Prof. Jinghan Zeng on Confucius Institute and China’s Soft Power

Author of "Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director, Volume 1: Challenges, Controversies, and Realities" in conversation at Mapping Global China

Palgrave Macmillan has recently published Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director, Volume 1: Challenges, Controversies, and Realities, the first insider memoir from a Confucius Institute director during a time of growing global controversy, by Michael Jinghan ZENG, now Professor, Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong.

Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong, Zeng established his academic career in the UK. At 31, he was appointed Professor of China and International Studies at Lancaster University (a top 7 UK University at the time), becoming one of the youngest full professors in Britain. Simultaneously, he served as Director of its Confucius Institute, leading a team of nearly 30 staff in the university.

As Western concerns about undue Chinese state influence, especially through Confucius Institutes, on Western university campuses linger, the book is an unprecedented personal account that deserves attention.

The following is a conversation at Mapping Global China, founded and led by Maria Adele Carrai, Assistant Professor of Global China Studies, NYU Shanghai, on Confucius Institutes and China’s Soft Power.

The mission of Mapping Global China is to facilitate informed discussions, expand debates, and enrich the understanding of Global China, ultimately contributing to a more connected and informed world that values diversity, collaboration, and equitable development.

The recording of the interview is available on Mapping Global China’s official YouTube channel.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Hello and welcome to Mapping Global China’s Conversations. I’m Maria Adele Carrai, and through Mapping Global China, we aim to deepen understanding of China’s global presence and impact, looking not only at its economic footprint, but also its political, cultural, and normative dimensions. Our goal is to move beyond one-dimensional narratives and bring together diverse perspectives that help us see the many ways China interacts and shapes the world. This series is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, NYU Shanghai, and the British Academy.

Today, we are delighted to welcome Professor Jinghan Zeng, professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong, where he has just moved. He’s also the founding editor and chief of the Cambridge Forum on Technology and Global Affairs. Professor Zeng is a leading scholar of Chinese politics and international relations whose research spans from the Belt and Road Initiative, the geopolitics of artificial intelligence, and China’s cultural diplomacy through the Confucius Institute. He’s also been one of the youngest directors of Confucius Institutes in the UK, and he will tell us more about his experience there today, along with his forthcoming book, Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director. So, thank you very much for being with us today, Professor Zeng.

Jinghan Zeng:

Thank you for having me.

Maria Adele Carrai:

So, let me start with some questions about your personal trajectory. You pursued your education and career across China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and now Hong Kong. How have these different contexts shaped your research focus and your approach to international relations and Chinese politics?

Jinghan Zeng:

Right. I think a lot of that provides a very different kind of cultural context of where we’re working on. When I do research on China, I find that it’s very interesting how you can get very different kinds of perspectives when you talk to people in mainland China, or talk to people in the U.S., or talk to people in the UK. My academic career started by studying the domestic politics of China, and gradually I became more interested in how this domestic politics has been shaping Chinese foreign policy and China’s role in the world. That is where my main passion for academic research really is.

The way that when you study China, you’ll find that perception matters a lot, and China is often, I would argue, not the kind of China that people perceive in Europe, in the U.S., and even in China. The way you look at China is very different depending on your angle, even for people who are in China as well. So that’s where I find international relations very interesting—with people in different kinds of perspectives, based on different geographical locations. Their perceptions of China and international relations are different. That’s why I think the passion for understanding how different regions understand China and how they understand the new global order is part of the reason that drives me from the U.S. to the UK and now back to Hong Kong.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. I have a question for you with regard to perceptions, because there are perceptions, but then there is also some objectivity about what China is and what China is trying to do globally. Do you think that’s accurate to say, or is it all about perceptions?

Jinghan Zeng:

I think that’s very much relevant to a theoretical debate. If you talk to people who write a lot on constructivism, they will tell you everything is socially constructed. In that regard, all we think about China is being socially constructed. So it’s a lot about how you perceive it, not necessarily about what China objectively does. But realism might tell you a very different kind of story. So, I think I’m kind of between. I think what China has been doing in the world, in many ways, has been shaping the perception, but I don’t think that the perception always accurately reflects what China is doing and what China wants to achieve.

And I think this is directly relevant to the topic we’re going to talk about today—about the Confucius Institute. I think a lot of the way we talk about Confucius Institutes in Europe and the U.S. doesn’t really match what I observed as an insider of Confucius Institutes. So, the perception of China doesn’t always match what China is actually doing or what China actually wants to do.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. Before going into your forthcoming book that tells the broader public about your experience as a very young director of a Confucius Institute, I want to discuss a bit more about soft power and public diplomacy because there is a mismatch here. China has spent a lot of money and effort to become a global power and to be perceived as a soft power—to cultivate its soft power reach globally—and the Confucius Institute has been part of it. You can elaborate more on that later. But if we stick to soft power, how do you see soft power? What is China trying to do to achieve soft power globally? And why is there this bit of a mismatch? It’s actually backfired on China; a lot of Confucius Institutes have been shut down. Even beyond Confucius Institutes, what has China been trying to do more broadly, if you were to situate Confucius Institutes within the soft power debate? What is China trying to do to expand its soft power?

Jinghan Zeng:

That’s actually a very good question, and it’s a question that I want to address directly in the book as well. When you talk about soft power, it comes from a concept from an American scholar who is very famous, and it’s a concept that China attaches a lot of importance to as well. When Hu Jintao was talking about China’s soft power, it was very much about constructing or promoting an international environment that is positive or favourable to China’s peaceful rise, so that China can concentrate on its domestic development. There are a lot of very brilliant scholars who have written very good work on soft power studies, and I think some of them have been cited in my work as well.

But I think I want to focus a bit on the relationship between Confucius Institutes and soft power. It’s certainly true, as you said, that China has been spending a lot of money on soft power, and Confucius Institutes are part of it. But I think we need to look at Confucius Institutes more comprehensively. That’s a key argument I make in the second volume of my book, which might still take some time to come out. I make the argument that soft power is only one dimension of Confucius Institutes, and that’s a general misperception about Confucius Institutes.

Every time people talk about Confucius Institutes, either politicians who have been saying that Confucius Institutes are there to promote Chinese propaganda, promote Chinese influence, promote Chinese soft power, change our perceptions, or academic analyses that focus on how Confucius Institutes are there to deliver soft power. But what I am arguing is that this is only one of many dimensions of Confucius Institutes.

To briefly summarise, number one, Confucius Institutes are joint partnerships. So, they’re not only Chinese; they are founded between a Chinese organisation and a local organisation. So it’s only half Chinese. Or if we use a baby as an example, it’s a mixed baby. The Confucius Institute in the UK is a mixed baby. It’s not entirely Chinese, and the local organisation has a considerable amount of governance and management of the Confucius Institute project. They’re not interested in promoting Chinese soft power; they have their own institutional interests. That’s the key argument I make there.

Number two, when you think about the idea that China wants to promote soft power through Confucius Institutes, the question is, who is China? Who are you talking about? And that’s something I unpack in the entire project as well, where I argue that there are multiple Chinese stakeholders. You do have, like, the Confucius Institute headquarters and now the Chinese International Education Foundation, which has the view that we can use Confucius Institutes to improve China’s national image—that is true. But you also have other Chinese stakeholders, like Chinese universities, who kind of support that idea but are driven more by their own institutional interests. So, there’s a bit of nuance there that we need to understand. It’s linked to the wider debate globally about the kind of misconception that China is a unitary actor. But actually it is not, and it has very diverse, sometimes competing, interests.

So, if you follow that logic, you will see that it’s not always driven by soft power. Soft power is only one dimension of Confucius Institutes.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. Following your reasoning, which I completely support, about China having many different stakeholders, you were one of the stakeholders of the Confucius Institute in your own way. Can you tell us a bit more about your own experience—the period of your serving as a director of a Confucius Institute? Just a bit more broadly about your own experience there and how your being a stakeholder influenced the final baby, as you said. What was your unique component that made up this unique baby of a Confucius Institute?

Jinghan Zeng:

So there are several stakeholders. In the Chinese one, you’ve got the founder, previously the Confucius Institute Headquarters. You’ve got a Chinese university, and then you’ve got a local university. So in my case, it’s Lancaster University in the UK. So three of them co-founded the Confucius Institute. And what is interesting in this book, and also my role, is that I am a Chinese national but I am a UK director; I’m not a China director. And this confuses a lot of people. A lot of Chinese would think that because I’m Chinese, I must be the China director. So the China director means that it is a representative sent by a Chinese university who comes here to co-govern the Confucius Institute. There are two directors. One is the local director, like my role. I’m an employee of Lancaster University and also a professor at Lancaster University and appointed by Lancaster University to lead the Confucius Institute. So I’m a local director. My counterpart from China, which is South China University of Technology, sent a professor to come here as the China director of the Confucius Institute. So the China director and I, as a local director, we govern the Institute together. So, in that regard, to ensure the local stakeholder and the Chinese stakeholder interests are being represented.

And what is interesting as well for my role is being a Chinese national and also a UK director, and also a professor of Chinese politics. So I want to provide a very aware perspective on this issue. And what I am arguing in this book and also in the future volumes is that it is often the local university making decisions about the Confucius Institute, not the Chinese university. And this is why a lot of discussion about Confucius Institutes does not really match the reality, because if you follow a soft power logic, then you would assume that what Confucius Institutes do has been following the Chinese strategic intention. What the Chinese government wants will be translated to what Confucius Institutes do, but the actual reality is not. It is the local university. In many cases, Lancaster University has been making the decisions based on Lancaster University’s interests: how we are going to organise the Confucius Institute, what is the priority, where our funding should go, what the Confucius Institute should do to support Lancaster University’s internationalisation goals, and to support Lancaster University’s Chinese language program. It’s less about promoting Chinese propaganda or promoting Chinese soft power. So I think that the local director’s perspective is something quite different from what you probably have been reading in the literature.

In the first volume of the book I talked about, I think there are two parts. The first part talks about my own personal observation from 2019 to 2025 and all the challenges. So there are three main challenges. The first one is the pandemic. The second one is the dissolution of the Confucius headquarters, which is the largest organisational change for the Confucius Institute. And the third challenge is back in 2022, when Rishi Sunak pledged to ban all Confucius Institutes in the UK. So in that book, I have been analysing and unpacking those critical external challenges from a Confucius Institute director’s perspective, trying to show people a frank account of how I interpret those events and what we did. And when you read that book, you’ll find that it has little to do with how to advance Chinese national interests. A lot more is about the Lancaster University perspective on those events and how they react to advance Lancaster University’s interests. So this is why I argue in this book that local stakeholders matter a lot.

And in the second part of my book, I directly address all the claims that have been leading to, as you mentioned, the massive closure of Confucius Institutes around the world. The U.S. used to be the country who hosted the largest number of Confucius Institutes, and now it is the UK. And a lot of arguments are saying that you know, the Confucius Institute is there promoting propaganda, promoting Chinese influence, and undermining institutional autonomy, undermining academic freedom, or to use the U.S. Secretary of State’s claim that they are a spying agency. Marco Rubio actually used to advocate for a Stop CCP Spying on Campus Act directly targeting Confucius institutes, making it very controversial. And I directly address them and explain my perspective on those issues, why the allegation does not really match with the reality, doesn’t really exist, because they are all seeing the Confucius Institute as a Chinese organisation, so whatever they do must reflect the Chinese interests. But in reality, it is not. It was a lot more about what the local organisation and the local university wanted.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. So may I ask you if there have been instances in which Lancaster interests clashed with the Chinese counterpart, Chinese university or the 汉办 Hanban—the headquarters of the Confucius Institute—and how this was resolved? And was it an ideological clash or was it probably a much more simple clash because we always, as you were saying, there are all these misperceptions like China trying to influence, limit freedom of expression. So did you experience that, like censorship? Or again, clashes of interest and how these were resolved?

Jinghan Zeng:

Well, I think there are two issues. One is different interests that are happening every day. It’s a daily issue because we see things very differently, right? As all joint partnerships, I think different stakeholders have their own interests, diverse interest, competing interests and that happens a lot regarding a wide range of issues on, for example financial arrangement and also governance and who have a bigger say and what is the priority of the Confucius Institute, what is the focus of the Confucius Institute and what kind of strategy we should be having. I think different kinds of stakeholders have different views, so that happens a lot.

And I think the second thing you’re arguing is about censorship and academic freedom. I think that’s something I directly addressed in the book in the first volume, which will be available in about two weeks’ time, and I talk about how it is not an issue, and I believe it can be managed properly. Because I’m a professor in Chinese politics, I have been frequently engaged in some of the sensitive topics and understand them very well. So we take very deliberate efforts to make sure it is not an issue. And we have been organising, for example, dozens of talks about Chinese politics within the Confucius Institute in the six years time when I served as director. I think in the book I also talk about, most of the academic talks are fine, but we do have some challenges with some of the topics, which I specifically analyse in my book. One is an event about Tibet. The other is an event on Japan.

I mean, when people talk about the Confucius Institute, they will say they are here to censor people, promoting censorship and cannot talk about the sensitive topics. That’s not true. And they were saying that we have to get orders and directives from the headquarters, the Hanban. That’s not true. When we organise events, there is never a procedure to seek approval from Hanban. The only approval I need to get when I organise an event is from the domestic Lancaster University. There is a governance team there, and they will be there to decide what events will go ahead, what events won’t go ahead. And their main issue of governance is very much about whether this might lead to some campus security issues. We never got an event being turned down.

So I think there’s a lot of misperception about what’s going on there in the Confucius Institute and what we can do that we couldn’t do. I wouldn’t say that there is no pushback. I think in the book I talk about when we organise a Tibet event, we organise about the Diaoyu Island event, how the pushback from the Chinese community happened and has been creating some incidents, but we still manage to get things through. And I analyse in detail what leads to those issues, which I argue are not really from the Chinese state, as people would assume. The actual operation is very, very different.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. This was enlightening to understand how it operates, how the Confucius Institute operates. At the beginning, you also mentioned that there is variation between Confucius Institutes. So maybe even in the UK, other Confucius Institutes will operate differently or in other countries. Can you tell us a bit more about this variation between different Confusious institutes and also the strength of the Hanban in dictating the agenda, for instance, or blocking certain events because of sensitivity in other places?

Jinghan Zeng:

First of all, I think the argument I made is exactly that Hanban is not dictating because Hanban is so far away in Beijing. And in China, we have a kind of old saying that the sky is high, the emperor is far away. So a lot of things happening locally are not under Hanban’s control, and they do not have the administrative capacity to process that. That’s the first point.

The second is that the Hanban era has gone. That’s something I document in the book as well. Hanban dissolved back in 2020, and ever since then, the Chinese International Educational Foundation has been founded. It is a non-governmental actor, and the way that it operates, the Confucius Institutes are fundamentally different. They do not get involved in daily matters at all. So, Confucius Institutes are now largely operated between a Chinese university and a host university. And we rarely hear any perspective from the foundation. So it’s very much like a joint partnership. I think it’s something to clarify.

And the third point, back to what you mentioned about variation, I think that’s a key point as well. Because of a lot of discussion about Confucius Institutes, either as a political allegation or in academic analysis of soft power, we tend to view Confucius Institutes as identical Chinese organisations. They have the same funding model, the same funder, so they must be the same and operate within the same agenda with the same structure and with the same goal. But actually, if you follow a local perspective, it will tell you a very, very different story. Because at the national level, there are some national factors affecting Confucius Institutes, which I unpacked in my second volume, the regional factor, the organisational factor, and the individual factor. And all those aggregate together are what have been shaping the Confucius Institute. So I argue in this project that each Confucius Institute is uniquely different and they have their different priorities, different focuses, and different activities depending on the local context that they are in. That’s why they are different.

And then back to the question you mentioned as well, I think you are right to say that what happened in Lancaster University Confucius Institute cannot be generalised to others. It is true. Because I am the director, I study Chinese politics, which is why I’m interested in organising seminars for Chinese politics. But if the director is a linguistics expert or the director is a business expert, then they might be less interested in organising Chinese politics seminars. They might be interested in Chinese business, Chinese music, and Chinese literature. So that individual matters a lot, shaping it very differently.

And the last point to make is the pushback that does not come from China. I think that’s something I mentioned. The pushback comes from Chinese individuals who have different political opinions on different kinds of things. And often it’s not about directives from Beijing. It’s about how individuals within the university have different views, have strong views on certain things, and how things are organised. That’s where we see the resistance.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. I have another question for you. Why do you think the Hanban was eliminated? I remember also when I was at the University of Roma Sapienza, that we had a Confucius Institute also in Venice, there was this Hanban from the centre that would make some decisions about who gets scholarships or not. Why was there this transformation in 2020, and what are the effects on the ground? You think that now there is even more variation between different Confucius Institutes because there is less control, although you said that even before, with the Hanban, there was not the capacity to really have full control or micromanage all these different Confucius Institutes?

Jinghan Zeng:

Well, I think that’s a lot of questions. I don’t think that there is a lot of micromanaging because when the Hanban was there, there were hundreds of Confucius Institutes. Hanban simply doesn’t have the capacity to micromanage anything. I think that’s something to talk about administrativewise.

And actually, when you were in Lancaster last time and we first met in Lancaster, Hanban was still there. That was 2018. I think I happened to be in the role. I think the dissolution of Hanban happened in my second year when I was the director, and it all came in the middle of the pandemic. A big shock. Hanban was the organisation that brought the Confucius Institute from nothing, from a concept to grow to one of the most widely discussed Chinese initiatives and make itself one of the most influential cultural organisations in the world. So it’s a very interesting story about how Hanban rose from nothing to a very popular conversation in China and in the world. And I think the perspectives on Hanban are very different. What do you perceive within China and externally?

But then why was Hanban dissolved? I think that’s a great question. At the time, I didn’t understand at all. And as a director, I have to say I strongly oppose that. And I still hold that view as well. If you’re interested in why, you can probably take a look at the book where I show my split identity. As a professor of Chinese politics, I agree that the move is right because if China truly want to promote soft power to fit the international standard, you cannot have too much government involvement. So if you truly want Confucius Institutes to be like the British Council, then you should cut your state ties. You should cut that influence from the state. So the move from Hanban to now being a foundation model is the right move to go.

Having said that, being a Confucius Institute director, I don’t think that’s a good idea. That’s where my other identity comes in. I strongly oppose it because things are a lot more organised when Hanban was there. You have a dedicated team who have experience in handling funding issues, personnel issues, and all sorts of detailed matters. And they can get things done. But now, when you are without them and all decentralised power to Chinese universities, that creates all sorts of issues and all sorts of problems that are yet to be solved. Now we’re talking about it five years after Hanban is gone, a lot of issues are still there, not being solved. So from an administrative perspective, the dissolution of Hanban made Confucius Institutes, I argue in the book, a lot less efficient. In many ways, I miss the time when Hanban was there. You’ve got a dedicated team that is there to support you, operating a lot of things and doing a lot of things that really support you.

Maria Adele Carrai:

So, it’s a leap of faith from the government. I mean, because delegating so much, it’s a kind of real loosening of control, which is very un-Chinese in the way I see China. It’s like giving all this power to universities in China and local partners, wherever they are.

And do you think that’s a trend? It might be a trend of more opening up rather than this rigid top-down control. Although again it was limited, as you said before, there was no micromanagement, but there was still organisation and top-down efforts. Now it’s more horizontal; anyway, it feels like a much more horizontal relationship between different stakeholders. And it is quite surprising, looking at China, I mean, as we see the way politics work and the government works in China.

Jinghan Zeng

Well, I think that’s a key debate within Chinese politics, right? To what extent this top-down approach, bottom-up approach and then how the state centralises power or decentralises power. I think a lot of discussion in Chinese politics is about how the power in China is being centralised and then changing the way China works. I am engaging in that debate, so I understand that. But when you look at a Confucius Institute case and also speak with someone who is inside of this of the entire Confucius Institute network, then you find a lot of reasons why they need to centralise a bit, why they need to manage it a bit, because if you don’t do that, the quality of the work is compromised.

Maria Adele Carrai:

It’s like a mess, potentially, if you’re left to individual actors and stakeholders without coordination. But maybe the new Confucius Institute that they created helps partly to coordinate. I’m sure there is some administrative centralisation, less than with the Hanban, but some control is retained, some guidelines, something that is standardised.

Jinghan Zeng:

I think there is very little. When you talk about the Chinese International Educational Foundation, I think the very reason why they changed from Hanban to that is they want to make this real. So in the past, there was a government actor who was coordinating things. Now it is a non-government actor who do not involve itself in the daily operations of Confucius Institutes, only managing what they call the branding of Confucius Institutes. And then all the matters, most of the matters were delegated to the Chinese universities to do. And this is where the trouble comes in. As a Confucius Institute director, I do not necessarily think it’s good for the Confucius Institute.

Take very small matters to focus on, about transferring money from Chinese organisations outside of China. Previously, when Hanban did that, it had a lot of governmental ties, and it had a dedicated team who do the accounting, finance, and was able to coordinate things to get that done. But now, when you decentralise that to individual universities, they have to have their own financial rules and regulations. Many of them haven’t really been transferring money outside of China, and they have to deal with different Chinese government agencies to get that done by themselves, and they don’t have that experience. So even the small tasks will be enormously difficult without Hanban. And that is the issue we are facing. And it’s only one issue. You’ve also got a lot of other issues about employment, contracts, personnel, and lots of other things there. So that’s why I think things are a lot more complicated without Hanban.

Back to the question you asked, why Hanban dissolved. I think that’s something also very interesting as well because when Hanban dissolved in 2020, things were doing great. I wouldn’t say I’m doing great. Things are still doing very well in Europe and in the UK. And many universities that want to build a Confucius Institute tie value this link with the Chinese government. And here, the Chinese government we talk about is the Chinese Ministry of Education. Many universities want to build stakeholder relations with this ministry. For example, if you have a campus operating in China, you are now in NYU Shanghai. So, for NYU Shanghai to operate, NYU must have a very good relationship with the Chinese Ministry of Education because they are the regulator there. They are the one who approves it. Once it’s been established, they will be the ones processing and also making some decisions to ensure the operation there. So stakeholder relations are crucial to NYU. And in the UK, there are lots of UK universities that have their campuses in China, and they want to have a good relationship with the Chinese Ministry of Education. And having a Confucius Institute being part of the Chinese Ministry of Education—the premise is that the Confucius Institute headquarters was affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education—so that stakeholder relation was viewed as very important in the UK.

So when we heard the news about the dissolution of the Confucius Institute headquarters and the creation of a new foundation without any governmental ties, that wasn’t very desirable to many in the UK. And the main factor of that is because of the U.S. I think at that time they made this decision in order to save the Confucius Institutes in the U.S., to say now we actually cut government ties and can we keep those Confucius Institutes in the U.S? But the consequence is severe. I think number one, it hasn’t really saved those Confucius Institutes from being closed in the U.S. And number two, it’s a Chinese solution, or I would say probably a decision based on the circumstances of one country, but affected all other countries with negative consequences. So I think for China, it’s a big lesson to learn how to engage with the rest of the world when different regions have different needs for China, and how you are going to develop an approach. And I would argue back then, they probably should be thinking about a more diverse approach rather than one single approach to deal with a problem coming from only one country.

Maria Adele Carrai:

And it’s a recommendation that Beijing should listen, especially now that it is expanding all over the world, and they all have different needs, and so it’s important to cultivate or find solutions that are based on the local needs, and they might be different. So that’s actually a very good point, an excellent point.

Before we conclude, I want to ask you a bit more about the activities that you’ve organised, like some of the activities of the Confucius Institute, because there are also some misconceptions about these activities of the Confucius Institute. But on a daily basis, what are the operations of a Confucius Institute, and how do you think these activities cultivated or promoted cultural diplomacy and soft power? Although soft power, as you said before, is not the only lens through which we should look at Confucius Institutes, from a soft power perspective, how do you think it bears fruit in terms of China’s image globally?

Jinghan Zeng:

In terms of daily activities, I think basically, Confucius Institutes are there to promote the Chinese language and culture. So we deliver credit-bearing courses in the university and also extracurricular courses in the Chinese language to students who are learning Chinese, covering all ages. So you can have children at year five, joining some of our language sessions, or people who have retired, also joining as well, to learn the Chinese language. And also some other cultural activities, for example, about Tai Chi, about Chinese calligraphy, Chinese painting, all sorts of activities are being organised in the Confucius Institute with different kinds of ages. So mostly about language and culture, or anything that is relevant to that area. You have a variation of that. For example, Chinese dancing, and you also have academic events.

Different Confucius Institutes have different priorities. In London, there are eight Confucius Institutes. Like in LSE, they have a Confucius Institute for business that is more focused on engaging with business stakeholders who want to do business in China. So they are teaching, for example, some business culture to them and how to do business with Chinese companies and Chinese wining and dining culture, things like that. You also have Confucius Institutes focusing on dancing or a Confucius Institute focusing on Chinese medicine. At the Open University, it’s a Confucius Institute delivering things online. So you have a variation of activities of what they do, but mostly about the Chinese language and Chinese culture.

And how is this relevant to soft power? I think generally speaking, you could not deny that when you organise a lot of Chinese language and cultural activities, it’s relevant to soft power. It’s definitely relevant to soft power, and you can see that the good quality of those events might help to promote Chinese soft power. So when you’ve got more and more people enjoying Chinese culture, enjoying Chinese language, they might want to go to China, they might want to talk to more Chinese people, their view on China might be different, which I think all of those are true.

Having said that, if we rethink about it, then who isn’t doing soft power? When you have British universities operating in China, they are teaching British programmes, British courses delivered by British faculty. They are promoting British soft power. NYU Shanghai, you have faculty employed by NYU and delivering American curricula using the American kind of structure, cultural system, and ideas. It’s also promoting American soft power as well. But that does not mean that NYU’s primary mission is to promote American soft power. It’s a byproduct. The main purpose of NYU Shanghai is to deliver an educational programme that is based on NYU’s interests and NYU’s agenda, and then, along the way, you might be promoting American soft power a bit. And I argue the same thing for the Confucius Institute. So its main job there is to deliver an educational programme for the local organisation, the local university. They want that funding to be able to provide those programmes. And along the way, those programmes might change people’s view about China, might promote Chinese soft power, which is all true. But it’s a byproduct of this global engagement in a world that we are all connected to each other and influence each other in different kinds of ways. And those influences go mutually.

Maria Adele Carrai:

This is wonderful. I like your framing of it, of China’s soft power, which is a byproduct. So the soft power of any country is a byproduct because there’s a target audience that shapes this soft power, because it’s attracted to certain things. And in the case of the Confucius Institute, it seems that it is even more the product. Whenever the events are organised, the cultural events or activities, it’s really the result partly of both the interest of the target, like Lancaster in your case, and the Chinese university before the Hanban, now it’s no longer the Hanban. I like this framing a lot.

So one last question for you. Based on your experience and also your scholarship on international relations, how do you see the future of China’s cultural diplomacy and soft power? Where are they going, as well as the Confucius Institutes? So the three things: cultural diplomacy through Confucius Institutes and its soft power. Given that we live in a very interesting time of very tense geopolitical competition, where China is seen as just an enemy, as a threat. Whatever it does, whenever there is the Chinese Communist Party involved, then it’s a malign influence. What you’re bringing to us today with your experience is a very different story, much more nuanced. So, what do you think is the future of Confucius Institutes and China’s cultural diplomacy, moving forward?

Jinghan Zeng:

I think the Confucius Institute case reflects a learning curve for China of how it rises to a certain stage that is able to have those resources to engage with the world and try to launch those overseas initiatives. And you see how the Confucius Institutes rise to the peak time and then meet where we are with massive closures in Western countries. And I would argue the peak time of Confucius Institutes is gone. I don’t see any possibility of it going back to that peak era in the near future. And if you want to know more, I would probably refer you to my book.

In the meantime, you see other kinds of Chinese initiatives which might be promoting soft power, and probably more effectively in many ways. And I think China learned a lesson from the Confucius Institute and learned lessons about how it engages with the world.

But I would like to conclude by saying that what worries me a lot is how China becomes less interested in promoting soft power. And this fundamentally is different from what many would think. When you see the massive closure of Confucius Institutes in Western countries, a lot of people will be celebrating, “Oh, Chinese influence is gone. It’s closed. We win.” But I see a big danger of that. And when you go back to when the Confucius Institute was created and grew to its glory, it was a period when China actively opened its arms to embrace the world. It truly wanted to be integrated into the world, wanted to be liked, wanted to be friends with everybody and made an effort to do that.

What is really dangerous is the current situation, in that we realise that China is not so welcome. Chinese ideas, Chinese values, or China in general are not appreciated by the Western world, and they lose interest in engaging with the Western world, lose interest in trying to make it attractive, and trying to improve its national image. And you see that provokes then the question: what should China do? When you are no longer interested in soft power, maybe you can spend more money on hard power. All those hard powers make you stronger. So in many ways, I think that’s something that really worries me.

And especially speaking as a Chinese, what I’ve been seeing China from within China perspective—you are based in China as well—you see that often the Chinese foreign policy is debated by two groups of people. Generally speaking, you’ve got the one who is very nationalist who believes the West is there trying to undermine China, demoralise China and demonise China. It’s bad. We need to fight back hard with all possibilities, even military solutions. You’ve also got other group people who like to engage with the rest of the world, who appreciate Western culture, saying that speaking English is a good thing; China should be part of the world; we should be liked; we should welcome Western ideas and engage with them. And I very much think that those people involving in Confucius Institutes lie in that camp.

When you hammer down those people who are doing engagement, who are you going to empower? You are going to empower those Chinese nationalists who said, “You know, I was right all the time. I told you it wouldn’t work. We won’t be liked. Whatever you do, however much money you throw in, it won’t change the Western perception. So why can’t we be on the same page? Build up all the hard power, trying to make China great, and worry less about how the West perceives you. Just do whatever you want and care less about how they perceive you.” So I think that is a trend which I worry the most, and that’s bad news not only for China but for the West as well.

Maria Adele Carrai:

One last thought, and then we conclude. Don’t you think that private companies with their own innovation can come up and create soft power for China? Because that’s something that we are not ready for yet in the West. But with Chinese brands that are not just cheap but they’re cool, a lot of things are great Chinese products that are going to inundate the Western market—not just electric vehicles, but just the brand Labubu, and other things that China is so advanced and so innovative that start to create a different view of China that is not related to the government. But then maybe the government can bring in this, and then probably it will be over with soft power in a way. And I think it also goes with the limitations of the concept of soft power in a way. So what are your thoughts about perhaps private actors going out? Now there are all these companies that need to go out and need to find new markets, and they are innovative. What are your thoughts on this?

Jinghan Zeng:

I think certainly. When you see the rise of Chinese companies like TikTok, like Deepseek, it has changed people’s perception about China. Now view China, “Oh, China is able to do tech. China has great Chinese companies doing A, B, C, and D.” I think it’s definitely going to enhance Chinese soft power. But if you reverse the angle, you can argue the same thing. Hollywood movies, right? They are not made for the American government. But the more you talk about Hollywood movies, it contributes to American soft power, American influence, making more people want to go to the U.S., or want to be educated in the U.S. or want a kind of American way of living. So it’s the same, I think, for all the private actors in China. How they contribute to Chinese soft power is the same as how Western companies can contribute to Western soft power. So I don’t think anything different there.

The Chinese government, of course, will welcome that. But what they can do, I think, is limited. After all, I think we need to understand that the Chinese companies go abroad to do business, not because of the Chinese government. It’s because of their own corporate interests. They are mostly interested in their corporate interests as well. So if they are successful, they are going to promote China’s soft power. But if they fail or do something bad, they’re also going to damage the reputation of China as well. You have lots of examples of how, sometimes even Chinese state-owned enterprises operating in Africa are not in a way that is good to China’s reputation, and that angers the Chinese government. So I think it’s a double-edged sword, and the way Chinese companies operate in relation to soft power is not different from that in the West.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Thank you. Any final thoughts? I think your last observation about that if China fails in a way in this effort and China is not well perceived abroad, then this will lead to perhaps shutting down more Confucius Institutes and also ending all the efforts to reach out to the world to make friends, and will foster instead a more nationalistic faction or nationalistic thinking that we should actually resist the West and stand up against the West and perhaps strengthen the military power instead of soft power. Anything that you would actually recommend to the West, to the U.S. or even to China to avoid this escalation and to go back to a place where we are trying to understand each other? Because I think making friends is also about trying to understand each other. You come to the Confucius Institute, you get the scholarship to go to China, and you study Chinese, so you see with your own eyes what China is about. But now this is kind of not ending, but it’s reduced. And in the U.S. as well, I think the number of people interested in studying Chinese or China-related stuff has dropped dramatically, not to mention Confucius Institutes that have been shut down.

Jinghan Zeng:

I think the Confucius Institute is a very important example for the West to learn how to engage with China and also for China to learn how to engage with the rest of the world. I think both sides have misperceptions about a lot of things. After all, the Confucius Institute shows the rise of China as a new phenomenon of how China gradually starts to learn about its role in the world, how it’s being perceived, things like that. I think it all offers valuable lessons for not only the Confucius Institute’s relevant stakeholders but also all the Chinese companies when they want to go out of China, for example, operating in Europe. What Confucius Institutes face in terms of local policy environment, political environment, perception, all those issues will be faced by other Chinese companies. So in that regard, it deserves a lot of attention and studies and trying to draw the lesson from it.

And also for Western countries, I don’t think that my book will be very popular in Western countries because what it offers is such a different story, such an alternative lens to understand a widely discussed topic. So I understand that. But I hope that those people who are critical of my view or Confucius Institutes in general would be engaging in the argument I made and trying to debate. I’m very open to debate on why they disagree with me and on what basis, and with an evidence-informed approach. Because now a lot of discussion, including recently in the UK, about the freedom of speech and how this might impact Confucius Institutes, is less about what has been happening on the ground; it’s more about the general perception of China.

And lastly, what kind of things I would say about the future of China and what lessons we can draw from Confucius Institutes to tell us about China and the West. I want to leave all the answers in my book. So, for the listeners of this interview, I would encourage you to probably go check out my book. The first volume, I think, will probably be available when this interview is out, and the second volume will be released, hopefully in 2026. And you will find detailed answers to my views on those topics and on Confucius Institutes in detail from those books.

Maria Adele Carrai:

Wonderful. This was fantastic, and thank you so much. I can’t wait to read the book, Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director. And I encourage you all to read Professor Zeng’s book on his own personal experience about Confucius Institutes, which provides a very different, accurate, on-the-ground view of how a Confucius Institute operates beyond all these misperceptions and perceptions about what Confucius Institutes do and how China’s soft power operates. Thank you so much.

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