—existing Muslim cultural and religious locations and traditions. At the same time, new cultural attractions and links to accentuate the Muslim presence and Arab connections were being created at various places within the autonomous region. The center of the China-Arab link in Ningxia was Yinchuan. One of the major new ‘Muslim’ sites here was the Park of China’s Hui Muslim Culture (Zhonghua Hui xiang wenhua yuan) established in 2005 and entitled ‘the centerpiece of Yinchuan’s transformation’ and a ‘Sino-Arab cultural bridge’ that could ‘promote all aspects of Sino-Arab exchange and cooperation’ (foreignpolicy.com). The imposing entrance of the park, evoking the famous Taj Mahal, seemed promising and heightened the expectations of approaching visitors eager to enter. The first disappointment, however, came even before getting into the park. The monumental white gate was closed and guests could only get in through a small side gate after purchasing a discounted ticket (the tickets had been discounted due to the lack of visitors). The park itself, dominated by a huge empty and unfinished building, was reminiscent of an abandoned construction site (see also Haddad-Fonda 2016b). It featured a small stage where dancers and singers performed ‘traditional’ Hui dances and music, a museum presenting the origins of Muslims in China and emphasizing the connection of Ningxia to the ancient as well as the modern Silk Road, and a replica of a traditional Hui village, offering a house, a yard, and, of course, a shop with local products. The employees representing the Hui population were dressed in colorful robes; however, many of them did not belong to the Hui ethnic group and were not even Muslims. What made the Park of Hui Muslim Culture worth visiting was the big Golden Mosque, hosting an exhibition describing the tradition of Islam

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in China. The visitors were guided inside and received a short explanation of the history of the mosque and the local Muslim traditions. The guides here were Hui Muslims, and although they were doing the tours for the sake of the state salary, some of them did not fail to clearly express their disagreement with the commodification of their religion (see also Yan 2016). The Park of Hui Muslim Culture was situated directly next to the First Hui Street of China, a long lane of shops dominated by a gate in ancient Chinese-style architecture that connected the Park with Najiahu, the oldest mosque in Ningxia. Like the Park of Hui Muslim Culture, the First Hui Street lacked visitors. The majority of the shop spaces remained empty and the imposing entrance was falling apart. The Chinese-style Najiahu mosque of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam (The Economist 2016) was first and foremost a religious site and not a tourist spot, and even though it was connected to the new area of Muslim culture, it remained in regular use by local Muslims and was thus not dependent on visiting guests. ‘Muslim culture’ spots of interest similar to those in Yinchuan could also be visited in other counties in Ningxia, such as Wuzhong. Besides a small museum of Muslim traditions founded in 2014, Wuzhong offered a Muslim settlement open to tourists, who could visit some of its tidy houses and experience daily life. Besides sites presenting the local Hui Muslim culture, there were also new sites in Ningxia directly emphasizing the new brand of the ChinaArab link. One of them was the China-Arab Axis (Zhong A zhi zhou)—a promenade built in 2016 in the neighborhood of the China-Arab States Expo exhibition hall, equipped with light-show pillars advertising the objectives of China-Arab cooperation and friendship and the importance of the New Silk Road and the BRI. Additionally, the Arab link was visualized through public signs and street names with (more or less correct) Arab translations below and some house decorations featuring Muslim ornaments and distantly imitating Arab architecture.8

8 After 2017, due to the accentuated affiliation to Arab culture, the Park of China’s Hui

Muslim Culture lost the word ‘China’s’ (Zhonghua) in its title, the dance performances were cancelled, the Hui village was cleared, and tables emphasizing the link between the Chinese Muslims and the Arabs were removed from the museum. Other cultural facilities promoting the China-Arab link in Ningxia met with a similar fate. The China-Arab Axis, for example, has been completely rebuilt in ‘traditional Chinese’ style (situation in 2019).

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As well as the Muslim image of Yinchuan, local infrastructure worthy to receive foreign visitors and represent the great Chinese development as well as the new status of Yinchuan and the whole of Ningxia as the hub for the China-Arab activities needed to be set up. The necessary funding to create the new Ningxia and attract Arab and other (Muslim) visitors and investors had to be supplied by the central government. One of the major achievements in practically linking Ningxia to the Arab world was a regular direct flight connection between Yinchuan and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which has been operating since 2016. Although travel agents described China in general, and Ningxia in particular, as the new popular tourist destinations for Arabs, the flights are not usually occupied by Arab tourists, but rather by Chinese tourists heading for shopping tours in Dubai, Chinese Muslims trying to undertake their hajj via the Emirates, or Chinese businessmen and retailers who own companies or shops in one of the free-trade zones or special market spaces ˇ rík and Ptáˇcková 2019). in the Emirates (see also Cuˇ Arabs did visit Ningxia, but mostly not in the summer, although Arabs are most likely to leave their countries to travel for holidays during the hottest months. In Ningxia, the season for the Arabs to visit is autumn. This is due to the China-Arab States Expo, the renamed China-Arab States Economic and Trade Forum, that takes place in September and is the major reason for Arabs to travel to Ningxia. Since 2015, the ChinaArab States Expo has taken place in the new Ningxia International Hall (China Daily 2015), built in a shape reminiscent of the head covering of the Hui women, which became another landmark of the promoted Muslim image of Ningxia.9 It seemed, however, that many of the Arab visitors did not come on their own initiative with the aim of establishing trade partnerships. Instead, they came at the invitation of the state and, in accordance with the preferential policies for the Pilot Economic Zone in Ningxia, had their travel costs at least partially covered by the Chinese government. This was also the case during other China-Arab activities in Ningxia, including, for example, the China-Arab Friendship Conference, the China-Arab Travelling Salesmen Conference, the ChinaArab States Tour Operators Conference, and the International Festival of Chinese and Arab Culture and Customs, when the majority of participating Arabs was brought in by China. During their visits, the Arab 9 The hall has been redecorated slightly since 2017 to make the originally intended association with Muslim symbolism less obvious.

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delegations were shown the Ningxia Muslim cultural sites, such as the Park of Hui Muslim Culture, the Najiahu mosque, and other sites in Wuzhong (see also Haddad-Fonda 2019, 20–24). As guests of the state, they were, of course, not required to pay the entrance fees, which slightly harmed the economy of the cultural sites. Even after 2017, Arabs are still welcome to attend the Expo. Economic cooperation between China and the Arab states continues to be highly valued by the government in China.

Fulfilling the China-Arab Agenda The embodiment of the China-Arab link and the major China-Arab investment project of the Inland Opening-up Pilot Economic Zone in Ningxia was entitled the World Muslim City (Shijie Musilin cheng ), or China-Arab Gate (Zhong A zhi men). This maximalist plan for Ningxia’s economic and urban development included ‘A Gate to Arab States International Exchange Centre,’ one of the biggest Quran Mosques in China, a Silk Road Museum, ‘A Thousand and One Night Theme Park’ with hotels and leisure centers, the ‘Silk Road Park,’ the ‘China-Arab Sports Park,’ the ‘China Arab Wisdom Bay,’ a ‘China-Arab International Health Centre,’ and the ‘China-Arab Knowledge Village’—a sort of China-Arab silicon valley.10 It was intended to give physical form to the idea of Ningxia as the gate toward the Arab states and the start of the China-Arab New Silk Road. The construction of the World Muslim City started in 2009. It was designed by the Sanxian Group and investors from along the Silk Road were supposed to pay for the 3.5 billion US dollar endeavor (for different figures, see Xinjiang Review 2011). According to the original plan, the World Muslim City should have been finished by 2016, but by the end of that year not much had been accomplished besides the hotel, congress center, and golf club of the China-Arab Cultural City (Zhong A wenhua cheng ) site, the seat of the China-Arab States Entrepreneur Association (see also Haddad-Fonda 2016a). Currently, the Arab characteristics have been removed from the project and the area is being referred to as the ‘Yinchuan International Trade City’ (Yinchuan guoji shangmao cheng ).

10 According to the description in an information brochure on the project of the World Muslim City, entitled Zhong-A Wwenhua Cheng (China-Arab Culture Park). Received in August 2016.

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The reports following the China-Arab States Expo and similar economically oriented events presented impressive figures of signed cooperation and investment agreements between the Arabs and China (CPC 2012; MOFCOM 2017). Although Arab state-owned and private companies did increasingly invest in China (Gater-Smith 2017, 42), according to my informants from Ningxia University, the majority of contracts signed with the Arabs visiting Ningxia on the state-sponsored trips were never realized. The visitors signed the cooperation contracts solely to fulfill the conditions of their subsidized journeys to China.11 The majority of investments into Ningxia’s development came from the East, namely from the Chinese central government and Chinese partner provinces of Ningxia, instead of from the West, i.e., Central Asia, and the Middle East. Aside from the China-Arab infrastructure in Ningxia, the promotion of the region as the new center of China-Arab cooperation and exchange also required some related activities. These activities of the Ningxia’s China-Arab brand policy were mainly carried out by private companies. Some of the companies involved were engaged with Sino-Arab trade or cultural cooperation, but others had no connection with Arab countries. To enjoy favorable policies and eventual state support for an undertaking, it was sometimes enough to carry the brand China-Arab in the company title or in the company agenda. An example of the China-Arab connection was and continues to be the Ningxia Wisdom House company (Zhihui gong ), the Chinese partner of the Arab Publishers’ Association (Alabo chuban shang xiehui). The company presents itself as the major Chinese office translating, promoting, and distributing Chinese literature or literature about China in Arabic within Arab countries.12 According to its chairman, the company approaches the Arab market mainly through the Arab Publishers’ Association in Egypt.13 Since 2013, Wisdom House has cooperated

11 Personal interviews with a member of Ningxia University and a member of the ChinaArab States Entrepreneur Association, August 2016. Even though the Chinese policy stopped emphasizing possible links between the Chinese and Arab populations related to Islam and global Muslim culture, economic cooperation with the Middle East continues to be highly promoted. The China-Arab Expo continues to take place in Yinchuan every two years. 12 See also the promotion video Wisdom house Arabic version on https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=RzBejXOMn6M. 13 See also http://www.arab-pa.org/en/staticpages/homeen.aspx.

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with the central government, which does not have its own office for Arab translations and therefore has to access Arab countries through private companies.14 Identified as a ‘key enterprise for China’s cultural export,’ fulfilling China’s aim to ‘enhance the international influence of Chinese culture, encourage and support cultural enterprises to actively explore international cultural market, improve the international competitiveness of cultural enterprises, and promote rapid development in the export of Chinese cultural products and services,’ in 2015 Wisdom House obtained ‘Key Projects for China’s Cultural Export’ certification (guojia wenhua chukou zhongdian xiangmu), issued by the Ministry of Commerce, the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture, the General Administration of Customs, the General Administration of Taxation, the General Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the General Administration of Press and Publication, and the State Council Information Office (Chinalawinfo 2019). To better reflect its role in Ningxia’s China-Arab policy, Wisdom House was provided with a new representative office under favorable conditions by the government and could apply for translation and publishing subventions for about 200 books per year or get other kinds of indirect support. The government made use of its right to suggest certain literature be translated and distributed, recommending booklets promoting the culture and traditions of (Muslim) minorities of China— for example, Al-qissa al-kamila li al-islam fi al-Sin (the complete story of Islam in China)—and the history and culture of China—for example, Al-tibb al-taqlidi al-Sini (traditional Chinese medicine). However, these were, according to my informants, not bestsellers in Arab markets and thus not the main target of the company. Such publications usually end up at state representative offices, such as Cultural Centers and embassies, which then distribute them for free.15 Among other translated books belong, for example, the ideas of President Xi Jinping, such as The Governance of China (Tan zhiguo lizheng, Arab: Hawla al-hukm wa al-irada Si Jin bingh).16

14 Personal interview with the leader of the Wisdom House Company, August 2016. 15 Personal interview with the leader of the Wisdom House Company, August 2016. 16 I would like to thank Giedre Sabaseviciute for her kind help with the transliteration

of the Arab titles.

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The distribution of Chinese literature in Arab countries was an important part of Chinese cultural heritage mediation, the core of cultural diplomacy aiming at mutual cultural understanding and enhancement of (economic) relations. The location of Wisdom House in Ningxia, the proclaimed center of China-Arab friendship and exchange, made this company a perfect fit for national as well as local development policy concepts. Besides its translation activities—and in accordance with the China-Arab link policy—Wisdom House also engaged in the organization of China-Arab publisher meetings in Ningxia. Recently, the company has extended its pool of interests and focuses on the translation of Chinese cartoons, mediation between Chinese and Arab entrepreneurs, and the development of online sale and delivery programs for Arab customers. Another company fitting the China-Arab image in Ningxia was the International College for Arab Language Training. With about 2000 students from China and abroad, it was the largest school for Arabic training and was unique in having regular high school (gaozhong ) status. The classes were taught in Arabic or English and the students that enrolled at the school wanted to learn Arabic in order to do business with clients in Arab countries. The graduates usually found work in Yiwu and worked for companies with Arab connections or as translators for the Arab traders visiting the Yiwu market (see also Johnson 2006). The school was partly supported from the student’s school fees, which were comparatively low (around 7000 RMB per year in 2016), and also from some Arab investments. The major sponsor, who built the Arab-style school campus, was Kuwait. Some money also came from the UAE and other Arab countries. The International College for Arab Language Training also featured in the show companies promoted at various state events as the embodiment of Ningxia’s China-Arab policy. Although the state did not support the college directly, it was eligible for various benefits, such as tax exemptions or more generous land policy.17 Both language training and literature translation clearly had the potential to enhance people-to-people bonds and cultural promotion. They were, however, not sufficient to fill the voluminous concept of ChinaArab connections and cooperation designated to take place in Ningxia so that it could satisfy its status as the pilot economic zone. As described above, besides the special China-Arab events, not much China-Arab 17 Personal interview with the director of the International College for Arab Language Training, August 2016.

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cooperation took place in Ningxia and the general Arab presence was negligible. According to my informants, there were about 70–100 Arabs living in Ningxia in 2016 and there were no direct Arab companies there at all. In order to realize the concept of the China-Arab policy in Ningxia—or at least to create an impression of dynamic China-Arab connections— other companies without direct Arab- or Muslim-related concepts could be included within the China-Arab framework of Ningxia, as long as they nominally claimed an Arab link. In Yinchuan, for example, attached to the China-Arab Cultural City was a China-Arab Joy Camp (Zhong A huanyue dabenying )—a leisure club offering holiday and free time activities to the Chinese middle class. Neither the customers nor the investors were Arabs, but the China-Arab label allowed the government to show more China-Arab activities and allowed the club to enjoy policy benefits toward its business.18 No matter what the official reports presented, it seems that in reality the image of the China-Arab center in Ningxia was built on mutual benefits for the local private and state sectors. In some cases, Muslim culture and the China-Arab connection were instrumentalized only rhetorically. The state received a label it could use in the international promotion of cultural and economic exchange and ‘sell’ as part of its policy toward Muslim countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as part of the BRI. The participants in the China-Arab policy, however, were local businesses which received certain benefits easing their undertakings and making them eligible for eventual government support in return for adopting the China-Arab label, no matter if their activities were actually linked with China-Arab collaboration. Halal or qingzhen products constituted another economically exploitable aspect of Muslim identity in China. As stated in the preferential policy of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, local production of halal food was to be accentuated in Ningxia, underlining local Muslim culture, and also creating an economic opportunity. The majority of halal food had been imported into China from other Muslim countries. This was to change, also as part of the BRI strategy, and China aimed to 18 Personal interview with an employee of the China-Arab Joy Camp, August 2016. After 2017, like many other institutions, the China-Arab Cultural City and China-Arab Joy Camp both removed the ‘China-Arab’ from their title. In 2019, both places stood empty, having closed down.

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become an internationally recognized producer and exporter of halal food products. As a result, an increasing number of companies in Ningxia and elsewhere in China competed to obtain a halal certificate for their products (see also Allen-Ebrahimian 2016). The certificates were issued by authorized institutions, such as the Ningxia International Halal Food Certification and Trade Center, which undertook extensive and strict assessments of the applicants and their production facilities. The examination of halal suitability itself was free, but companies under evaluation could be asked to pay for the travel expenses of the assessment team.19 In order to exploit the economic potential of halal to the largest possible extent, some companies started to apply for the halal brand for purely plant or clearly non-meat-based products—for example, ‘halal tea’ or ‘halal water.’ In the majority of cases, such attempts were not only rejected by the halal certification institution, but also led to discontent on the part of regular Hui Muslim consumers, who were worried about the commercialization of their beliefs and the proposal to limit choice and increase product prices by means of halal labeling. In order to promote Chinese halal products on the international market, the employees of the Ningxia International Halal Food Certification and Trade Center were expected and encouraged to undertake trips abroad during which they would contact Muslim countries, negotiate contracts, and gain recognition for the Chinese halal brand. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, however, foreign travel for state employees to establish connections with Muslims abroad was first significantly limited and later banned completely, the certification center was closed down, and the production of halal products was stopped. The increasing influx of foreign Muslim trends to China, together with the public visibility of Muslim culture and the promotion of Muslim identity (even in Ningxia, where it had been actively supported by the state), prompted the Chinese government to worry about cultural radicalization, support for Islamization, and the spread of political unrest.

19 Personal Interview with a member of the Ningxia International Halal Food Certification, August 2016.

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Strengthening Ethnic Cultural Identity or Building Up a Tourist Site? Although the actual Arab participation in Ningxia’s development was negligible, it is obvious that the China-Arab label contributed to Ningxia’s infrastructural and economic development on the local level. It enabled Ningxia to receive targeted funding from China’s central government as part of the focused policy to develop Western China. Moreover, it perfectly matched the culturally and economically dominated soft diplomacy of the New Silk Road and BRI promoted earlier by the Chinese leadership (see also Ma and Yu 2015) and thus secured the autonomous region further funding from the state. The emphasis on the uniqueness of the Hui Muslim cultural heritage and the idea of using it as a cultural bridge to attract the attention of Arab and other Muslim tourists and investors caused money to flow into Ningxia’s infrastructure and urbanization, the construction and renewal of Muslim cultural sites, and the preservation of local Muslim traditions. In the China-Arab context, Ningxia was promoted for its Muslim culture, and indeed, when visiting the Hui Autonomous Region, we found ourselves surrounded by Arabic signs and could see new Arab-style mosques, Islamic symbols on public places, and buildings or cultural sites such as those mentioned earlier in this paper.20 But how much of this actually represented the local Hui culture and how much was imported to artificially create a ‘Muslim image’ of Ningxia to satisfy the official Muslim cultural promotion there? Answering this question first requires a clear definition of the actual Hui identity. The complexity of this issue is demonstrated, for example, in the study of Dru Gladney (1991), who analyzes the historical and cultural situation of the Huis in China with regard to their ethnic classification. As descendants of various foreign Muslim travelers to China, who intermarried with Han, the various Hui communities across China do not possess a common ethnic or national history as a group and relate to each other primarily through their common belief in Islam (see also Wang 2015). A common identity of the Hui as an ethnic group has been created, more or less artificially, only within the boundaries of China, where they live scattered over the whole territory, adapting to the cultural traditions of whichever other ethnic groups they interact with the most 20 Arabic has been banned completely from public spaces and many architectural sites with Arab characteristics were removed since 2017.

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(Ding and Zhang 2002, 3–5). What is perceived as culturally representative for the Hui population in a given period changes alongside changing influences from outside and inside the Hui communities. The Huis even incorporated praise for Confucius’ teachings into their religious practice, distinguishing themselves from the Han population mainly through their diet and certain rituals and ceremonies, such as those marking marriage or death (Gonul and Rogenhofer 2017, 3). The common language among the Huis is Chinese. Arabic serves mainly as the language of the Quran (see also Gladney 1991, 20; or Gonul and Rogenhofer 2017, 4), but many Huis have significant difficulties reading Arabic.21 The Arabic names and signs displayed in public places in Ningxia thus did not reflect the local Hui culture and could be counted as one of the attributes of the China-Arab promotion aimed at helping the incoming Arabs feel more comfortable. Some new ‘cultural’ sites, such as the China-Arab axis, that did not emerge in response to the needs or on the initiative of local Hui Muslims, but were set up by state architects attempting to promote a more Muslim- and Arab-oriented image of Yinchuan city, could be perceived in a similar way. More complex is the question of the Arab-style mosques that almost replaced the earlier more common Chinese-style architecture at Islamic religious sites. Although mosques were constructed with the support of state funding under certain circumstances, according to my informants the majority of the impressive new mosques have been built using funding from local Muslim communities, sometimes with financial support from foreign Muslim sponsors (see also Johnson 2016). The currently popular ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic’ shape of the mosques can be explained, on the one hand, as belonging to the ‘traditional’ Islamic architectural trends promoted increasingly within the global Muslim community and, on the other, as a consequence of economic considerations, since the construction of entirely concrete mosques is cheaper than the elaborate construction of Chinesestyle wooden structures. The notable boom in mosque construction and reconstruction might have been, in case of Ningxia and its international Muslim image, understood as ‘guiding the religion to contribute to

21 Arabs are also among the ancestors of today’s Hui in China, but due to the long history of interaction with Han and other ethnic groups and non-Arabic speakers within the Chinese territory, knowledge of the Arab language disappeared among the majority of the Hui. It can be used for religious purposes, but is certainly not the language of daily use (see also Ding and Zhang 2002).

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economic development’ (Klimeš 2018). At the same time, it could be interpreted as a sign of the growing cultural radicalization or ‘Islamization’ of the Chinese Hui Muslims, who, due to their integration into Chinese Han society, were living on the periphery of the Islamic world (see also Gladney 1991, 23) and who have only reconnected with the global Muslim society in the last three decades. Construction of Arabstyle mosques could thus be understood as a sign of the fundamentalist Wahhabi influence introduced to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by pilgrims returning from the hajj . Wahhabi ideas proposing the practice of a purified and non-China-influenced Islam are represented in China through the Ikwan movement (Yihewani yundong; Al-Sudairi 2014). This is also the point of view advocated by the contemporary leader of China, Xi Jinping, whose emphasis on ‘Chinese’ in ‘Chinese Muslims’ and ‘Islam with Chinese characteristics’ encouraged the Ningxia leadership to ban all signs of globally influenced Islamization in the autonomous region.

Conclusion The policy concept of using cultural similarities to encourage diplomatic and economic connections, so heavily emphasized within the contemporary Belt and Road Initiative, had already been adopted by China much earlier. In a similar way, and with the same hopes of boosting the national economy, the Chinese state has encouraged economic exchange between Muslims in China and abroad and hosted large delegations of potential investors from the Middle East at least since the 1980s (Gladney 1991, 63; Haddad-Fonda 2019). Instrumentalizing the Chinese Muslim cultural heritage and building up Ningxia as the transnational space of Chinese Muslim culture and as a center for China-Arab connections further stressed this economically oriented policy which, through its support for all attributes of Muslim culture, including religion and the halal food industry, stood in direct contrast to the Chinese policy toward another Muslim Autonomous Region of China, Xinjiang, where the aim is clearly to restrain (public) expressions of ethnic and cultural diversification among the local population of Uyghurs (see Klimeš 2018; or Human Rights Watch 2018). In Ningxia, the emphasis on Muslim culture clearly contributed to the objective of local development, although the majority of investment

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flowing in comes from the central government, with only marginal Arab involvement. From the perspective of national-level development, the outcomes were not as positive as has been promoted. Although rhetorically the goal of establishing Ningxia’s national importance in bringing further development to central and western regions of the country, reviving the traffic along the New Silk Road, and forging connections with Central Asia and the Middle East seems to have been fulfilled, technically the situation was not that satisfying. From an economic point of view, Muslim investments from abroad into Ningxia’s development were rather scarce and mainly targeted the cultural-religious needs of individual Muslim communities—for example, the construction of Muslim schools or mosques. The intensive public diplomacy, however, placing Ningxia at the forefront of China’s Muslim traditions and encouraging Arab and other Central Asian visitors to take part in sponsored delegations, might have actually placed this location on the map for potential Arab investors. And perhaps this could even lead to genuine Arab economic interest in Ningxia in the future. However, as in other ethnic minority areas, a supportive policy toward minority culture and religion remains, from the Chinese state’s perspective, a double-edged sword, and the ‘Muslimization’ and ‘Islamization’ of Ningxia was perceived by the Chinese central government in an ambivalent way. The state invested in the promotion of Muslim culture in Ningxia, including the Islamic religion, but it also feared the possibility that a greater emphasis on and increased visibility of ‘Muslimness,’ resulting from a turn toward Arab-Islam and the mobility of Chinese Muslims along the New Silk Road, where they are exposed to foreign religious and political influences, could empower radical thinking and endanger China’s national security (Gonul and Rogenhofer 2017). Finally, the central government made a clear decision to privilege the issue of internal political stability. Although economic cooperation with the Middle East is still highly encouraged by the Chinese government, the aim of strengthening mutual people-to-people bonds has been superseded by the promotion of culture with ‘Chinese’ characteristics. Ningxia has thus lost its culturally and economically exploitable denomination as a center of China-Arab connectivity. This step has clearly had a negative influence on local development as Ningxia has had to forfeit some emerging industries with high economic potential, such as international halal food production.

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The strong governmental support for Muslim culture in Ningxia during recent years was a unique and time-limited case, which, however, clearly reminds us of the extreme changeability the world has to count on in regard to any Chinese policy or diplomacy approach.

References Al-Sudairi, Mohammed. 2014. Chinese Salafism and the Saudi Connection. The Diplomat. https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/letscorp_archive/arc hives/105657. Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany. 2016. China Wants to Feed the World’s 1.6 Billion Muslims. ForeignPolicy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/why-chinais-trying-and-failing-to-woo-the-worlds-muslims-with-food-halal-market/. Alterman, Jon. 2009. China’s Soft Power in the Middle East. In Chinese Soft Power and Its Implications for the United States, ed. Carola McGiffert, 63–76. Washington: Rowman & Littlefield. Alterman, Jon. 2013. China’s Balancing Act in the Gulf. Gulf Analysis Papers. Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://www.csis.org/ana lysis/chinas-balancing-act-gulf. Belguidoum, Said, and Olivier Pliez. 2015. Yiwu: The Creation of a Global Market Town in China. Articulo—Journal of Urban Research 12. https:// articulo.revues.org/2863. Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRFIC). 2017. Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Belt and Road (4). April 10. http://www.beltan droadforum.org/english/n100/2017/0410/c22-45-4.html. Calabrese, John. 2016. Fate of the Dragon in the Year of the Red Fire Monkey: China and the Middle East 2016. Middle East Institute. www.mei.edu/con tent/map/fate-dragon-year-monkey-china. China Daily. 2015. China-Arab States Expo Online Silk Road Forum. http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2015chinaarabforum/index.html. China.org. 2010. Islamic Culture, a Bygone Glory Revitalized in Ningxia. December 28. http://www.china.org.cn/travel/Ningxia/2010-12/28/con tent_21667171.htm. China.org. 2016. China-Arab Friendship Driving Journey Kicks off. September 27. http://www.china.org.cn/travel/Ningxia/2016-09/27/content_3938 0971.htm. China’s Arab Policy Paper. 2016. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/ 2016-01/13/c_135006619.htm. Chinalawinfo. 2019. Announcement [2012] of the Ministry of Commerce, Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Culture, General Administration of Customs, State Administration of Taxation, General Administration

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CHAPTER 8

China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin: The Impact of Transnational and Local Actors Jens Damm

Introduction The research presented here is based on the premise that a variety of actors involved in various transcultural and transnational networks shape cultural diplomacy in the cases examined. While their general aim of promoting interest in China is identical to that of Chinese state actors, their choice of topic and methods of presentation may differ widely. Therefore, this paper highlights the role that local actors, both foreign and Chinese, play in cultural diplomacy, discussing transnational networks and the involvement of cultural capital. In this chapter, I employ the term ‘cultural diplomacy’ in a broad sense: ‘Cultural diplomacy may best be described as a course of actions, which are based on and utilize the exchange of ideas, values, traditions, and other aspects of culture or identity, whether to strengthen relationships, enhance socio-cultural cooperation, promote national interests and beyond; cultural diplomacy can be practiced by either the public sector,

J. Damm (B) Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_8

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private sector or civil society.’1 At the same time, we should keep in mind that a much narrower conception of cultural diplomacy exists, especially in China, which emphasizes the exclusive role of the government.2 One key element of China’s cultural diplomacy is the international appeal for the creation of a ‘harmonious world’ (hexie shijie) and the specific role China is expected to play in this. This concept of harmony began to gain importance under Hu Jintao and since then has become a central argument of Chinese cultural diplomacy and soft power campaigns (Callahan 2015; Li 2008; Nordin 2016). Chinese scholars argue here that the promotion of a ‘harmonious world’ should be seen in relation to American-created theses such as the ‘end of history,’ ‘cultural clash,’ ‘soft power,’ and ‘alliance of democracy,’ which falsely give US foreign policy moral backing (Wang 2014, 366).3 Discursively, it attempts to democratize international relations. Economically, it pursues balance in South-North disparities. Culturally, it promotes the concept of the coexistence of different civilizations. Built on a multipolar system, this concept seeks to enable China to achieve moral appeal for its foreign relations; it includes establishing an image of China as a responsible, constructive, and confident power so as to rein in fears about the threat of China or Chinese hegemony (Wang 2014, 400). Xi Jinping has officially articulated a broader vision for China in response to these challenges, primarily domestic but also foreign, calling for fulfillment of the ‘Chinese Dream,’ referring to a ‘national renaissance, building a nation of prosperity, ethnic harmony, and strength and influence internationally’ (quoted in: Bader 2016; Mandelbaum 2019, 182).4 This claim is firstly 1 http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en_culturaldiplomacy. 2 I would like to thank my colleague Isabelle Cheng, University of Portsmouth, who provided a comprehensive overview on the current academic discourse on cultural diplomacy in the PRC. 3 For a critical discussion of the idea and practice of the concept of the harmonious world, which was developed by former President Hu Jintao and then transformed into the ‘Chinese dream’ by the current President Xi Jinping, see Nordin (2016). 4 On the other hand, China has become much more involved in international systems, such as:

• the United Nations, as the largest contributor of the P-5 to U.N. peacekeeping operations; • the World Trade Organization, as a frequent utilizer and target of dispute settlement cases; • the World Bank, as the third largest contributor and largest recipient of loans;

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based on the assumption that where other great powers, past and present, have engaged in coercion, violence, and belligerent imperialism, China’s long tradition of thinking about harmony makes it uniquely able and disposed to exercise soft power in world politics (Hagström and Nordin 2019, 10). Thus, in cultural diplomacy, the idea is to present China’s long history as being ever peaceful. However, a significant cohort of reputable historians has repudiated the claim of a historically peaceful East Asia that is the basis for Chinese claims to past harmonious rule. Peter Perdue (2015), for instance, calls the claim ‘absurd’ as ‘harmony’ could easily be another term for a more or less forceful assimilation of the weak. Secondly, a closer look at internal developments in China shows that this harmony discourse in China is not necessarily benign but intertwines with hierarchal rule and calls to battle diversity. One of the policies most strongly associated with Hu Jintao’s ‘harmonious society’ has been increased censorship—especially of the Chinese internet—and this practice has become particularly repressive under Xi Jinping (Hagström and Nordin 2019, 10). This association is so strong that perhaps the most common use of the term ‘harmony’ in current everyday conversations in China is ‘being harmonized’ (bei hexie le), that is, being censored online or forced out of the public discourse by other means (Hagström and Nordin 2019, chapter 4; Nordin 2016). Thirdly, Chinese political leaders and scholars insist that the rise will be harmonious and peaceful despite China’s increasing spending on the military, which for many foreign observers indicates that the country intends to rely on hard power as well as soft power.

Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in Europe, Germany, and Berlin In addition to many exhibitions on China and a city partnership between Beijing and Berlin, Berlin is the city where the first Confucius Institute in Germany opened in 2006, and it is home to the China Cultural Center. While both institutes aim to promote Chinese culture, they differ in their institutionalized form. The Confucius Institute was established

• the International Atomic Energy Agency, as a member of the team that negotiated a freeze on Iran’s nuclear weapons program; • the IMF, whose reserve currency (Special Drawing Rights) China is on track to join; and • the United Nation’s other specialized agencies (Bader 2016, 13).

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as an association according to German law (‘eingetragener Verein e.V.’) between the Free University of Berlin and Beijing University. These two universities had already established an official partnership, signing an official partnership agreement as early as 1981. This agreement was one of the first in German-Chinese higher education and resulted in numerous collaborative projects in research and teaching.5 Financial support, various materials for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and various books and magazines produced by China are provided by the Hanban (also known as the Confucius Institute Headquarters).6 Thus, the CI did not prevent the Chinese government from opening a China Cultural Center in Berlin, established under the auspices of the People’s Republic of China; the Berlin center was the third of its kind in Europe, after one in Paris, France, and another in Malta. Officially opened on May 26, 2008, it is the counterpart of the Goethe-Institut set up in Beijing by the German government and run by the Ministry of Culture.7 The Cultural Center’s status as the counterpart of the Goethe Institute means that the number of such centers is limited, as it has to equal the respective number of German institutes in China. Thus, it makes sense to explicitly explore and analyze China’s cultural diplomacy in this city. Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that Germany is a federal state without any central cultural policy, and that, unlike in capitals such as Seoul or London, only a very small percentage of the population lives in the capital. However, in media reports dealing with China’s cultural diplomacy, it seems that it has mainly been discussed in relation to the Confucius Institutes and their influence on academic freedom as well as the image of transmitted Chinese culture. We also find many positive reports on the various activities of local Confucius Institutes, which are mostly linked to prestigious universities (Hartig 2015, 253).8 For some, CIs 5 https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/international/network/strategic-partnerships/peking/ index.html. 6 Since 2006, the official title is the ‘Office of Chinese Language Council International’ (Guojia Hanyu guoji tuiguang lingdao xiaozu bangongshi; Li 2019, 5). Its predecessor was the ‘China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language’ (Guojia duiwai Hanyu Jiaoxue lingdao xiaozu), established in 1987. 7 http://en.cccweb.org/Berlin.html. 8 I received the same answers from my interviews as Hartig: ‘The more important question for the present is what actually happens at CIs with regard to events, lectures and talks. In conversation, interviewees would usually assure me that, so far, there had been no interference from the Chinese side and no attempts to push topics in a certain direction. ‘As long as I am here, we did not get any kind of instruction, which for me is

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represent institutions for exchange and collaboration between different cultures governed by different political systems; for others, they are part of a United Front directed against the West. Far less attention has been paid to other forms of cultural diplomacy, such as the role of the Cultural Centers (e.g., in Berlin), which are directly subordinate to the Ministry of Culture, and the non-state activities undertaken by various groups. These range from the Shaolin monastery (Angelskår 2013, 139–164; to film festivals and some religious groups (Hartig 2015).9 For my research, I focused on various activities and institutions of Chinese diplomacy in Berlin in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the complexities of China’s cultural diplomacy in places where the direct influence of the Chinese state is limited. The more important question is what actually happens at CIs with regard to events, lectures, and talks. In conversation, interviewees would usually assure me that, so far, there had been no interference from the Chinese side and no attempts to push topics in a certain direction. The most obvious reason for the limited nature of China’s influence was that cultural diplomacy was carried out partly outside China, but, more importantly, the actors involved had their own interests and brought their own knowledge and understanding of China, as well as the target audience.10 a counterargument to the accusation of propaganda’ (I-A3). Another director said, ‘the Chinese don’t dictate to us what we should or cannot do’ (I-A2). A statement that is repeated throughout the institutes is that “Hanban doesn’t impinge on our daily work at all” (I-G6). Although it appears that Hanban does not usually intervene in the daily work of CIs, it still has an influence on the programes of CIs by its power to reject or approve the annual project budget. According to one CI director, Hanban’s agreement to the funding depends in the last analysis on “whether they actually like the proposal” (I-A4) and it stands to reason that Hanban may not like a proposal for a project that is deemed inappropriate’ (Hartig 2015, 132). 9 Other researchers partly came to the same conclusion: ‘This article reports three main findings: (1) the geopolitical influence of Confucius Institutes is uneven in different regions and they are engaged in an ongoing process of geopolitical construction’; in addition these researchers also reported that ‘analyses of correlation with China’s national image show that not only does the influence of the institution vary in regions but also that the project could have a negative impact on bilateral cooperation, suggesting that, contrary to popular thinking, Confucius Institutes have not had a positive impact on China’s global interests,’ which seems to be too general and is very much dependent on the concrete case and ‘the capacity of the institutes in everyday operations is systematically limited, reflecting China’s inexperience in managing this global cultural network’ which also could not be established in my case study (Yuan et al. 2016, 334). 10 I would distance myself from reports that there is a coordinated and well-financed Chinese United Front strategy, as was suggested by one commentator on my chapter. This aspect has been raised, e.g., by the Nottingham-based sinologist Andreas Fulda, ‘Wie

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Semi-structured interviews were employed as the main method of data collection to access the ‘lived experience’ of participants and to elicit the meanings that participants attributed to their actions, including their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, and assumptive world (Marshall and Rossman 2006, 193). The top-down approach of China’s cultural diplomacy is characterized by the direct involvement of governmental actors, including party and state organs, and—in terms of content—focuses on ‘traditional’ Chinese values. These values are seen as deriving from the syncretic combination of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, often described in terms of ‘harmony’ and ‘harmonious society.’ This is offered as a formula for understanding China as well as a counternarrative to Western human rights, democracy, and pluralism discourses. From the bottom-up perspective, China’s civil society has encountered tremendous problems domestically, but the transnational sphere that the involvement of international NGOs with their Chinese counterparts has shaped continues to thrive despite new regulations and a general sense of insecurity about future developments. The importance of international funding and wellestablished infrastructure should not be underestimated, particularly in the case of China’s cultural activities in Europe and North America. Enacted in January 2017, China’s Foreign Non-Governmental Organization Management Law (‘FNGO Law’) has been interpreted as the clearest evidence of ‘shrinking spaces’ for civil society in China. ‘While the overall trend towards tightened political control and the restriction of independent societal initiatives under Xi Jinping continues unabated, the effects die Kommunistische Partei die Wissenschaft gefährdet,’ Zentrum Liberale Moderne ‘How the Communist Party Endangered Science,’ https://libmod.de/china-wie-die-partei-diefreie-wissenschaft-gefaehrdet/, June 12, 2019). Other sinologists, e.g., Helwig SchmidtGlintzer and Michael Lackner, have stressed the importance of cultural exchange despite the different political systems. Yan Xu-Lackner, the director of the Confucius Institute at the University Erlangen-Nürnberg, has also been cited warning against overestimating Beijing’s political intentions with respect to the Confucius Institutes. She reports on more than 80 events a year, makes critical films, and heads one of the best-funded institutes (Schmoll 2018). Especially in the United States, Confucius Institutes have had to close, but as Randy Kluver, former director of the Confucius Institute at A&M University in Texas, said: ‘I have been active for years countering these accusations that the Confucius Institutes are a vehicle for propaganda. Nothing could be further from the truth.’ Kluver left Texas A&M last year and is now dean of the School of Global Studies and Partnerships at Oklahoma State University. He went on, ‘It’s disappointing to me that, No. 1, the accusations continue to be floated even though there’s no evidence of propaganda.’ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/09/texasam-cuts-ties-confucius-institutes-response-congressmens-concerns.

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of the new legal environment for non-profits operating in China remain ambiguous’ (Lang and Holbig 2018; see also Shirk 2018). To be more specific, this chapter is based on field research, which consisted of observation, participation, expert interviews, and interviews with practitioners. In addition, a wide range of materials—e.g., websites, exhibition catalogs, and the feuilletons section of newspapers— are included. As an outcome, I hope to challenge claims that China’s cultural diplomacy is solely a state-driven, propagandistic tool for exercising soft power. The example of Berlin was chosen because the city has again become one of the most important centers in Europe both politically and culturally since the unification of Germany. This is one of the main reasons China established its Cultural Center—which the Ministry of Culture directly finances and administers—in the embassy quarter of Berlin. Various research institutions, associated with the three public universities in Berlin (the Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, and the Technical University of Berlin), have offered teaching and conducted research on China for decades. The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security) moved from Munich to Berlin in 2001, and the Mercator Institute of China Studies (MERICS) was established in 2013. The first Confucius Institute in Germany was opened in Berlin. This Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin combines academic research and cultural activities, thus providing much more than mere language training.

Berlin and China: Historical Overview and Background Cultural exchange between Berlin and China has a long history. We even know the names of the two Chinese people, Feng Assing and Feng Haohao, who came to Berlin and were shown to a larger public in 1822, as was then common (Yü-Dembski 2007, 7). In 1861, Prussia and the Qing Empire signed a friendship treaty. Subsequently, an official Chinese representative arrived in Berlin. While, at the beginning, the interaction was difficult and many rumors about Chinese cultural norms practiced in the Tiergarten villa were presented, more and more Chinese, ranging from students to business people and cooks, arrived in Berlin. Moreover, the city itself became more multicultural. One of the most successful instances of cultural diplomacy had a sad background in the Boxer rebellion. Germany had sent troops to Beijing to loot and destroy important

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cultural assets in China, but when the young Prince Chu arrived in Berlin the local press was fascinated; while there were negative comments and mockery, all in all, the image of China was elevated (Hu 2014; Steen 2014). However, it was shaped by their mutual respect and admiration for high culture as well as the increasing arrogance of the West, which resulted in the destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing after the Boxer rebellion. After this tragedy, the so-called Sühnemission des Prinzen Chun (‘atonement mission of Prince Chun’) won over parts of the population of Berlin (Butz 1998; Mühlhahn 2007). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, two Chinese people were ‘shown’ for an entrance fee, but (unlike people from ‘primitive’ cultures) there was a focus on Chinese high culture, e.g., showcasing Chinese calligraphy and Chinese fine arts. And, while one of them returned to China, the other received a villa from the Prussian king and remained in Germany. After 1881, about 120 Chinese students were enrolled in Berlin. Together with various Chinese artists and the diplomatic mission, they shaped the image of China. The era of the Chinese Republic after 1911, which was shaped by domestic struggles between conservative forces (the Guomindang, split between a more liberal and a quasi-fascist wing, and the Communist Party), also made coherent cultural diplomacy unlikely; various groups of Chinese were embedded in different networks, which also shaped the era of the Weimar Republic (Yü-Dembski 2007, 5). The Weimar Republic era was culturally productive but economically difficult. The so-called roaring twenties, in particular, shaped Berlin like almost no other European city. The image of China at that time was based on two very different groups: In the Schlesisches Viertel, there was a group of poor Chinese whom one might today call economic refugees. However, in the western parts, elegant and rich students— together with various restaurants—showed a different picture of the then Republic of China, which, in many respects, had similar problems to the Weimar Republic (Yü-Dembski 2007, 28–29). Thus, one could argue that the weak Chinese state of the 1920s and 1930s was unable to carry out cultural diplomacy on a large scale, but the urban elite represented by the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) sent their children to study in Berlin, opened expensive restaurants, and showed that China was very much interested in ‘Western’ culture. On the other hand, poor Chinese workers tended to support the leftist movement in the Weimar Republic and adhered to a Communist international idea supported by the Soviet Union. One of the ongoing cultural exchange exercises with Berlin since the 1920s has been academic exchange, wherein the Humboldtian model of

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the higher education ideal has played a decisive role. Cai Yuanpei, the Minister of Education and, later, the first president of Beijing University, paved the way for relations between Berlin and Beijing, while the Cold War played a decisive role. Cai Yuanpei had studied in Berlin and Leipzig before Hitler rose to power. After World War II, East Berlin followed the policy of the USSR and established better relations with the PRC, while the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) had closer contacts to the Republic of China in Taiwan—albeit without establishing official relations in order to avoid countering its own policy concept of German unification. Thus, the FRG did not recognize the People’s Republic that was founded in 1949; the reasons were that despite the FRG’s strict anti-Communist stance, the problem of a divided Germany was then compared to the division of China into the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC in mainland China, and a One China policy was equated to a one Germany policy. During the Cultural Revolution in China, there were almost no relations between the two German states and China, but in the 1970s relations between West Germany and the PRC became more friendly, and thus, many years after Cai Yuanpei had been to Berlin, Beijing University, and the Free University of Berlin would become partner universities. In 1972, official relations were established, but the acting capital of West Germany was then Bonn, not Berlin. East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) recognized Beijing’s government in 1949 and maintained relations even when there was a split between the Soviet Union and China. After reunification, Berlin became the capital of Germany again and China opened a new embassy in the heart of the city. The current Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin is built on a partnership between these two universities.

Overview of Networks and Institutions in Berlin Exhibitions and Museums A variety of museums in Berlin offer insights into Chinese culture. For example, in 2017, various exhibitions were held on the day the People’s Republic of China and Germany celebrated the 45th anniversary of their establishment of diplomatic ties. These exhibitions explicitly compared and contrasted the mutual influence of Chinese and Western artists and highlighted the exchange of ideas and knowledge. To date, this forms what is probably the most successful part of cultural diplomacy: when the two cultures start to interact and begin a fruitful dialogue. Examples of such exhibitions are Exchanging Gazes between China and Europe:

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1669–1907 , September 29, 2017, to January 7, 2018, Kunstbibliothek and Faces of China: Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1912), October 12, 2017, to January 7, 2018, Kulturforum Berlin. At the same time, other actors, such as the Taipei Representative Office, opened their own exhibition hall (‘Taiwan Kultursaal’) to present the ‘other China,’ that is Taiwan as an island representing both Chinese cultures and new forms of hybrid culture and aboriginal Taiwanese culture. The once-divided city has also brought together very different networks of citizens interested in China. They include former Communist academics who regard the Chinese way as an abbreviation of the Moscow way, while the West of the city was home to strict antiCommunist organizations founded in the 1950s as well as Maoist groups founded in the early 1970s. In 1957, the German-Chinese Society e.V. (Deutsch-Chinesische Gesellschaft e.V.) was founded. At first, it consisted mainly of members of the German Bundestag who were concerned about the long-term development of German-Chinese relations, which were then understood in terms of ROC-German relations; members of this organization often came from the right wing of the German conservative party, the CDU. Gradually, this organization became the Taiwan friendship group and somehow gave up their One China stance. On the other side, leftist groups in Berlin were attracted by Mao Zedong and established ‘people to people’ (minjian) friendship associations such as the Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesische Freundschaft Berlin e.V. (GDCF), which was founded in 1973. However, the latter have followed the development of modern China with great sympathy and are today much more focused on the problems associated with China’s rapid development, including the situation of minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, and negative aspects of the Chinese economic boom, such as pollution and infrastructure problems, which are discussed in their semi-academic magazine Das Neue China (‘The New China’11 ) published four times annually. Berlin-Beijing City Partnership One important aspect of a more localized cultural diplomacy encompasses officials in Berlin (e.g., the Senate—that is, the government of the federal state of Berlin) cooperating with the city government of Beijing (Beijing

11 Since 2014 only at https://dnc-online.de/.

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and Berlin are twin cities).12 There is, however, definitely a difference with regard to the influence of the local government in Berlin and in Beijing, which is due to the influence of the central government in China. A British governmental report described the situation in China as follows: ‘In general, the Chinese literature on city diplomacy is now well developed, and defines city diplomacy as a tool to attain national diplomatic goals. …Having a highly centralized political system and strong emphasis on national sovereignty, it is impossible for them to have physical offices abroad. …However, the central government retains significant control over foreign affairs at the local level’ (Acuto et al. 2016, 14–17). That is to say, in China, the city government acts on behalf of the central state in a division of labor between the central and local governments. The central government creates the policy of cultural diplomacy, and its conduct may include signing international agreements, assigning officials to cultural delegations abroad, organizing cultural and information exchange, and hosting high-profile events such as the Olympics, World Expo, and international fora on cultural policy. Local government may be relegated to facilitating actual programs or events. For example, the governments of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen were involved in the Sino-French Year of Culture (Peng 2006, 83); these cities held Beijing Week, Shanghai Week, etc., in France and Germany for this occasion. In Germany, however, the federal state governments enjoy much more autonomy—in particular because culture in Germany is defined as belonging to the federal states and the role of the federal government is very limited (e.g., only states and citystates have a Ministry of Culture, which does not exist at the central level). This different level of autonomy given to local governments and city governments could easily lead to problems between the two partners. The official website of the Berlin Senate highlights the City Partnership with Beijing with a proverb: ‘‘Isn’t it a pleasure to meet with friends from afar.’ This saying by Confucius is a good reflection of the city partnership between Berlin and Beijing: countless joint projects, reciprocal visits by delegations on the political and the working level, and personal contacts in different areas have led to many long-term cooperative projects and deep personal friendships.’13 This city partnership dates to May 5, 1988, 12 https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/en/international-relations/city-partnerships/bei jing/artikel.23713.en.php. 13 https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/en/international-relations/city-partnerships/bei jing/artikel.23713.en.php.

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when it was first established by the Magistrate, East Berlin’s city government, and its counterpart in Beijing. In April 1994, a joint declaration and a memorandum on exchange programs underscored the partnership between the two capital cities. While it is obvious that the 1958 partnership was firmly embedded in the diplomacy of two Communist parties, i.e., highly politicized, the wording of the 1998 memorandum focused on culture and avoided political context. At the same time, reference was made to the earlier East Berlin–Beijing relationship. After the unification of Berlin, Berlin of course emphasized its democratic nature, while at the same time a strong sentiment from the population of East Berlin that unification was more of a surrender of the East to the West had to be taken into account. Thus, references to historical developments during the time when Berlin was divided always were and still are a tricky issue for the Berlin Senate and the Mayor.

China’s Cultural Diplomacy Actors in Berlin14 In the following, I will briefly map China’s cultural diplomacy in Berlin. In this context, it is often difficult to differentiate between public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and cultural exchange without the involvement

14 Regarding the interview patterns: most interview partners preferred not to be named: thus, I have anonymized the interviews where possible. All interviews were carried out from June to September 2015 and then again in the same period in 2016. I was able to talk to the personnel of the CI at the Free University of Berlin without any objections, and thus interviewed as many staff members as possible, including the directors, the managing directors, and the student employees, but also talked to the audiences at various film screenings and lectures. In particular, I took part in various workshops organized by the institute. In addition, interviews were carried out with members of the CIs in Freiburg and Vienna. I also attended lectures and other activities of CIs in Erlangen-Nürnberg, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. Furthermore, I talked to various sinologists from the Department of Political Science at the Free University and the Mercator Institute for China Studies in addition to talking informally with the audience and making observations in exhibitions, lectures, and workshops at CI Berlin and the Cultural Center Berlin. I also interviewed the managing directors of the GDCF. Other qualitative interviews were carried out with members of FIAKE, Berlin. Finally, I interviewed members of the Taipei Representative Office (including the de facto ambassador and friendship organizations), as well as student organizations linked to the Taipei Representative Office in Berlin and members of the parliamentary friendship circle Taipei of the German Bundestag.

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of any official from China (or Berlin). As actors’ involvement as well as the target audience often overlap, I will start with the institutions directly influenced, financed, and managed by Beijing and then list various other organizations, while remaining well aware that one could debate whether they belong to cultural diplomacy in a strict sense. Chinese State Actors in Berlin According to the strict rule of reciprocity between Germany and the PRC, one country can only establish one cultural institute in the partner country.15 According to the cultural agreement between the two governments, the status of the Cultural Center corresponds to that of the Goethe Institute in China (hence the limited number of possible cultural institutes). From the description given on the website, the aim of the Cultural Center is not very different from that of the Confucius Institute (CI): ‘We would like to introduce Chinese culture, art and education to a broad public in Germany. Our aim is to promote cultural exchange, mutual understanding and friendly relations as well as cooperation between the two countries.’ Another factor mentioned is the bridge ‘that connects people of both cultures.’ In addition to language training, films and exhibitions are hosted in the institute. The reading room of the Cultural Center almost exclusively offers publications on China produced in China (and, thus,

15 As Hartig (Hartig 2015, 169) indicates, the Confucius Institutes, on the other hand, escape the reciprocity system as they are established and registered in the host country, and the Ministry of Education (Hanban) is only one of the actors—the others are usually the Chinese and the foreign host university or institution (http://en.chinaculture.org/ ccc/worldwide.html). From the website: ‘Interested parties can also find numerous printed and electronic media in Chinese as well as German literature about China in the in-house library and attached reading room. Be our guest and be inspired by China’s millenniaold culture’ (http://www.architektur-ausstellungen.de/institution/berlin/chinesisches-kul turzentrum-berlin). I would argue, however, that despite the similar descriptions of the Confucius Institute and the China Cultural Center, which I will describe when discussing the CI in Berlin, the largest difference remains the initial form. In the CI two partners— one Chinese and one foreign—are the main actors, and often these are universities and respective departments which have already had established forms of cooperation for years. Thus, workshops, lectures, and exhibitions which provide a much more nuanced picture of China are more likely to be found in CIs than in the Cultural Center.

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differs from the CI in Berlin, which also exhibits a large variety of publications from the East Asian Seminar, Sinology). From my observations at the Cultural Center, it seems that the prior knowledge of the audience may counteract the message of the presented films and other activities. To give just one example: I attended a screening of two films shown together on July 20, 2015. The first film, a documentary film by the director Hu Linping, The Tibetan Herdsmen of Nam Co Lake, which chronicles the daily life of a herdsman’s family living in Tibet, including the many changes brought about by economic development and the migration of Han settlers, was applauded and discussed by the audience. The second screening of that day, Puppen und Spielzeuge in China (‘Dolls and toys in China’), which also was described as a documentary (produced under the auspices of the Chinese Ministry of Culture), and showed the history of a doll maker in Beijing over one century, skipped over upheavals such as the ‘Great Leap Forward’ (1958–1961) and the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ (1966–1976), and the audience regarded this film as pure propaganda similar to films available via the website of the Chinese embassy in Berlin.16 Semi-State Actors and Cooperation Between Different Actors Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin (Konfuzius-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin) Unlike the China Cultural Center, Confucius Institutes are jointly managed by Chinese and foreign actors: ‘The Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin (KIFUB) is a non-profit association promoting Chinese language and culture overseas, initiated by the Chinese State Leadership Group for Chinese as a Foreign Language (‘Hanban’) in Beijing. It was founded in cooperation with Free University of Berlin

16 In 2019, only four documentaries were shown, three of which (by the director Chen Xiaoqing) dealt only with food culture. In 2018, there was no documentary film; in 2017, there was one screening of the documentary film Village Diary and the possibility of a conversation with director Jiao Bo on rural China, and there was no film in 2016. There were seven documentary films in 2015 (including the documentary film by Zhang Tongdao, following the lives of 18 children over 13 years), there was one in 2014, and there were four documentaries in 2013 (dealing mostly with famous architecture and landscapes).

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and Beijing University. On April 27, 2006, it became the first Confucius Institute in Germany to begin work.’17 The website, interviews with the director, and interviews with the management all emphasize various issues: Firstly, the Confucius Institute in Berlin contributes to the maintenance of Chinese-German cooperation; secondly, it offers a platform for academic exchange with China which otherwise would be much more difficult to establish; and thirdly, it has been able to establish itself in recent years as an important cultural and linguistic institution in the Berlin area for a larger audience. The cooperation agreement, the statute of the CI and the declaration of intent of the three participating institutions, the Free University Berlin, Beijing University, and Hanban state: ‘The CI stands for competent and broad language education, is an important platform for intercultural exchange, and offers an attractive cultural and sophisticated scientific program.’18 This broad range of activities offered by the Berlin CI is also officially

17 http://www.konfuziusinstitut-berlin.de/html/de/ueber-uns/index.html; Ptackova (2018).

see

also

18 The cooperation agreement, statute (of the association), and declaration of intent of the three participating institutions, the Free University of Berlin, Beijing University, and Hanban are publicly accessible under the Freedom of Information Act Berlin (IFG). Online: https://media.frag-den-staat.de/files/foi/399746/19due213aKonfuzius_Institut. pdf. In addition to questions regarding finances, the most important issues are as follows (translated by the author from German):

‘In 2005, the Peking University, represented by the President, Prof. Xu Zhihong, and the Freie Universität Berlin, represented by Uni Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dieter Lenzen, signed the cooperation agreement on the foundation of the Confucius Institute an der Freien Universität Berlin.’ … Activities The activities of the association are focused on the promotion of knowledge of Chinese culture, the cultivation of Chinese-German cooperation, the teaching of Chinese language skills, the support of Sinology and Chinese studies at the FU Berlin, and the demand of China-related projects. … Statute Purpose of the association are the requirement of knowledge of Chinese culture, the maintenance of Chinese German cooperation, the teaching of Chinese language skills, support of Chinese Studies and Chinese studies at the FU Berlin and the demand of China-related projects Letter of Intent of the National Office of Chinese Teaching as a Foreign Language, People’s Republic of China and the Free

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welcomed by the Chinese side: ‘For its achievements, the Berlin Institute has been awarded by the Chinese Ministry of Education three times in a row as a model institution. The managing director, Dagmar Yu-Dembski, received an award of excellence for her personal achievements’ (ibid.).19 Its collaborations are a secret of the institute’s success: ‘A partnership of more than 30 years links Beijing University and the Free University of Berlin. The Confucius Institute is an important joint project for both sides. The institute works closely with the Institute of China/Sinology at the Free University of Berlin and promotes China-related projects. Added to this is the cooperation with other departments of Free University of Berlin, Beijing University and partner institutions throughout Berlin.’20 The Free University Berlin’s Confucius Institute belongs to the dominant form, i.e., it is operated by a partnership between a Chinese and a foreign university supported by the ‘Office of Chinese Language Council International’ (Hanban).21 The partner university, Beijing University, is the highest-ranking university in China, and both universities have been partner universities before (from 198122 ). This may be one of the reasons why the CI in Berlin differs from other CIs, which focus mainly on language training. The CI in Berlin understands itself as offering a University of Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany on the joint establishment of a Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin. … The demand and development of Chinese teaching in Germany, including the provision of training for Chinese language teachers, the development of teaching materials according to local requirements, the organization of scientific lectures and seminars, and the organization of temporary courses. … The demand of relevant activities with the aim to arouse public interest in China or the Chinese language. By organizing activities such as academic lectures, seminars, conferences, and Chinese film festivals, an understanding of Chinese literature, history, economics, philosophy, etc., is to be achieved. 19 ‘Confucius had positive associations with teaching in particular, and culture more generally, and the name offered global brand recognition’ (Starr 2009, 69). 20 http://www.konfuziusinstitut-berlin.de/html/de/ueber-uns/index.html. 21 Sometimes, the foreign partner is another cultural institution and not a university/institute for higher learning. In Germany, it is usually registered as an association, but other legal frameworks are possible, depending on local laws. CIs are always registered in the foreign country according to their legal framework. 22 https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/international/network/strategic-partnerships/peking/ index.html.

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platform for intercultural exchange between Chinese lectors/academics, German academics, and a wider audience. In addition to language courses, the two outstanding fields are the organization of workshops and lectures on various issues, ranging from gender to questions of ecology, history, and the law. They are open to the public and offered for free, and in addition, Chinese and German artists, photographers, and academics offer a number of exhibitions related to China. In general, the Confucius Institute offers a positive, but, nevertheless, partly critical approach to political, social, and economic developments in China. At the same time, discussions after lectures and in workshops are completely open, and interested audience members are free to get further information on China, e.g., via China-critical organizations, the university, or MERICS.23 Although there has been some criticism dealing with a supposedly improper influence on teaching and research in general, I would argue that, at least in the case of Berlin, such criticism cannot be justified. In general, there have been various discussions on the role of Confucius Institutes worldwide; regarding the discussion on the influence and role of the Confucius Institutes in Germany in particular, the more critical position can be summarized as follows. The sinologist Heiner Roetz stated: ‘So far, at least, no known Confucius Institute has openly acted as China’s political mouthpiece,’ but he also points to the fact that the idea proposed by the Chinese side that CIs act as a platform to ‘understand the contemporary China’ (liaojie dangdai Zhongguo) also means that the Confucius Institutes are connected not only to the Ministry of Education, but also to the ‘CPC Central Commission for Guiding Cultural and Ethical Progress’ (Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyang jingshen wenming jianshe zhidao weiyuanhui). The thesis derived from this could then be 23 To give a few examples of the wide range of topics discussed in workshops or presented in lectures during the last two years: Workshops were organized partly in cooperation with the publicly funded GIGA Institute of Asian Studies and dealt with ‘The reorientation of the Chinese economic model under Xi Jinping: Analysis of the institutional framework’ and ‘EU-China Relations: A New Era of Cooperation?’ The addressing of other issues clearly shows an open and critical stance dealing with ‘Food security and food safety,’ ‘Green Innovation,’ and ‘20 years Beijing-Berlin: Beijing’s controversial urban spaces.’ An exhibition by high-ranking academics of Beijing University was ‘The spirit of Beijing University: A calligraphy exhibition’; various academics gave lectures on issues such as ‘The “Chinese Dream” in the Future Discourse of Modern China’ (Prof. Nicola Spakowski, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg) and ‘China’s global cultural diplomacy’ (my own lecture). Prof. Philip Clart, University of Leipzig, discussed ‘The Fate of the People’s Religion in the People’s Republic of China: 1949 to today.’

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formulated as follows: China’s soft power offensive would already have been successful if it had succeeded in concealing the negative image of China behind a colorful facade of harmlessness. Therefore, it is often less revealing what the institutes do than what they don’t, at least not yet. 24 In my interviews, however, this argument was seen as too simplistic as it was obvious, to all participants, that certain areas would not be discussed within the Confucius Institute when the German partner decided to risk establishing a joint institute with a Chinese partner. All German directors (and codirectors) also mentioned that the various Chinese academics working at the institutes take part in the workshops and lectures and in planning exhibitions, so they get to know a more critical discussion-oriented academic environment. In addition, while the Hanban is involved in the selection process for teachers and other staff, the role of the partner university should not be underestimated. A case of direct influence or attempted influence on events and academic teaching/research by the Confucius Institute on other parts of the university was not found.25 There are a number of reasons to believe that the CI at the Free University of Berlin does not influence other parts of the university. First of all, the CI is supported by two highly prestigious universities, and 24 See, for example, Roetz (2011). Arguments for a lack of criticism of China in German

academia can be summarized as follows: (1) cultural relativism; (2) sinology or the Chinese sciences have, with exceptions, by no means felt forced to correct a holistic view of Chinese culture as presented by China itself, and with regard to China’s cultural diplomacy, this is to say that China itself now propagates this image which makes it immune from criticism; (3) reasons such as the lack of funding in the German (and in general European university system) and the need to cooperate with the Chinese government. 25 In 2011, the Confucius Institute in Freiburg organized—together with Freiburg University—a reading by the exiled writer Liao Yiwu, who has been living in Germany since 2011. The website of the CI states: ‘In his new book Die Kugel und das Opium. Fates from Tiananmen Square Liao remembers the protest movement of 1989 and its bloody suppression’ (Mit der Lesung des Exil-Schriftstellers Liao Yiwu, der seit 2011 in Deutschland lebt, wird die Reihe um eine authentische chinesische Stimme bereichert. In seinem neuen Buch’Die Kugel und das Opium. Schicksale vom Platz des Himmlischen Friedens’ erinnert Liao an die Protestbewegung von 1989 und ihre blutige Niederschlagung). In general, however, Confucius Institutes as well as their European partner universities know about the limits on what can be openly discussed and advertised. This well-known fact was clear to the initiators of all Confucius Institutes, but as long as there is no interference with other academic activities and the audience is able to openly discuss whatever topic they like, the CIs are still a platform to connect China (the PRC) to Germany and Austria. Direct contact may help to increase mutual understanding, and the CIs are only one of many platforms. Others—e.g., Amnesty International or Tibet organizations—have a different attitude and the audience is free to choose.

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Beijing University, although embedded in the Chinese system, enjoys a larger degree of academic freedom than other universities. The CI is not essential for teaching Chinese to university students; it only offers additional non-graded courses. The audience of the CI is composed of highly educated people, students, academics, and Bildungsbürgertum (‘the urban educated middle classes’), who are able to reject any kind of simplistic ‘propaganda.’ Critical topics such as the situation in Xinjiang, Falungong, Tibet, and Taiwan are not explicitly discussed. However, from my personal experience giving lectures in Freiburg und Berlin, the audience asked all relevant questions as I was an associate professor in Taiwan at that time, and there were no limits to the discussion. This audience also visits exhibitions by Berlin museums, exhibitions of the increasingly CPC-critical artist Ai Weiwei, etc. Finally, as in other examples where the Confucius Institute was established at a university that already had deep knowledge of China and the local audience, the power structures were quasi-automatically in favor of local actors. The Chinese directors and lectors, who are usually sent to the CIs for two years, have to rely on existing structures and the knowledge of their local counterparts. That may be different in other CIs with (also financially) weaker universities or with no prior Chinese local knowledge (here, the role of the Chinese Director of the CI is automatically much stronger), or where Chinese language training for students is offered solely by the CI, which is, for ˇ rík and Ptáˇcková example, the case in the United Arab Emirates (see Cuˇ 26 2019).

26 In addition, there is, of course, an open discussion on the role of CIs in a democratic society. Accusations of improper behavior, e.g., in Maryland and Stockholm, have been solved by closing down the CIs. Xin Liu, who compared the role of the CIs in South Korea and the United Kingdom, also came to the conclusion that ‘despite the centralized input from Hanban and the globalized outreach of the CI, no standard “recipe” can be found for all the nine CIs interviewed, and stark differences can be observed in their day-to-day activities. Localization is essential here, as the same message sent would be received and perceived differently in the process of interacting with different ideologies, cultural spheres, historical contexts and media environment of the destinations’ (657). Furthermore, she concluded: ‘the real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another’. …What the CI offers can considerably contribute in this aspect: by bringing teachers from China to the host institutions, facilitating student exchange programs between the two partner institutions, organizing study tours, and providing scholarships and chances to study in China. All this helps to correct some of the mystified or imagined ‘knowledge’ about China, (657). ‘Correcting the improper views of China held by the evil West’ is a

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Non-State Actors (Including Transnational Chinese and German Actors) Chinaladen, in cooperation with The Society for German-Chinese Friendship (Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesische Freundschaft, GDCF).27 The GDCF Berlin was founded in 1973 with the aim of promoting friendly relations between the German and the Chinese people. According to the website, the GDCF is not tied to any party or organization, and the interviewees stressed their neutrality, which is also obvious in their publications (e.g., Das Neue China). The GDCF is analytically independent and is open to anyone who supports its goals. The GDCF Berlin is financed exclusively by membership fees and donations; the tax office recognizes it as a nonprofit. The association offers a variety of opportunities to learn about China and to engage with it. Language, painting, and calligraphy courses are regularly offered; there are monthly readings, lectures, and discussions on culture, history, tourism, politics, and China. The rooms of the GDCF can also be used to hold photo and painting exhibitions. As the GDCF has a long history in Berlin, many of its members can be found engaged in other activities. They include, for example, Dagmar Yu-Dembski, the former chief editor of the magazine Das Neue China, who later became, among other things, the manager of the Confucius Institute; and Prof. Eva Sternfeld, who is very active in development organizations in Germany and, with her Chinese counterparts, has served as a professor at the Technical University of Berlin and is today a visiting professor at the Free University.28 The GDCF is a democratic organization with no strict hierarchy and ‘supports the highly compromised Chinese propagandistic line, which is academically untenable because it doesn’t demonstrate how the West errs in perceiving China. 27 Information is taken from the website https://www.gdcf-berlin.de/ and from inter-

views with the management of the Chinaladen, the bookstore run by the GDCF, e.g., Vera Wollenweber, Dagmar Yu-Dembski. 28 See, http://www.stadtkultur-international.de/en/eva-sternfeld/: For over 30 years, Eva Sternfeld has been involved in research on issues related to the environment, urban development, and water management in China. She holds a PhD degree from the EastAsian Institute of the Free University of Berlin. From 2000 to April 2008, she worked with the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Center (CESDRRC) in Beijing. The environmental information facility was set up by the Center for Environmental Education and Communication (CEEC) of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Since August 2008, she has been an assistant professor at the Technical University of Berlin; she directs the university’s Center for Cultural Studies

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Chinese living in Berlin in intercultural exchange and promotes friendly relations through joint events and activities. Suggested topics and projects are presented and discussed at the monthly board meetings and the annual general meeting. The GDCF sees itself as a living union of active members’ (GDCF website). Other Organizations Other organizations engaged in Chinese cultural diplomacy in Berlin are more hierarchical or organized in a very top-down manner compared to the German part of the CI—always by one outstanding member. These persons are often transnational actors with strong links to China (party, government, economy, art scene), but their main field of activity is Berlin (or Germany and beyond). The Chinaclub Berlin29 and the Chinesischer Filmclub (Chinese film club) are two examples of such organizations. The films shown derive from Chinese regions such as the PRC, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Fiake is a Berlin-based cultural association with a focus on youth exchange, the organization of so-called youth days, and its members— for example, the founder, Dr. Mei Huang—have close connections to the UDK (the Berlin University of the Arts—Universität der Künste Berlin). In interviews, Fiake especially emphasizes its apolitical nature and the importance of youth exchange and was not willing to discuss any political issues. Kan Yujing (cfc-asia.de) heads CFC ASIA GmbH, the Center for International Cooperation, Intercultural Management Exchange, which views itself as an organization for delegations in the field of business but is also involved in education. The managing director, Ms. Kan Yujing, studied Chinese literature and came to Berlin in 1991 on a scholarship from the Goethe-Institut. The organization focuses on intercultural training with both Germans and Chinese. This kind of cultural diplomacy resembles

on Science and Technology in China at the Technical University of Berlin. Dr. Sternfeld has worked as a consultant for various German and international institutions. Dagmar Yu-Dembski studied journalism, art history, and Sinology at the Free University of Berlin. She is the chairwoman of the Society for German-Chinese Friendship Berlin e.V., the publisher of the magazine, ‘The New China,’ and the MANAGING Director of the Confucius Institute at the Free University of Berlin. 29 https://apwberlin.de/chinese-culture-festival-2/, www.chinaclub-berlin.de.

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strongly the definition given above—the ‘exchange of ideas, information, art, language and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding’—while the Chinese definition, which emphasizes the role of the state, is much less obvious in this case as this organization mostly works with Chinese already in Germany. Unlike the GDCF being a basic-democratic association, involved in Chinese cultural diplomacy in Berlin, Yu Zhang, a very active transnational actor, is close to the Beijing cultural establishment and has links to influential business groups in Germany and Beijing. She has founded various organizations (associations) such as China Talents and, thus, can be seen as an exponent of ‘high culture’ and the top-down approach. She is very well connected to the inner government circle in Beijing. Yu Zhang has lived in Berlin since the 1990s and thus surely represents the official political stance of China’s cultural diplomacy. The Chinese-German online platform which she initiated is probably her best-known enterprise.30 In Germany, too, she is connected to governmental groups, e.g., she is the honorary vice president and chief lobbyist of the Chinese umbrella organization in Germany (Chinesischer Dachverband in Deutschland UCCVD e.V.). She is responsible for the relationship with the German Bundestag, Federal Council, and various ministries, and is honorary chairman of the Association for Intercultural Exchange and Promotion e.V.31 Cultural Diplomacy and Research/Education In addition, Berlin is host to several research and educational organizations with a focus on China, private and public, which by teaching on China, carrying out research, and being responsible for student exchange form an important part of Chinese cultural diplomacy. I will mention them here only briefly. However, academic exchange is definitely a very important part of cultural diplomacy and this should not be left out. Sinology at Humboldt University in Berlin traces its roots to the founding of the Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Seminar for East Asian Languages nearly 200 years ago. In the late nineteenth century and then in the 1920s, this university produced famous names in German

30 www.china-talents.de. 31 www.interkulturellev.de.

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and international Sinology.32 After World War II, Humboldt University in East Berlin was home to famous sinologists of East Germany (Leipzig University was the only other academic institution to offer Sinology). After reunification, the Sinological seminar at Humboldt University in Berlin was reconstituted as part of the Institute for Asian and African Studies.33 The development of Sinology at the Free University of Berlin was influenced by both the general history of Germany and the complex history of the city of Berlin. The Institute of Sinology/China studies at the Free University of Berlin has employed an interdisciplinary social science-based approach to Sinology/China Studies for several decades. Teaching and research at the institute focus on the society of modern and contemporary China and the historical process of its formation.34 As mentioned before, the Free University of Berlin also hosts the Confucius Institute. The Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China at the Technical University is rather new. Its website states its purpose as follows: ‘At the China Center of the TU Berlin, we are working to prepare you for your international career in China-related expertise. These include aspects of Chinese culture, politics, science and technology – a broad curriculum that combines the humanities and social sciences with the MINT subjects. The topics vary because we try to stay in the current context; this way, you can better deal with the current challenges of technical-scientific cooperation. Our China-specific teaching program is unique among the Technical Universities in Germany.’ The Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China developed out of the previous ‘Forschungstelle und Arbeitsstelle Wissenschafts und Technik Kultur Chinas’ (‘Research Center and Office of Science and Technology Culture of China’), established in 1994.35 An important aspect of cultural diplomacy is, of course, language training. While in many smaller cities the Confucius Institute has a de facto monopoly on language training, the situation in Berlin is more complex. In addition to the language training offered directly under 32 The website mentions W. Grube, J. J. M. de Groot, O. Franke, E. Haenisch, W. Simon, E. Hauer, and P. Ratchnevsky. 33 https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/region/ostasien/historisches/sinologie. 34 https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/einrichtungen/fachbereiche/fb/gesch-kultur/orient/ sin/index.html. 35 https://www.china.tu-berlin.de/menue/studium_und_lehre/.

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the auspices of China via the China Cultural Center, and the language training that the Confucius Institute offers (here teachers are sent from the partner university, and locally employed staff teach some courses), the universities, the GDCF, and the local Volkshochschulen offer their own Chinese courses managed by lectors selected by the German institutions. Thus, even when the CI sticks close to textbooks from China, many students of the Chinese language have a wide choice, ranging from courses at the Technical University to courses offered by Taiwanese institutions.

Conclusion The empirical data of this study are mainly based on the case of Berlin. When considering these data, the concept of power as defined by Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1990, 1991; Calhoun 1993; Collins 1998) seems to make more sense than the ideas China and Chinese academics propose in research on power within the cultural diplomacy activities of China. Bourdieu regards power as culturally and symbolically created but strongly emphasizes processes of legitimization and re-legitimization involving agency (by certain actors) and structure (in which actors work). That is to say, in Bourdieu’s terms, both non-state actors and Chinese state actors have a certain ‘habitus’ (behavioral norms) that directs their thinking and deeds. Habitus is ‘the way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in determinant ways, which then guide them’ (Wacquant 2005).36 Cultural diplomacy cannot be controlled by a central government in Beijing alone, but develops through the interactions of transnational actors (as in the case of various cultural organizations in Berlin established by Chinese nationals, who often have very good relationships with various parts of the Chinese government, economy, or cultural scene). As soon as cultural diplomacy ‘leaves China,’ it is carried out by a variety of actors, which are partly influenced by Beijing and partly financed by the Chinese side. Nevertheless, they have to adapt to local

36 Edney (2014, 19) also argues that the ‘key tension embedded in China’s foreign propaganda practices—the tension between the desire to showcase a range of Chinese views that appeal to foreign audiences and the need to ensure they are all politically consistent—is a product of the way the Party-state uses propaganda practices to exercise power domestically.’

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rules and local environments.37 It is very hard to measure the success of Chinese cultural diplomacy. From the various interviews carried out with actors involved in Berlin, however, it became obvious that local expertise, in cooperation with Chinese actors, not only provides a platform for information exchange but also helps to attract a larger group of interested citizens in Berlin and provides connections to the political sphere of the German capital. Within academia, the Confucius Institutes are often seen as the main promoters of Chinese cultural diplomacy. However, more detailed research has shown that many different actors are involved in propagating Chinese culture either informally or in an organized manner. At some point, in the future, the results of the research in Berlin could be compared with findings from other regions, and the efficiency of Chinese cultural activities as part of Chinese cultural diplomacy could thereby be evaluated. Thus, it can be shown that the expected regionalization and localization aspects have played a decisive role because, except for those held at the Cultural Center, events such as workshops, exhibitions, and theater performances are often locally determined and adapted for a local audience, which—in the case of Berlin—can be described as urban, representing the political center, and not having any economic interest. Here, Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital as well as his idea of habitus could be employed to understand how transnational narratives can be dominated by local actors despite their officially subordinate role, e.g., in CIs, in relation to their Chinese counterparts.

37 Lately, there has been a great deal of research which highlights the increasing activities of China with respect to foreign academics, the media, and other cultural institutions. While I do not doubt the existence of these activities, the question remains whether invitations to five star hotels in China for conferences, the provision of free teaching material, and free books alone can change attitudes toward China if the materials provided are not credible at all. I myself was given free copies published by the Foreign Language Press, China International Publishing Group recently at an international conference in China, including A Concise Reader of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing 2016. I do not have to be a sinologist to understand that this book is mere propaganda, and students at the CI—the normal interested audience for anything to do with China—will recognize this immediately.

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References Acuto, Michele, Mika Morissette, Dan Chan, and Benjamin Leffel. 2016. Future of Cities: Working Paper Foresight, Government Office for Science ‘City Diplomacy’ and Twinning: Lessons from the UK, China and Globally. City Leadership Initiative, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, University College London. https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/545 780/gs-16-13-future-of-cities-diplomacy-uk-china-twinning.pdf. Angelskår, Trine. 2013. China’s Buddhist Diplomacy. NOREF Norwegian Peace Building Resource Centre. March. https://studylib.net/doc/8271602/chinas-buddhist-diplomacy. Bader, Jeffrey A. 2016. How Xi Jinping Sees the World … and Why. Asian Working Group Paper. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/ 2016/07/xi_jinping_worldview_bader-1.pdf(2). Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. The Peculiar History of Scientific Reason. Sociological Forum 6 (1): 3–26. Butz, Herbert. 1998. Kniefall und Geschenke: Die Sühnemission des Prinzen Chun in Deutschland. In Tsingtau: Ein Kapitel deutscher Kolonialgeschichte in China 1897 –1914, ed. Deutsches Historisches Museum, 173–180. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum. Calhoun, Craig J. 1993. Habitus, Field, and Capital: The Question of Historical Specificity. In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, ed. Craig J. Calhoun, 61–88. Cambridge: Polity Press. Callahan, William A. 2015. Identity and Security in China: The Negative Soft Power of the China Dream. Politics 35 (3–4): 216–229. Collins, James. 1998. Language, Subjectivity, and Social Dynamics in the Writings of Pierre Bourdieu. American Literary History 10 (4): 725–732. ˇ rík, Jan, and Jarmila Ptáˇcková. 2019. Diplomacie cˇ ínsko-arabského pˇrátelství: Cuˇ ˇ CLR a Spojené arabské emiráty [The diplomacy of the China-Arab Friendship: ˇ The PRC and the United Arab Emirates]. In Kulturní diplomacie Cíny a její regionální variance, ed. Ondˇrej Klimeš, 191–215. Praha: Academia. Edney, Kingsley. 2014. The Globalization of Chinese Propaganda: International Power and Domestic Political Cohesion. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Hagström, Linus, and Astrid H.M. Nordin. 2019. China’s ‘Politics of Harmony’ and the Quest for Soft Power in International Politics. International Studies Review 22: 507–525. Hartig, Falk. 2015. Chinese Public Diplomacy: The Rise of the Confucius Institute. London: Taylor & Francis. Lang, Bertram, and Heike Holbig. 2018. Civil Society Work in China: TradeOffs and Opportunities for European NGOs. GIGA Focus Asia. No. 6.

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Hu, Zhongliang. 2014. Liu Xiuhong - Der erste chinesische Gesandte in Deutschland. In Preußen, Deutschland und China: Entwicklungslinien und Akteure (1842–1911), ed. Mechthild Leutner, Andreas Steen, Xu Kai, Xu Jian, Jürgen Kloosterhuis, Hu Wanglin, and Hu Zhongliang, 161–194. Münster: Lit. Li, Mingjiang. 2008. China Debates Soft Power. The Chinese Journal of International Politics 2 (2): 287–308. Li, Linda Mingfang. 2019. Language Management and Its Impact. New York: Routledge. Mandelbaum, M. 2019. The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, Catherine, and Gretchen B. Rossman. 2006. Designing Qualitative Research. Thousands Oaks: Sage. Mühlhahn, Klaus. 2007. Kotau vor dem deutschen Kaiser? Die Sühnemission des Prinzen Chun In Kolonialkrieg in China: die Niederschlagung der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901, ed. Mechthild Leutner, Klaus Mühlhahn, and Hauke Neddermann, 204–211. Berlin: Links. Nordin, Astrid. 2016. China’s International Relations and Harmonious World: Time, Space and Multiplicity in World Politics. London: Routledge. Xinliang, Peng. 2006. Cong Zhong-Fa wenhuanian ‘kan woguo de wenhua waijiao’ [China’s Cultural Diplomacy Through the ‘Sino-French Cultural Year’]. Journal of Shandong University of Science & Technology (Social Sciences) 8 (3): 84–90. Perdue, Peter C. 2015. The Tenacious Tributary System. Journal of Contemporary China 24 (96): 1002–1014. Ptackova, Jarmila. 2018. The Silk Road of Friendship: China’s Cultural Diplomacy Towards the United Arab Emirates. China in a Global Context (Berliner China-Hefte 50), 131–142. Roetz, Heiner. 2011. Die Chinawissenschaften und die chinesischen Dissidenten. Wer betreibt die, Komplizenschaft mit der Macht’? Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung 35: 47–80. Shirk, Susan L. 2018. China in Xi’s ‘New Era’: The Return to Personalistic Rule. Journal of Democracy 29 (2): 22–36. Schmoll, Heike. 2018. China: Mit Konfuzius zur wissenschaftlichen Vormacht. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 2. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/kar riere-hochschule/china-mit-konfuzius-zur-wissenschaftlichen-vormacht-155 63867.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_4. Starr, Don. 2009. Chinese Language Education in Europe: the Confucius Institutes. European Journal of Education 44 (1): 65–82. Steen, Andreas. 2014. Der Zwang zur Diplomatie: Kommunikation, Übersetzung und die Verhandlungen zum deutsch-chinesischen Vertrag, 1859–1861.

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CHAPTER 9

Trajectory of Chinese Cultural Diplomacy: The Case of International Co-production of Documentaries Gary Rawnsley, Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, and Ming Yu

Introduction This chapter focuses on the historical development of international coproduction of Chinese documentaries. The authors map this history onto a broader contextual discussion of Chinese foreign policy and the development of China’s understanding of cultural diplomacy and soft power. We divide the history of international co-production of Chinese TV documentaries into three eras: (1) from 1979 to the 1990s; (2) from 2001 to 2010; and (3) from 2011 to the present. By demonstrating how the

G. Rawnsley (B) University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China e-mail: [email protected] M. T. Rawnsley School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK M. Yu School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China © The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3_9

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frameworks of international collaboration have changed and how China’s partner institutions have diversified throughout the decades, the authors argue that the international co-production of Chinese documentaries has always been guided by the state. Nevertheless, the methods of government involvement have become increasingly sophisticated as Chinese television and creative industries have integrated deeper into international markets and networks. When the Chinese authorities upheld restrictive propaganda objectives in earlier periods, the co-production partners involved often experienced much cultural confrontation and difficult negotiations during various stages of the filmmaking process. Meanwhile, the cultural products usually suffered from a deficit of international credibility. Yet as the Chinese government invested heavily in the infrastructure of the international television industry in the twenty-first century (including distribution, dissemination, and production) and acted as an equal partner with other international broadcasters, China’s cultural diplomacy began to be advanced and affected by international collaboration in the documentary sector. We argue that the development of co-production reveals a significant, unique, and successful dimension of China’s cultural relations that is often overlooked in other discussions of the subject. Most intriguing is the cooperative relationship forged between a state-led television system in China and independent production companies operating in other parts of the world. 2011 was labeled ‘documentary channel year’ (jilupian yuan nian) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) due largely to the rising domestic market demand for documentary films and the launch of two new documentary channels—Beijing Documentary and the China Central Television Documentary Channel (CCTV-9)—in addition to the six existing documentary channels (Cao 2015, 355). The international version of CCTV-9 was later consolidated into a new international cluster and relaunched on December 31, 2016, as China Global Television Network (CGTN), which served as a major platform for the global outreach of documentaries on China. As a multilingual media network, CGTN offers services in English, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian. The network comprises six television channels, overseas production centers in Washington and Nairobi, a video newsletter agency, and a new media agency (Osborne 2016). Then, in March 2018, the government announced that three national radio and television bodies—CCTV, China Radio International, and China National Radio—would merge to become the

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single ‘Voice of China,’ one of the world’s largest broadcasters with dozens of bureaux around the world producing output in more than sixty languages. We will discuss both CGTN and the Voice of China again in this chapter. In addition, since 2011, major Internet companies including Sohu, Sina, and China Online Television have started to host ‘documentary sites.’1 Researchers often observe the market-driven surge of Chinese documentaries as a reflection of both the socioeconomic transformations in China and the changing nature and mode of mass communications. However, we believe that we need to view Chinese authorities’ commitment to investing in international co-production of documentaries as a vital component of China’s cultural diplomacy strategy targeting international audiences, the domestic population, and Chinese overseas.

Investment vs. Resources: 1979 to the 1990s International co-production of Chinese documentaries in a modern sense began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. China finally ended the long disruption of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and began its ‘open door policy’ in 1978 (Huan 1986, 1). During the early years of the Cultural Revolution, television broadcasting stopped entirely, and broadcasters were dismissed from their posts. It was not until the early 1970s that the development of television in the PRC gradually resumed normality. On May 1, 1978, Beijing Television—China’s first TV station, founded in 19582 —was renamed China Central Television (Zhongyang dianshi tai, CCTV), which became China’s official national network (Hong and Liu 2015, 428). To mark this re-launch, CCTV wished to make a series of prominent documentaries with high budgets and advanced technologies, but at the time the station lacked financial resources and industry expertise. Meanwhile, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK, Japanese Broadcasting Corporation)

1 For further information about these online documentary sites, see Sohu documentary channel: http://tv.sohu.com/documentary/; Tencent documentary channel: https://v. qq.com/x/channel/doco; CCTV.com documentary channel: http://jishi.cctv.com; and iQiyi documentary channel: http://www.iqiyi.com/jilupian/. 2 Beijing Television was established on May 1, 1958, and broadcast its first television program in September the same year. With only one channel, it broadcast twice a week for two to three hours per session (Sun 1989, 210–221).

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was interested in making documentaries about Chinese history, culture, and current affairs. Shared interests as well as practical necessity pushed the two into several international co-production projects, including the 17-part The Silk Road (Sichou zhilu, 1979–1980), 25-part Stories of the Yangtze River (Huashuo Changjiang, 1983),3 30-part Yellow River (Huang He, 1988), and 12-part The Great Wall (Wangli Changcheng, 1990–1991). NHK was the first international broadcaster among the capitalist countries to have been permitted to film in the PRC since 1949. Among these programs, Stories of the Yangtze River was hugely popular. It achieved a 40 percent rating—the highest recorded in the history of Chinese television (Cao 2015, 360). During the 1980s, travel was still a luxury that most Chinese citizens could not afford. The TV series not only highlighted local history, culture, and ordinary people’s lives along the river, but also offered shots of the Yangtze River from many different angles, including a bird’s-eye view. In other words, Stories of the Yangtze River offered Chinese audiences for the first time an onscreen spectacle showcasing the longest river in China so that they could see and appreciate parts of their own national geography. Japanese singer-turned-filmmaker Masashi Sada persuaded his father to invest the full budget to fund the project—that is, 800 million JPY, the equivalent of around 4 million RMB at the time.4 A crew of thirty from Japan took part in the filmmaking process alongside CCTV’s production team. Moreover, the Chinese authorities supported the collaboration by employing military helicopters to shoot from above. However, the collaboration was not without friction. The Japanese crew could not film unless they were accompanied by their Chinese colleagues. During the shoot, the crews from both countries often clashed because of their different standpoints, methods of production, and taste in aesthetics. For example, CCTV wanted to shoot big factories, but their Japanese counterparts did not particularly care for China’s modernization. Instead, the Japanese production team preferred to pay attention to ordinary people and their day-to-day concerns. They showed their Chinese colleagues how to apply the aesthetic of direct film, capturing reality with handheld long shots,

3 Strictly speaking, Stories of the Yangtze River was not a NHK production. It was produced and funded by a Japanese singer-turned-filmmaker, Masashi Sada. 4 The equivalent of c. 47.5 million RMB (c. 7.6 million USD) today.

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which later became part of the widely adopted aesthetics of documentarymaking used throughout the 1990s in China (Zhang 2016a, 175). This change in approach in Chinese documentaries has been analyzed by Qing Cao, who observed: ‘Moving away from the grand narrative of politics, economy and nation [of the previous decades], filmmakers in the 1990s started to be drawn to ordinary people’s lives in the “popular phase,” or pingmin hua (shift to the ordinary people)’ (Cao 2015, 360). The Great Wall was another key co-production initiative in the late 1980s and early 1990s involving China and Japan. The entire project cost 6 million RMB (c. 1.25 million USD) and the full amount was once again invested by the Japanese partner (Liu 2011). The collaborative arrangement for The Great Wall was similar to that for Stories of the Yangtze River. It can be argued that during this learning period of international collaboration, China was willing to use its natural and human resources in exchange for financial investment, creative ideas, and production experiences from other countries, such as Japan, with more advanced and popular documentary-making techniques. It is noteworthy that while the Chinese and Japanese crews filmed together, they edited and distributed their final products separately. This practice revealed that the Chinese and Japanese partners had different aims and target audiences even though they collaborated on the production processes. After all, for the Japanese filmmakers, these television series might simply be cultural products for broadcast on NHK to inform, educate, and entertain their viewers. Yet their Chinese counterparts always consider the implicit or explicit policy implications of landmark documentary programs made for CCTV because the Chinese government is a major stakeholder in co-production projects. Consequently, different versions of the documentary series discussed above had different fates. For example, the Chinese version of The Silk Road met with an underwhelming response because there were very few television sets in China at that time. Moreover, the series was not broadcast on a regular CCTV schedule but was shown randomly. In contrast, in 1980, the 12-episode Japanese version running to 50 minutes per episode was broadcast by NHK in prime time every night, and thereafter, five million Japanese tourists visited the Silk Road every year. The series was subsequently shown in over 50 countries around the world. Furthermore, NHK continued to film the countries alongside the Silk Road outside of China, including India, Russia, Pakistan, and Italy, and made the second series of Silk Road in 1983 (Qiu 2014).

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The Japanese version of Stories of the Yangtze River made a huge loss because it was privately funded by the filmmaker Masashi Sada (Guanxu 2017). On the other hand, the Chinese version consisted of 25 episodes in total, and CCTV received over 10,000 letters from appreciative viewers (Cao 2015, 360). When each episode was screened on CCTV in 1983, streets in cities across China emptied as everyone gathered in front of television sets to watch the program. We should also note that the Chinese television industry experienced dramatic structural changes from the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Since the liberalization of the PRC’s media market in the 1980s, fierce commercial competition (particularly noticeable since the mid1990s), together with the rapid growth in the number of television stations—from under 40 prior to the economic reform to more than 3000 in 1998 (Chen and Guo 2011, 60)—has transformed Chinese television from an instrument of mass propaganda to a profit-making enterprise. On the other hand, the CPC continues to own all television stations in China whether they are classified as national or transnational, state-owned or commercial. Moreover, both management structures and the content of programs have also been subject to the supervision of the State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) (Rawnsley and Feng 2015, 298).5 It is within this context that we shall examine the next era of international co-production of Chinese documentaries and their implications on Chinese cultural diplomacy.

China Reaching Out: 2001–2010 Entering the new millennium, media commercialization in the context of record-breaking economic growth encouraged documentary-makers to explore new themes and subjects. However, official discourses remained dominant in major television series as CCTV commanded vast resources to build its documentary production and distribution capacity (Cao 2015, 369). In their continuous effort to extend and deepen international engagement, we can witness in this period CCTV’s persistent and proactive attempts to help China reach out to the world. 5 The Chinese government announced in March 2018 that the CPC’s Propaganda Department will take direct control of broadcasting throughout China, dissolving the SAPPRFT.

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In 2001, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing (Longman 2001). The staging of the Beijing Olympics and the media coverage of the event were widely considered as China’s ‘coming-out party’—a global and spectacular announcement of China’s arrival on the world’s stage (Callahan 2010, 1; Liang 2015, 389). In an interview with the Liberation Daily, Zhang Jigang, the deputy director of the Olympic opening ceremony, explained the spectacle’s aim: I really hope that the people of the world can get to know the Chinese culture … to get to know China, to understand China, to love China, and to desire China. This Olympics is the best opportunity. … What will they see about China? I think the most important thing is to see that Chinese people are happy. (Callahan 2010, 4)

Hosting the Olympics projects an image of national strength and virility; it communicates a strong narrative about the host nation, and both the public and cultural diplomacy implications for China were obvious. A few months after being awarded the Olympics in November 2001, China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) after fifteen years of discussions (CNN 2001), marking another milestone in China’s quest for global leadership after setting up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001. Focusing on reform and following the international condemnation of China under the leadership of Presidents Jiang Zemin (1993–2003) and Hu Jintao (2003–2013), China introduced policies to project Chinese culture globally. President Hu was the first Chinese leader to acknowledge the value of cultural diplomacy, calling in 2008 for the creation of ‘a publicity capacity to exert an influence on world opinion that is as strong as China’s international standing’ (Kurlantzick 2008, 39). In his Full Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress in 2007, President Hu Jintao described the accumulation of soft power as China’s ‘paramount state mission’ and identified ‘culture’ as the main instrument for projecting China’s soft power capacity at home and abroad: We must keep to the orientation of advanced socialist culture, bring about a new upsurge in socialist cultural development, stimulate the cultural creativity of the whole nation, and enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country to better guarantee the people’s basic cultural rights and interests, enrich the cultural life in Chinese society and inspire the enthusiasm of the people for progress. (Hu 2007, Part VII)

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China’s cultural industries were already making progress before Hu Jintao committed to these aims when the Fifth Plenary Session of the Fifteenth CPC Central Committee passed the National Economic and Social Development of the Tenth Five-Year Plan in 2000, under Jiang Zemin’s leadership. This defined for the first time in China the concept of ‘cultural industry’ and launched the ‘Going Global’ strategy (Zhu 2001). As a result, more and more Chinese documentary producers and filmmakers were encouraged to enter international television markets to seek suitable collaboration prospects. Moreover, thanks to China’s rapid economic development from 1978, and especially since the 1990s, by the beginning of the new century, China had already yielded sufficient financial resources to invest in co-production projects. The economic advantage enabled Chinese producers to select their international partners more strategically. The Chinese authorities believed they had the capacity to invest in the best technologies and equipment. They were also able to invite talent from across the world, including composers, cinematographers, and directors, to join production teams. International co-production offered Chinese filmmakers the opportunity to learn the secrets of storytelling and the design of content that might appeal to an international audience. In 2003, CCTV planned to make a series of documentaries about the Imperial Palace, otherwise known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing. China International Television Corporation (CITVC)—a state-owned enterprise with investment from CCTV and responsible for overseas sales of CCTV programs—pitched the idea in MIPCOM (Marché International des Programmes de Communication) in Cannes, an event attended by TV studios, broadcasters, and celebrities from all over the world who wish to buy, sell, and promote new programs and formats for international distribution. The BBC, Discovery, and National Geographic Channel (NGC) were all interested in CITVC’s proposal. After careful consideration, CITVC chose NGC to make and distribute the international version of the project (Liu 2016, 103). The end result, Forbidden City (Gugong, 2004), was a 12-episode documentary series co-produced by CCTV and NGC. Through NGC’s global networks, the international version of the program was sold to more than 160 countries and created the highest value of sale for a single episode among all Chinese documentaries to date. The project’s total budget was 10 million RMB (c. 1.59 million USD), funded solely by CCTV (Liu 2016, 97). It was the highest production budget for a

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Chinese documentary series at the time, although when the BBC and CCTV co-produced a six-part nature documentary a few years later, Wild China (Meili Zhongguo, 2008), the budget soared further (Feng 2012, 30). During this period, CCTV executives generally preferred to work with international commercial media companies, such as NGC and Discovery, as their co-production partners. The brand names of NGC and Discovery, together with their international market strategies were certainly attractive for Chinese producers. Another important factor was that as commercial enterprises, Discovery and NGC were considered less critical of China when dealing with domestic social and political issues. Nevertheless, Chinese filmmakers soon discovered that working with international commercial media was not without challenge. Closer examination of the CCTV and NGC versions of Forbidden City reveals differences between the two partner institutions. In the version edited and completed by CCTV, the program begins with a voiceover that intends to inspire: ‘Who invented history? Who created a great civilization?’ But the NGC’s version provides an alternative narrative: It’s the biggest palace complex in the world, with almost 10,000 rooms, so big that it’s a city unto itself and it was all built for one man. For 500 years, it was the seat of the most powerful ruler on earth. He had absolute control of the life and death of his followers. Until the twentieth century, entry to the inner precinct was prohibited to all males except the emperor and eunuchs. Trespassing in this palace met one fate, death. Even the name of the palace inspired fear, 24 Chinese emperors called it home. But their subjects called it the Forbidden City. Today as it’s long closed door open as we can go deep inside China’s Forbidden City.6

In other words, while the Chinese filmmakers aimed to glorify Chinese history and civilization through the stories of the Forbidden City, the NGC sought international audiences by revealing taboos and intrigues that had occurred within the Palace. Hence, the NGC focused more on the relationship between the emperors and their numerous concubines, as well as stories of imperial treasures. After much deliberation, CCTV

6 English scripts of the program. The episode is available online: http://www.iqiyi.com/ v_19rr9zn158.html.

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and NGC finally learned to compromise and satisfy their different interests by clarifying the complex copyright arrangements. The content of the Chinese version—12 episodes of documentaries—was re-edited and packed into a much shorter international version with only two episodes. Each episode is 60 minutes long including commercial breaks (Liu 2016, 93). Meanwhile, Chinese filmmakers continued to seek association with reputable public service broadcasters from other countries. For example, following their previous cooperation in the 1980s and 1990s, CCTV and NHK co-produced a new series of Silk Road (Xin sichou zhilu) in 2005. The series cost 30 million RMB (c. 4.73 million USD) in total and this time it was co-funded. The two crews filmed almost separately at the same sites and agreed to share the footage (Shi 2006). The different visions of CCTV and NHK were once again demonstrated in their respective versions of the documentary series: CCTV’s version focused on the histories of the Silk Road and the lives of the people it touched. It highlighted the achievements of Chinese ancestors with a dose of cultural self-confidence. By contrast, NHK’s version emphasized the present. It showed how the people along the Silk Road live today and the uncovered problems and challenges faced by modern China. Another milestone during this period was the completion of Wild China in 2008, by which time the BBC had made several ‘Wild’ series on different continents.7 This was a direct result of the Beijing Olympics, which strengthened the motivation for international coproduction between the BBC and CCTV. The budget of the entire Wild China series amounted to 5 million GBP (c. 6.94 million USD), 65 percent of which came from the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU)8 and BBC Worldwide,9 while the remaining 35 percent (including 10 7 The BBC ‘Wild’ series were produced by the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU). Prior to 2008, the titles included Wild Africa (2001), Wild New World (2002), Wild in Your Garden (2003), Wild Down Under (2003), and Wild Caribbean (2007). 8 The BBC NHU is a department of the BBC that produces television, radio, and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. For more information, visit its official website: https://www.naturalhistorynetwork.co.uk/bbc-studios-nhu. 9 BBC Worldwide Ltd. is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC and is wholly owned by the Corporation. The company was formed to support the BBC public service mission and to supplement the income received by the BBC through the license fee. BBC Worldwide monetizes BBC brands and maximizes profits on its behalf by selling BBC and other

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million RMB and local resources) came from China Television Media, Ltd. (CTV),10 a subsidiary of CCTV (Feng 2012, 30). The negotiation of the contracts between the BBC and CCTV was long and difficult. As the oldest public service broadcaster in the world, the BBC has enjoyed a long-standing and authoritative international reputation. The BBC NHU is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including globally famous programs such as Life on Earth (1979), Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), The Blue Planet (2001), and Planet Earth (2006). Therefore, from the Chinese perspective, CCTV’s status as a co-production partner with the BBC, instead of as a junior partner which merely offered filmmaking assistance on location, was a significant achievement. CCTV influenced the production in two key ways. First, Chinese producers insisted on their right to edit scripts before broadcast; and during post-production, CCTV exercised its editorial rights and changed a number of passages in the Chinese version’s voiceover. According to Gao Xiaoping, the General Manager of CTV, the revision of Chinese scripts took place for several reasons, namely outdated evidence, overreliance on a single source, providing false information, or offering an overly negative opinion about China (Ping 2008). Although the BBC maintained its editorial independence, collaboration with CCTV prompted revision of the final scripts to be more politically sensitive when discussing environmental concerns and issues. For example, before broadcast, the BBC decided to delete the following voiceover in its final version: So it is not surprising that the mother river is also known as China’s sorrow. The hutongs in Beijing with long history were the breeding ground for superstitions. Kung Fu… was once banned by the nervous government officials in the twentieth century. (Feng 2012, 28–29)

Second, all the other BBC ‘Wild’ series produced before 2008 focused primarily on natural history. In comparison, Wild China paid attention not only to the country’s natural resources and geographical wonders,

British programming for broadcast overseas. For more information, visit its official website: https://www.bbcworldwide.com/. 10 China Television Media, Ltd. (CTV), is a media company holding owned by the CCTV. See CTV website: http://www.ctv-media.com.cn/Index.html.

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but also to the history, culture, and lifestyle of ordinary men and women in modern-day China. We argue that Chinese executives treat international co-production as an important tool for communicating externally a positive narrative about China. Hence, regardless of a program’s subject, it becomes almost a default setting for any major internationally coproduced Chinese documentaries to embed a cultural message and to project China’s history and values in a positive light. Like the other internationally co-produced TV series examined earlier in this chapter, there are two versions of Wild China that are almost identical except for the voiceover. For example, Table 9.1 demonstrates the differences in their opening voiceovers. While the BBC version points out that ‘China faces immense social and environmental problems,’ the Chinese version avoids environmental issues completely. Generally speaking, the BBC version tends to ask questions, but the Chinese version prefers to provide answers. For example, in the opening sequence of the fourth episode, the BBC’s voiceover asks: ‘So how do people and wildlife cope with hardships and challenges of life beyond the Wall?’ But the CCTV’s voiceover states: ‘… in the land beyond the Great Wall, human beings and wildlife have conquered a series of natural challenges to survive.’ Another example can be found in the fifth episode where the voiceover in the BBC version says: ‘In the midst of headlong change, conducted at a pace unprecedented in human history, can China hold on to its ancient desire for harmony with nature? Can it reconcile the aspirations of its people with the long-term need to protect its environment?’ Yet for the same sequence in the Chinese version, the voiceover remarks: ‘Reform and opening-up have brought fundamental change to this country. The ideal to coexist harmoniously with nature has become deep-rooted. The road to harmony is resolving issues of imbalance between economic development and environmental protection. The entire society devotes its effort to find solutions for sustainable development.’ Then, the narrator confidently informs the viewers: ‘Chinese people have sought to achieve harmony between development and natural environment.’ The themes of ‘harmony’ and the creation of the ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) are long-standing in Chinese political discourse. In the narration above, we see how the idea of ‘harmony’ is embraced when speaking of the natural environment, thus demonstrating how such narratives seek to apply the concept beyond the political, economic, and social landscapes. It also suggests that the cultural diplomacy of co-productions

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Table 9.1 Contrasting the voiceovers in the opening sequences of the BBC and CCTV versions of Wild China (The BBC version of the voiceover is from the program’s own English subtitles. We provide our own English translation for the CCTV version from its Chinese subtitles) BBC version

CCTV version

The last hidden world China For centuries, travelers to China have told tales of magical landscapes and surprising creatures

This is a country full of vitality China Beautiful geographic landscape Abundant species It has always inspired and awed people all over the world A civilization continuous for thousands of years Continuing the nation’s bloodlines Today, 1.3 billion people and 56 ethnic groups live here

Chinese civilization is the world’s oldest and today it’s largest with well over a billion people. It’s home to more than 50 distinct ethnic groups and a wide range of traditional lifestyles often in close partnership with nature We know that China faces immense social and environmental problems But there is great beauty here too China is home to the world’s highest mountains Vast deserts ranging from searing hot to mind-numbing cold Steaming forests harboring rare creatures grassy plains beneath vast horizons and rich tropical seas Now, for the first time ever we can explore the whole of this great country meet some of the surprising and exotic creatures that live here and consider the relationship of the people and wildlife of China to the remarkable landscaping which they live This is wild China

Here we find the world’s highest mountains Boundless sand oceans From the deepest deserts to the coldest areas of ice and snow Steaming forests Harboring the dreams of rare creatures Grassy plains extend to far horizons In a glorious manner The ocean boasts its endless treasures Our journey begins from these amazing details Transcends numerous surprising circumstances and countless lives To find an answer that will move you How do people in this country coexist with all the creatures?

How do they create a remarkable lifestyle? And produce a beautiful China that brings harmony between nature and man

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likewise incorporated the dominant ideological themes of the time. That this is featured in the Chinese version of the documentary is significant. The co-production reveals China’s cultural diplomacy practices, but also confirms the continuing political resonance of the programs made. Since, in the words of the Foreign Minister, the Chinese government sees ‘diplomacy as an extension of domestic politics’ (Edney 2012, 907), the domestic program of nation-building, ensuring stability and harmony, and maintaining the CPC’s authority all explain China’s outreach activities. As Kingsley Edney has noted, ‘efforts to promote Chinese culture internationally and to increase China’s international voice are undertaken primarily in order to shape a public opinion environment conducive to the pursuit of the CPC’s domestic political agenda.’ Edney concludes: ‘Analysis of China’s soft power policies therefore needs to consider not only the foreign propaganda work the party-state is undertaking abroad, but also how it manages its propaganda work at home’ (2012, 914). Here, we can identify a clear conceptual divergence from Western approaches to soft power and public and cultural diplomacy. The latter focuses on understanding communicative activities among foreign audiences and says almost nothing about domestic opinion. However, the Chinese embrace both domestic and foreign audiences, including the Chinese diasporic communities. CCTV’s Gao Xiaoping regarded the cooperation with the BBC as much as a co-production of cultural output as a learning curve for both sides (Ping 2008), helping the BBC and CCTV to establish a mutually agreeable formula for future collaborations. As CCTV becomes increasingly confident and competent in their alliances with a variety of international broadcasters, CCTV’s partnership is today actively sought by many prominent media companies from different parts of the world.

International Expansion of Chinese Media: 2011–Present Liu Yunshan, Director of the Propaganda Department of the CPC declared in 2009: It has become an urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status. Nowadays, nations which have more advanced skills and better capability in communications will be more

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influential in the world and can spread their values further. (quoted in Scotton and Hachten 2010, 113)

It is apparent that China in the twenty-first century has placed considerable faith in generating and communicating its version of ‘soft power.’ The government in Beijing continues to devote extraordinary amounts of money (c. 9 billion USD per year), time, and talent to designing and executing its soft power strategy (Rahman 2010). The more the authorities have recognized documentary’s potential for cross-cultural communication, the more the international co-production of television documentaries has become an invaluable part of China’s cultural diplomacy strategy that may correspond to China’s soft power aspirations. As Gary Rawnsley (2015, 460) has commented: ‘Today China not only continues to export televisions (and increasingly television programs), but also China’s idea of China is more noticeable around the world.’ So, in China’s documentaries and its strategy of encouraging international coproduction, we see the convergence of themes: the ‘China Dream’; the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; pride in the past and ambition for the future; the alleged success of the China model of governance; the purity of Chinese culture and values; and, above all, the need to challenge the West’s supposedly distorted image of China. Again, we can argue that Chinese documentaries—even those focusing on nature and the environment—are not apolitical, but are designed to communicate a specific positive image about China to audiences both inside and outside the country. CCTV Documentary Channel In October 2011, the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee passed ‘Major Issues Pertaining to Deepening Reform of the Cultural System and Promoting the Great Development and Flourishing of Socialist Culture,’ which furthered political support for the development of Chinese cultural industries (Zhang and Hu 2012, 11). Later in the same year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT)11 issued guidelines, ‘Further Strengthening the TV Star Integrated Channel Program 11 SARFT merged with the General Administration of Press and Publications in early 2013 and became the State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT); see Creemers (2015, 60). The government announced in March 2018

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Management Advice’ (commonly known as the ‘Entertainment Restriction’), which required all television channels to offer more documentary program slots to accelerate the development of the Chinese documentary industry (Zhang and Hu 2012, 38). As part of these plans, the CCTV Documentary Channel was launched as a major platform for the global outreach of documentaries. The international version of CCTV-9 later was renamed CCTV-N and in December 2016 CGTN (Osborne 2016). Then, in March 2018, the government announced that three national radio and television bodies—CCTV, China Radio International, and China National Radio—would merge to become the single ‘Voice of China,’ one of the world’s largest broadcasters producing programming in more than sixty languages. CCTV-9 learned to play down ideological content and commissioned documentaries on natural science, culture, and history. Particularly significant is that the new channel no longer only produces and broadcasts China-related themes, but also creates programs with a global outlook. For example, Supersized Earth (2012), a three-part series co-produced by the BBC, Discovery, and CCTV looks at the world’s largest and most ambitious engineering projects and explores the power of human ingenuity and the making of the modern world (BBC 2012). In 2013, CCTV participated in two international collaboration projects: Wonders of Life, a five-part documentary series presented by the British physicist, Professor Brian Cox, and co-produced by the BBC and CCTV-9;12 and Africa, a six-part natural history documentary series co-produced by the BBC NHU, Discovery, CCTV, and France Télévisions.13 One year later, an even larger group of international broadcasters joined forces and co-produced Hidden Kingdoms (2014), a three-part television series showing how animals experience the world from their perspective. The participants in this project included the BBC NHU, Discovery, RTL Group (a European entertainment network based in Luxemburg), France

that SAPPRFT would be dissolved and the CPC’s Propaganda Department would take direct control of broadcasting throughout China. 12 The BBC official site for the program is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01 rgjt0. However, Wikipedia offers clearer information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Won ders_of_Life_(TV_series). 13 Wikipedia entry for the program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa_(TV_series).

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Télévisions, and CCTV-9.14 Then, The Hunt was made in 2015, a sevenpart documentary series narrated by English veteran broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough. This was co-produced by the BBC NHU, the UK’s Open University, BBC Worldwide, BBC America, CCTV-9, and a German company, NDR Naturfilm.15 These examples demonstrate how CCTV has become integrated into the mainstream networks of international co-production since 2011. By regularly associating itself with reputable institutions and globally recognizable television series, CCTV has steadily accumulated international status as a brand name in the documentary sector. Moreover, the documentary outputs produced and endorsed by CCTV-9 and CGTN have similarly gathered increasingly higher levels of international credibility. CICC Another important organization during this period is the China Intercontinental Communication Center (CICC, Wuzhou chuanbo zhongxin) under the direct control of the State Council Information Office16 and established in Beijing in December 1993 (see also the chapter of Ondˇrej Klimeš in this volume). Although it used to produce a huge number of documentaries, they were mostly considered propaganda and did not attract any international attention. However, in 2011, CICC was restructured and transformed into an enterprise (though still under the State Council Information Office). Since then, CICC has played a much more active role in achieving its goal—‘let the world understand China, let China understand the world’—by working with ‘more than 70 TV organizations in over 30 countries and regions’ (Video China 2017). Several documentaries co-produced by CICC and its international partners provide insight into how the Chinese media has expanded and penetrated international TV markets.

14 Official

site of the program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01nppg8. Wikipedia entry for the program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Kingdoms. 15 Official site of the program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0342d1x. Wikipedia entry for the program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(BBC_ series). 16 The official website of CICC is: http://www.cicc.org.cn/ (in Chinese). The official website of the State Council Information Office is: http://english.scio.gov.cn/.

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Chinese New Year: The Biggest Celebration on Earth (2016) is a collaboration between a British production house, Lion Television, and CICC. In this three-part series, the film crew shot in ten different locations around China, including Hong Kong, in the run-up to the Spring Festival to understand how Chinese people celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year (Xinhua 2016).17 When the series was first shown on BBC Two (a terrestrial channel available in the UK) between February 14 and 16, 2016, some critics considered it controversial. For example, Wang Yuanyuan, the Head of Production at CICC, noted: ‘Our UK co-producer of Chinese New Year said it would be “unimaginable” in the past that BBC could broadcast our programs as they were because the three episodes were full of positive content about China’ (Yu 2016, 50–55). According to Xinhua News Agency, since its release in the PRC on February 29, 2016, Chinese viewers across the world watched this TV series via two major Chinese video websites (Xinhua 2016). In other words, we should always be mindful that the target audiences of China’s international co-production consist not only of the international community, but also Chinese at home and abroad (returning again to our previous discussion about the domestic propaganda value of cultural practices for the Chinese government). Researchers have long predicted how the prospect of a global Chinese audience will reshape the screen industries in China, Asia, and the rest of the world (Curtin 2007). The impact of this vast and increasingly wealthy market on Western media conglomerates and telecasters has become more evident in the latest period of international co-production. Since the 1990s, the Discovery Channel has tried hard to gain access to the Chinese television market. Although Discovery has been available in Taiwan and Hong Kong since 1994, it struggled to reach audiences on the Chinese mainland until the CICC invited Discovery to work jointly on How China Works in 2014. How China Works represents a new collaboration model for international co-production of Chinese documentaries. It is not a stand-alone three-part series, but forms part of a new documentary platform cocreated by CICC and Discovery, ‘Hour China.’ How China Works was first broadcast by Discovery Asia on March 28, 2015. Meanwhile, ‘Hour China’ is a weekly one-hour slot on Discovery Asia, dedicated

17 The official website of the program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071c3nh.

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to showcasing China’s wildlife, technological wonders, architectural and engineering feats, and culture (Shen 2015). At the time of writing this chapter in May 2018, ‘Hour China’ has 103 million subscribers in 37 territories across the Asia-Pacific. The founder of Discovery Channel, John Hendricks, believed that CICC was able to sign such a contract with Discovery because ‘our programs are generally not “hostile” towards governments’ (Dong 2005). How China Works was the first series of documentaries to be shown on ‘Hour China.’ In these programs, host and architect Danny Forster traveled across the land ‘exploring the country’s most ambitious projects and technological innovations to gain insight into China’s newly urbanized society.’18 Enrique Martinez, Acting President of Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, was full of praise when talking about How China Works. Asked whether the series amounted to an ‘advertorial’19 funded by the Chinese government, he responded: ‘I’d say watch the shows. They’re incredible, insightful, and just extremely deep analyses of what is transpiring. One of the things that are very clear right now is that China is on the world stage’ (Sonmez 2015). In the meantime, CICC also established a three-year partnership with NGC to make ‘China Revealed,’ a weekly one-hour slot on NGC Asia ‘that will bring viewers a brand new block of programming showcasing the hidden natural beauty and culture of China’ (Asia Fresh News 2016).20 The first series shown on ‘China Revealed’ was China from Above, co-produced by NGC and CICC. This two-part documentary records ‘an epic aerial journey across China’s varied landscapes and cultures to unveil the secrets of the living past in a fresh new perspective,’ revealing ‘how China has developed its cities while still keeping its traditions, and how modern China lives, eats, works, travels and plays on a

18 Discovery Press Web: https://press.discovery.com/emea/sci/programs/how-chinaworks/. 19 ‘Advertorial’ usually means a newspaper or magazine advertisement giving information about a product in the style of an editorial or objective journalistic article. Here, the term is borrowed to refer to the way the international media companies receive funding from the Chinese government to produce documentaries to help shape positive images for China internationally. 20 The official site for ‘China Revealed’ on NGC Asia is: http://www.natgeotv.com/ asia/china-revealed.

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mega scale.’21 The programs were broadcast in 45 languages in 171 countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US on September 24, 2015 (Zhang 2016b, 12). By 2017, ‘China Revealed’ was available on 41 NGC channels in Asia, Europe, and Latin America covering over 300 million users in 170 countries and regions around the globe. In 2017, the CICC recommended re-commissioning both How China Works and China from Above for a second series.

Conclusion This chapter has investigated the evolution of the international coproduction of Chinese documentaries from 1979 to 2018. We have examined how co-production has been used to further the state’s international ambitions and fulfill its soft power strategy targeting audiences within and outside China. We have also discussed the changing practices of and influences on different broadcasters and international TV documentary markets. As Chinese television has become more adaptable and incorporated into the international system through investment in both ‘hardware’ (i.e., filmmaking technology and equipment, broadcasting platforms, distribution networks) and ‘software’ (i.e., programs and content), it can be argued that internationally co-produced documentaries have been one of China’s most powerful and effective tools of cultural diplomacy in recent years. Through their regular and close collaboration with reputable international television producers and broadcasters such as the BBC, NGC, and Discovery, CCTV-9 and CICC have progressed faster toward international credibility than at any time in the past. In addition, it is not just the state media in China that has expanded its engagement in international co-production, as regional and commercial media companies are also actively involved in international television. For example, Yunji Media in Shanghai worked with the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) in 2016 to co-produce a documentary, Super Asia, as a follow-up to KBS’s commercially successful seven-part documentary series, Super China (2015). In Super China, Korean filmmakers traveled the world to explain China’s success and impact on the global economy, international political structures, and culture. 21 Quoted from the official site of China from Above: http://natgeotv.com/asia/chinafrom-above/about.

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Furthermore, the BBC’s flagship documentary series, Planet Earth II (2016), received funding from a Chinese digital media company, Tencent. When the series was broadcast on the BBC in the UK, it was shown simultaneously in the PRC via the Tencent video website and attracted 760 million clicks, ranking top among all the online documentaries in China (Zhang 2017, 12). Tencent video’s documentary commissioning editor, Huang Pingmao, told us during an interview: ‘If Tencent showed Planet Earth II later than the BBC, the number of clicks would be far fewer, which means the company will lose a lot of money.’22 In other words, international co-production of documentaries has become increasingly commercialized in China, with Chinese media ever more integrated into international frameworks. Nevertheless, it is most likely that state policies will continue to determine the future of China’s international co-production. For example, as soon as Xi’s government announced ‘The Belt and Road Initiative,’23 many new international co-produced documentaries were made about it. In April 2016, the State Council Information Office invited 17 media organizations from home and abroad—including CICC, Discovery, NGC, History Channel, and many others—to jointly form the Belt and Road Media Cooperation Union (B&R MCU). This aimed to integrate media resources along the Silk Road for more potential cooperation in terms of program production, dissemination, and marketing. Within a year of its formation, the number of member organizations inside the B&R MCU increased from 17 to 43 (CICC 2017), and several documentaries were completed through the B&R MCU framework, including The Rise of Silk Road (Silu jueqi, 2016), Crossroads: 2000 Years on the Silk Road (Duiwang: Silu xinlucheng, 2017), and Delicacy Hunter on the Silk Road (Mianmian daguan: Sichou zhilu shang de mianshi, 2017). These programs were all co-produced by CICC and Discovery. Another two documentaries—Route Awakening: The Belt and Road (Huanxing Zhongguo: Yidai yilu, 2017) and Maritime Silk Road Reborn (Ershiyi shiji 22 An interview with Huang Pingmao, Tencent Office in Beijing, December 19, 2016. The interviewer was Qian Zhao, a member of Ming Yu’s research team. 23 The One Belt, One Road program, later known as the Belt and Road Initiative

(BRI), was launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 during a visit to Kazakhstan and Russia. Planned as an economic ‘belt’ linking China with Western Europe through central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and the Balkans, it complements the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ linking China to the Mediterranean through the Indian subcontinent and the Persian Gulf. The BRI connects China to over 60 countries.

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haishang sichou zhilu, 2017)—were broadcasted on the NGC’s ‘China Revealed’ platform. Moreover, CICC established a transnational television network, the Silk Road Transnational Broadcasting Network (Silu dianshi kuaguo lianbowang ). The first project undertaken by this new network was a program strand named USilk (Silu shijian), which in January 2017 began broadcasting in 11 different languages on prime time (30 minutes per episode) on partner channels and reached 500 million viewers in 40 countries. China is rapidly expanding its international capacity for documentary production, distribution, and dissemination. While Chinese broadcasters have gained international credibility by working closely with reputable producers and broadcasters and have integrated further into the international documentary industry, one cannot help but wonder if and when the state presence will become a hindrance. One interesting example occurred in October 2017 when a documentary series, China: Time of Xi, was shown in ‘Hour China’ on Discovery Asia (Zhang and Hu 2018, 324–325). The series introduced President Xi Jinping in a completely positive light, even though it was produced by Discovery, prompting observers to note its propaganda flavor and comment on how China is increasingly able to find willing media partners abroad to help tell China’s stories better (Chen 2017). In other words, no one can or should take international credibility for granted. Building credibility—and trust—is a long-term process and one that can suffer serious setbacks as a result of the slightest knocks and jolts. This means China’s documentaries must continue to seek credibility, but it also means recognizing that political factors, beyond the control of the producers, will also play a role in cementing the reputation of China’s programming. It is possible to argue that the signs are positive: international co-production has built a framework for the transnational relationships that are the lynchpin of cultural diplomacy, and this has occurred while both sides of the partnership recognize that changes are needed to the final versions of programs for different markets, and that compromises must sometimes be found. After all, diplomacy is the art of negotiation, comprise, and finding a common ground that will grow a relationship. However, as Xi Jinping continues to tighten the CPC’s grip on culture in China (as documented by Gary Rawnsley’s chapter in the volume), the continuing success of these cultural diplomacy practices in the production of documentaries must remain uncertain.

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Index

A Ai Weiwei, 191 ASEAN, 90, 117

B Beijing Olympics, 16, 25, 207, 210 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 4, 5, 26, 35, 38, 66, 78, 90, 117, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 151, 165, 221

C Cai Yuanpei, 181 Central Commission for Guiding Cultural and Ethical Progress, 189 China-Arab, 150 China-Arab Economic and Trade Forum, 151 China-Arab Friendship, 148–150, 160 China-Arab States Expo, 151, 155, 156, 158

China Central Television (CCTV), 71, 130, 132, 202–206, 208–214, 216, 217 China-Eurasia Expo, 44 China’s foreign policy, 16, 38, 47, 65, 67, 73, 201 China’s international television service (CGTN), 24 Chinese characteristics, 4 Chinese community in Malaysia, 91, 92, 103, 104, 116, 123, 125, 129, 131–135, 137, 138 (Chinese) Cultural Center, 2, 123, 159, 175–177, 179, 185, 186, 196, 197 Chinese diaspora, 77, 91, 96, 99, 101, 104, 107, 108, 119, 137, 138 Chinese Dream (Zhongguo meng), 3 Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu), 3, 39, 42 Chinese New Year, 54, 218 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, 148 city partnership, 175, 182, 183 community of shared interests, 93

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 J. Ptáˇcková et al. (eds.), Transnational Sites of China’s Cultural Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5592-3

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228

INDEX

Confucius Institute (CI, Kongzi Institute), 2, 5, 6, 28, 42, 46, 48, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 77, 79, 81, 115, 119, 123, 127, 128, 133, 134, 139, 175, 176, 179, 181, 185–192, 195–197 connectivity of people’s hearts’ (minxin xiangtong ), 50, 146 cultural diplomacy, 1, 2 cultural infiltration (wenhua shentou), 26

hard power, 1, 13, 14, 24, 29, 118, 175 harmonious partnership, 99 harmonious society (hexie shehui), 4, 67, 175, 178, 212 harmonious world (hexie shijie), 4, 67, 174 Hui, 41, 42, 77, 147, 150, 152–154, 156, 163, 164 Hu Jintao, 2, 25, 150, 174, 175, 207, 208

D domestic structures, 92, 108, 115, 116, 119, 124

I image, international image, 146, 219 instrumentalism, 65, 72, 79, 82 International Zheng He Society, 95, 97, 99 Islam, 43, 46, 47, 99, 101–103, 107, 124, 127, 147–151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 163, 165

E Economic Belt, 68. See also Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) exchange diplomacy, 119, 128 F festival, 29, 116, 120, 123, 138, 139, 177 financial diplomacy, 119, 120, 123 G Going Global strategy, 137, 208 Great Opening of the West (xibu da kaifa), 38, 44, 147, 150, 151 Great Silk Road, 68, 69, 75, 78 H hajj, 153, 156, 165 halal , 127, 152, 154, 161, 162, 166 Hanban (Office of Chinese Language Council International), 123, 125, 128, 176, 177, 186, 187, 190, 191

K Key Projects for China’s Cultural Export’ certification (Guojia wenhua chukou zhongdian xiangmu), 159

L love of the country’ (aiguo), 148

M Maritime Silk Road, 66, 90, 93, 103, 221. See also Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) media, 2, 5, 15, 16, 44, 48, 54, 71, 116, 126, 130, 133, 135, 176, 185, 191, 197, 202, 206, 207, 209, 214, 217, 218, 220, 221 Ming voyages, 107

INDEX

Ministry of Culture, 153, 159, 176, 177, 179, 183 Muslims, 37, 39, 41, 44, 48, 51, 52, 54–56, 93, 98, 99, 101, 102, 107, 124, 127, 145, 147–155, 162–166 Hui, 147, 148

N National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, 26 National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 148 nationalism, 19, 28, 30 national unity, 26, 55, 104 nation building, 105–107, 214 nation-state, 80, 81, 91, 92, 102, 104, 107 Ningxia, 145, 147–158, 160–166

P Park of China’s Hui Muslim Culture, 154 patriotism (aiguo), 148 peaceful rise of China, 67, 92, 93, 97 people to people (friendship) (minjian), 182 Pilot Economic Zone, 152, 156, 157, 160 political reeducation camps, 48 propaganda, 2, 4–6, 16, 24, 28, 43, 44, 49, 51, 55, 71, 123, 177, 178, 186, 191, 196, 197, 202, 206, 214, 217, 218, 222 public diplomacy, 2, 3, 5, 6, 15, 21, 25, 28, 36, 40, 42–44, 50, 54–56, 65–67, 70–72, 75, 76, 79–82, 119, 128, 133, 137, 148, 166, 184

229

S security, 21, 26, 27, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42–44, 55, 56, 90, 117, 152, 166, 179 separatism, 39, 47, 48 Shanghai Expo, 16, 25 Silk Road, 37, 65–69, 72–76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 145, 149, 154, 157, 205, 210, 221 Silk Road Economic Belt, 38 Sino-Arab Cooperation Forum (Zhong A hezuo luntan), 150 smart power, 13 Society for German-Chinese Friendship, 193 soft power, 2, 13–16, 24, 26, 27, 36, 44, 56, 65, 67, 71, 106, 115, 118, 119, 134, 146, 174, 175, 179, 201, 207, 214, 215, 220 South China Sea Dispute, 5

T Taiwan, 4 Tibet, 4 tourism, 41, 96, 97, 116, 192 trans-border nationality (kuajie minzu), 42

U Uzbek-Chinese Society, 74

V vocational training center, 48

W Wang Zhengwei, 150 Wild China, 209–213 win hearts and minds, 4, 118 win-win, 99, 103

230

INDEX

World Muslim City (Shijie Musilin cheng ), 157 X Xi Jinping, 3, 5, 6, 25–27, 35, 38, 44, 55, 66, 68, 106, 129, 138, 148, 159, 162, 165, 174, 175, 178, 189, 220–222 Xinjiang, 4, 5, 36–48, 50, 52–56, 68, 147, 149, 151, 152, 165

Y Yinchuan International Trade City, 157 Z Zheng He, 89, 92–107, 116