Just after the 19^th Party Congress in October, when a second volume of Xi Jinping’s Thoughts was published, I quickly moved to order my own copy through Amazon. Weeks later, still no anticipated delivery date. If I am to believe the website Stalin’s Moustache, that’s because Chinese citizens are voraciously buying up books by and about Xi Jinping Thought.

The recent 19^th Party Congress may well require revising many previous publications. At the Congress, Xi followed Communist Party of China (CPC) tradition in presenting a Report (报告baogao) to the 2,200-odd delegates assembled and to the nearly 1.4 billion Chinese citizens more generally. One thing that broke with tradition was the sheer length of his speech: 3 ½ hours. The length resulted in part from the CPC’s comprehensive governance – implicating all facets of Chinese society. That’s lots of ground for a speech – and the Party – to cover. Xi clearly felt comfortable claiming the verbal space, using it to map out a path to Make China Great Again.

Western press reports framed the event as Xi’s fast-track enshrinement among the pantheon of great Chinese Communist leaders. The report championed the leader’s trademark ideology, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics, which has already been ensconced in the Chinese Constitution. This is notable as his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were inscribed only toward the end of their ten-year tenures, not mid-term.

More specific policy details will appear late 2018, at the 3^rd Plenum of the 19^th Party Congress. What the Report does, however, is set forth a general ideological framework legitimizing the policies to be followed over the next 5 years. That being the case, it is well worth our while to see what sort of leadership powers and prerogatives the Report confers upon Xi.

Measuring the dimensions of Xi’s Authority:

Its height:

Xi not only has some good ideas; he already has “thought,” which, in the CPC’s carefully crafted lexicon means a higher, longer lasting active status in the hierarchy of Communist philosopher-leaders. Marx and Lenin get highest and longest lasting honors; they’re “isms” (主义 zhuyi) as in Marxism and Leninism. Mao and apparently now Xi are just one step below, being “thought”(思想 sixiang). While Deng is officially only “theory” (理论 lilun), I’d still place Deng among the Chinese Communist demi-gods, for reasons explained below. Below them would be Jiang Zemin (even though he has “important thought”) and Hu Jintao. Hence the authority denoted by the term Xi Jinping Thought.

Its length:

The relative authority of isms, thoughts, and subsidiary forms of thinking is determined by the scope of time and space the ideas cover. Marxism covers all time and space; Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics primarily covers China after the founding of the CPC. Within Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics, one finds more Communist Party guiding concepts deemed authoritative for some particular segment of time.

Accordingly, each Party congress report presents some clear marker of change, usually depicted in new slogans, which are tied to particular eras much as hit songs evoke distinct periods of one’s life. Some such past “hits” include: Deng’s Reform and Opening to the Outside World, Jiang’s Three Represents, and Hu’s Harmonious Socialist Society. Attaching Xi Thought to a new era (新时代 xin shidai) affirms its long-lasting importance. More than just this season’s hit, it’s hoped that upon hearing Xi’s new tune, generations of Chinese will exclaim, “Honey, they’re playing our song!”

Its depth:

Undergirding all these isms, thoughts, and theories is a notion of progress, or rather of development (发展 fazhan). Indeed, the word pervades the 19^th Party Congress Report, which flatly declares at one point: “Development is the Party’s primary task” – echoing Deng Xiaoping’s adage that “only development is firm reason” (发展才是硬道理 fazhan cai shi ying dali.) Perhaps to state the obvious, development is understood as moving forward along the socialist path, stage by stage, towards some better place. Progress is marked by reaching various “landmarks” along the way. The ultimate destination, communism, is some ways off. Better keep those seatbelts fastened as officially we’re still only in the Primary Stage of Socialism which, according to Deng Xiaoping Theory, will last about 100 years.

The nature of movement along this developmental path differs depending on whether one is moving from phase to phase or from stage to stage. Phase-to-phase, denoting more minor forms of progress, can be characterized as predominantly quantitative change, that is, involving persistent incremental improvements over time. (Think Adam Smith: “the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.”) Stage-to-stage, however, involves a qualitative change, reflecting categorical transformations between epochs. (Think Karl Marx: feudalism replaces slavery, capitalism replaces feudalism, communism replaces capitalism – all through revolution.)

Xi’s new era denotes that qualitative changes are required, not just more of the same. More specifically, key elements of Deng Xiaoping Theory can be set aside, not as illegitimate but rather as inappropriate for this new stage in history. As the CPC discourse puts it, a new era and its new goal bring with them a new primary contradiction, which means new struggles for the Party and the people.

It’s all so new, and yet….

Two-timing and two-stepping in Xi’s New Era

There’s something distinctive about Xi’s Report to the 19^th Party Congress from the very start. At first, the official title fits firmly in the Party’s standard framework:

Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society

Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics.

But then the Report’s opening immediately reframes the goal as:

Struggle Tirelessly to Achieve the Chinese Dream of the Glorious Revival of the Chinese Nation (中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦 Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing de Zhongguo meng).

The Report, thus, presents two goals, denoting two framings that coexist throughout. The first goal focuses attention on the future, a socialist future. The second goal focuses attention on the past, a civilizational past. Xi’s not just giving a Report to the Party Congress, he’s leading a revival meeting.

Indeed, the Report lays out not one but two concurrent timelines: one of the Chinese people and the other of the Chinese nation. Xi’s great power derives from him occupying a critical strategic position in effecting progress toward long-standing historical goals for both China as state and as nation.

The Where, Who, and What of Xi’s New Era

A new era denotes Xi’s movement toward the status of Mao and Deng, each of whom is lauded as a progenitor of particular stages of history. Mao proposed the right guiding thought for an era of war and revolution; Deng proposed the right guiding thought for an era of peace and development. (Mao’s “tragedy” according to the definitive Party account of the Mao Era, the 1981 Resolution on Some Problems of Party History, is that he failed to realize that war and revolution had given way to peace and development.)

This new era, says the 19^th Party Congress Report, is still a time of peace and development. Xi doesn’t break completely with Deng, as Deng did with Mao. Moreover, China is still firmly embedded in the Primary Stage of Socialism; it’s still a developing country. The 19^th Party Congress era (2017-2022) spans a 5-year period bracketed by centennial anniversaries of key Communist historical “landmarks” that will help frame stages and their significance in ways that tug at Chinese Communist civic heartstrings.

It is bracketed by, on the one hand, the centenary of the Russian October Revolution (1917) and, on the other, by the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (1921). The centenary of the founding of the CPC coincides with the achievement of xiaokang, the concrete goal Deng set forth several decades ago: achieving a moderately well-off society (小康社会xiaokang shehui), a developmental landmark declared by Jiang in 2002 as a goal to be reached in 2020. This goal shaped the polity’s marching orders in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th Party Congress reports, framing the endeavors of both Jiang and Hu’s rule as well as Xi’s first term.

Now, however, xiaokang is so, well, last stage.

Xi’s new era (新时代 xin shidai) is bounded on its outer limits by another centenary, 2049: the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. What will China find when it gets there? This is part of Xi’s power: the ability to set forth an agenda for the next 30 years.

A New Goal for A New Era:

The goal, as trumpeted in the Report’s title Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics, cannot be reached in a single bound. Rather, it requires an intermediary goal, each one separated by a distance of 15 years. Thus, on his big stage of history, Xi performs a 2-step dance: first, from 2020 to 2035, China basically achieves socialist modernization (社会主义现代化 shehuizhuyi xiandaihua); next, by 2050 for China becomes a socialist modernized strong country (社会主义现代化强国 shehuizhuyi xiandaihuaqiangguo).

Both goals fit firmly within the logic of CPC developmental stages. A closer look, however, shows that the second melds with a goal that has saturated the Chinese psyche since well before Marx was even a twinkle in Chinese eyes, much less the inspiration for the CPC. This resonance comes forth in a full description of the final goal: a powerful socialist modern country that is wealthy and strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and beautiful.

Make that an Old Goal for A New Era:

The phrase “wealthy & strong country” (富强国 fuqiangguo) has been around a long time, wailed by Qing Dynasty scholar-gentry seeking to save the country (救国 jiuguo) from colonialism and imperialism of Japan and Western countries. Over 50 years ago, Benjamin Schwartz titled his book on Yan Fu, the Qing Dynasty official who introduced Spencer’s Social Darwinism to China in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, In Search of Wealth and Power. Just recently, Orville Schell and John Delury saw fit to name their history Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty First Century.

What we have here, then, is not a purely Chinese Communist goal. Rather, it’s a goal that hearkens back to China’s initial encounters with Western notions of progress in late 19^th century Qing Dynasty, when China was gripped with fear of civilizational decline that in time gave way to concerns about national sovereignty as Chinese worked to reimagine their polity, as Wang Hui expresses it, in From Empire to Nation-State.

This is where Xi’s speech sounds off-key if listened to expecting a pure Marxist dialect. Terms like “Chinese Dream” and “Revival of the Chinese Nation” just don’t fit with historical materialism, either in tone or substance.

But then the end of the new era comes in 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PRC in 1949, and that immediately evokes what 1949 marked: the centenary of: the commencement of the “century of shame and humiliation” suffered under imperialism and colonialism. This is referenced throughout the Report and evoked by the 2049 goal of building a 近代 (jindai) rather than a现代(xiandai) historical aspiration. Both terms mean “modern,” but each has significantly different connotations. Generally speaking, for Chinese historians, the jindai stage of history starts with the Opium Wars while the xiandai stage starts with the May 4^th Movement in 1919.  A jindai aspiration is a civilizational aspiration, a xiandai aspiration is a nationalist one.

Xi’s Creole Marxism: tradition, the people, and dreams.

The phrase, “great restoration of the Chinese nation,” rings odd relative to traditional Marxism in several respects. First is the very idea of China’s feudal past having anything worthy of reviving. Marxist history finds resolutions to present conflicts in the future, not the past. Under Mao, anything associated with the Four Olds of Feudal China (old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas) was excoriated, even becoming the object of violent political struggle. Before he helped found the Chinese Communist Party, Chen Duxiu spoke for a generation of New Youth in his eponymously named journal when he railed against Chinese traditional culture.

Yet in the 19^th Party Congress Report, we read of the wonderful things in China’s traditional culture:

“With a history of more than 5,000 years, the Chinese nation created a brilliant civilization, making remarkable contributions to humanity, and became one of the world’s great nations.” These too become part of the repertoire of resources for the CPC to draw upon, a part of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics.  When saying this phrase in the Xi Jinping dialect (习近平话 Xi Jinpinghua), not to be confused with Xi Jinping Thought, remember the stress falls more on “Chinese Special Characteristics” than on “Socialism.”

What one sees encoded in the Report is China’s new nationalism, perhaps most clearly connoted in the double ways of referring to “the people.” The term “renmin” (中国人民 Zhongguo renmin) takes on a more civic connotation. When Mao Zedong stood on the podium at Tiananmen Square in 1949 to proclaim the founding of the PRC, he used this term when uttering the famous phrase, “The Chinese people have stood up.” (“中国人民站起来了Zhongguo renmin zhanqilai le. ”) While Xi references a civic notion of “the people” throughout the Report, the term used in conjunction with past and future is (中华民族Zhonghua minzu), which can mean Chinese nation and also Chinese ethnicity. Xi’s speech denotes a nationalism that is both civic and ethnic.

This brings us to a third word that has no place in conventional Marxist lingo: dream, as in China dream (中国梦Zhongguo meng). Historical materialists don’t generally have dreams; they have plans.  “Dream” brings to mind pejorative declamations from Marx like: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

This dream, however, has two reference points, one historical the other contemporary. The first is a 19^th Century China debilitated by the scourge of imperialism and opium addiction. The second reference point: another dream that’s out there – the American Dream.

复兴fuxing: A Middle Kingdom once more

While a rich and strong country has been a dream for some time, this dream now seems close to becoming a reality. Accordingly, Xi’s speech begins to revise China’s spatial imagining. As noted above, China officially considers itself a developing country. Much of Deng’s agenda was about development – again, “only development is firm logic” – but a development that was calibrated relative to other, more advanced (发达 fada) countries. China needed to develop at breakneck speed to catch up with (赶上 ganshang) the more advanced countries.

In Xi’s new era, the dynamic changes. Deng broke down Maoist autarchy when he called for learning from more economically advanced countries, including capitalist countries. His formulation placed China in apprenticeship to those countries’ practices. Xi’s Report affirms that in contrast to the former era’s focus on high-speed development, this new era will be about high-quality development. Previously, Deng emphasized developmental “initiative” (积极性 jijixing). Now, the emphasis is on developmental “innovation, creativity” (创新性 chuangxinxing).

Thus, development involves both the tangible and the intangible. On the one hand, the degree to which China is a “strong country” is readily measured through standardized criteria associated with “comprehensive national power,” criteria that distill down to hard power, good old realpolitik. On the other hand, part of being a “strong country” in this new era places added emphasis on intangible factors. Among those highlighted in the Report are civilizational strength as well as international influence, by which is meant not just diplomacy but the effective spreading and inculcating of ideas, such as creating philosophy and social sciences with Chinese special characteristics.

All of this requires the dogged, determined oversight and guidance of the Party in all domains of the polity. Nothing is to be free of the Party’s influence, even the Party itself – which Xi presents as critical to the success or failure of this historic, and historical, mission.

The 2050 goal is presented as aspiration not just for China but for humanity: “The era of striving to achieve the Chinese nation’s dream of China’s restoration, is an era of our country moving closer to the world’s center stage, an era of incessantly greater contributions to humanity.”

What Xi is setting up in the China Dream is an alternative to the American Dream. It is a move to present, if not a challenge then at least a clear alternative to the previous U.S. hegemony in the economic and ideological realm. In part the alternative presented is one of systems – a socialist market economy as a coherent system, an organism distinct from – not subordinate to nor a perversion of – a capitalist market economy. One thinks back to Deng’s adage that both socialism and capitalism have markets. In part, though, it is presented as a civilizational difference, one rooted deeply in the past yet creatively competing for more market share in the future. In 2050, then, China resumes a version of its proper historical position, if not as the Middle Kingdom than certainly as a Middle Kingdom.

Xi-ing Double

Xi Jinping’s speech refracts in two ways, much like those 3D lenticular postcards – a.k.a. wiggle pictures – I loved as a kid. (You know the ones: at first look there’s the Cheshire Cat but shift your gaze just slightly and you see only its grin.) The 19^th Party Congress Report, looked at one way, manifests a great Communist leader – a Mao or a Deng. Of course, we’re talking about the “good” Mao not the “bad” Mao. The Mao of Mao Zedong Thought, who proclaimed in 1949 atop Tiananmen Square: “the Chinese People Have Stood Up.” Not the Mao of the subsequent “20 wasted years,” in Deng’s blunt assessment. But tilt the card just slightly and another image of Xi appears: Xi as the latest of a line of great Chinese emperors, concurrently advancing civilization and keeping the barbarians in their place. As used with images, the process is called Xography. As used in reference to the text of the 19^th Party Congress Report, let’s call it Xigraphy.

The CPC worked hard for much of the past century to keep these two images of Chinese leadership on two separate cards. Not always successfully, as I know from personal experience. Some 20 years ago, a grassroots official proudly told me that China had two peasant emperors. One hailed from his district: the founder of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang. The other? Mao Zedong. At that time, his utterance produced a wave of angst amongst the other officials present, who were quick to interject that Mao wasn’t an emperor. Twenty years later, I doubt they’d be so concerned.

Indeed, Xi’s Report repeatedly calls not just for confidence (自信 zixin) in China’s current system but also in traditional culture.  This is a China that, after nearly breaking its national neck when attempting The Great Leap Forward some 60 years again, now not only speaks of catching up in great strides (大踏步赶上 databu ganshang) but even of taking flying leaps towards glory, wealth and power (向繁荣富强的伟大飞跃 xiang fanrong fuqiang de weida feiyue).

Xi is known as a big fan of Chinese traditional philosophy, and in the Report’s conclusion, he sums up Chinese Communist and Chinese civilizational aspirations through a phrase known to most any student of Chinese history:

大道之行，天下为公

Where the “Great Way” (大道) prevails “all under heaven” (天下) is one community.

These words, from one of the four Confucian classics, the Book of Rites (礼记 Liji), and inscribed on Sun Yatsen’s mausoleum, can be found in traditional centers of Chinese communities around the globe. For them to be accorded a place of prominence in a Party Congress report – indeed, not just the final word but a final proverb! – creates conceptually a political dish that is strikingly retro nouveau.

In Confucian China and its Modern Fate, Joseph Levenson wrote of a China that, having failed as an empire, sought to reclaim victory as a country. It is said that reversal is the essence of the Dao.  Flash forward almost exactly 100 years from Yuan Shikai’s farcical attempt at dynastic restoration in the Republican Era.  Now we see China as country, seeking to reclaim a status as empire. This time, the Great Way refers not to a Confucian Way (儒道 Ru dao) but rather the Socialist Path (社会主义道路 shehuizhuyi daolu) with Chinese Special Characteristics. Guiding China as nation state along the correct path through this new era: Xi Jinping Thought.

 ‘Making Great Again’ – what’s lost in translation

Xi is far from only state leader pushing a mission of national revival. Across the Pacific, Donald Trump came to power on the phrase “Make America Great Again.” There are resonances between their respective aspirations. Both evoke nationalist sentiments that are more ethnic than civic. Both forms of nationalist sentiments evince protracted conscious framing efforts made more impactful through strategic deployment of media resources. Both see restoring greatness as a fraught process, occurring in an international environment filled with grave threats as well as tremendous opportunities.

But one also finds striking differences in their respective formulas on how to make their countries great again:

One views the goal largely proactively, from the perspective of centuries.

The other views the goal largely reactively, from the perspective of only a decade, maybe two.

One vision upholds a unified nation by obscuring differences and repressing dissent.

The other vision asserts one nation over others by accentuating differences and demonizing dissent.

One Party declares it best can “serve the people” through state-led economic redistribution policies.

The other party avows people are best left to serve themselves, promoting laissez-faire and trickle-down policies.

One leader affirms government as a critical part of the solution.

The other leader attacks government as a critical part of the problem.

To paraphrase Mao, what we have here is a whopping contradiction.

Another difference, of course, are their histories and the distinctive flavors of cultural nationalism each can impart. In their efforts to define “great,” each leader has a different pantry of cultural resources to complement the various kinds of civic and ethnic nationalism they’re dishing. Whatever “nouveau retro” cuisine Trump may be serving up, I’m sure the list of ingredients doesn’t include four Confucian classics, Maoist contradiction, or dragon tales.

All joking aside, as Xi and Trump would both agree, we see before us two very different recipes for becoming great again. Beyond simply affirming systemic differences, each intends to cultivate – even entrench – civilizational differences. More work needs to be done to compare and contrast their respective logics.

Fortunately, this being an exi-Xi-sis, not an exi-Trump-sis, I can keep this point provocatively evocative. Besides, key pieces of information – ingredients – have yet to be assembled. Trump’s recently released National Security Policy (December 18, 2017) on Making America Great Again has brought his vision into greater focus through some policy specifics, much as the Report to the 19^th Party Congress’ 3^rd Plenum fall 2018 will do for Xi’s agenda.

In the meantime, if anyone’s got an extra ticket to Xi’s show at the 19^th 3^rd this coming fall, I’ll trade you a Xi Jinping chairman-emperor wiggle picture for it.

The post Exe-Xi-sis on Making China Great Again appeared first on China Research Center.

Xinan Lianda – Southwest Associated University – was an amalgam of three institutions that fled Beijing and Tianjin in 1937 at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. These were Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University. Lianda kept the light of learning burning in Kunming for eight years of war in the face of Japanese bombing, material shortages, devastating inflation, and official oppression that sometimes morphed into terrorism.

When I first heard of Lianda in the early 1970s, I decided to write a book about it. Besides the historical importance of the university, I was attracted to the subject because it was a ripping good story – and I am a rather old-fashioned practitioner of narrative history. But there was another dimension that tied together author and subject – shared values. So much of what I found in Lianda resonated with my own values as a liberal American academic: a vision of liberal education marked by diversity, tolerance, and academic freedom. The people I was writing about were subsequently characterized by my mentor, John King Fairbank, as “Sino-Liberals.”

Following a quarter century of research, interviews, writing, rewriting, procrastination, and unanticipated problems, my work was published by the Stanford University Press as Lianda: A Chinese University in War and Revolution.

Friends in China – many of them Lianda alumni – heard about the book. Some volunteered to translate for a Chinese edition. Knowing that a serious translation depends upon close cooperation among author, translator, and publishing house, they invariably asked me if I would cooperate in such an enterprise. I agreed to do so if they could satisfy three conditions:

1. They would have to have a high level of proficiency in English. The response here was invariably affirmative.
2. They would have to write Chinese with stylistic verve. Further smiles and nodding of heads.
3. The publisher would have to agree not to change a single word for political reasons.

This always elicited a crestfallen expression and nipped our Sino-American joint enterprise in the bud.

There were two reasons for my zero tolerance stand on censorship:

1. Personal convictions and values. I have been a card-carrying ACLU member for half-a-century.
2. The nature of my subject. Professors and students at Lianda risked (and sometimes gave) their lives for freedom of expression. It would have been unseemly to sacrifice such a noble legacy to publish a sanitized version of the university’s history.

Over time, I became more fully aware of what I was up against. Chinese censorship did not operate from the top down. To be sure, the Communist Party’s Propaganda Bureau was charged with guarding against politically incorrect ideas. However, publications were not submitted to some official with a wary eye, a green eyeshade, and the countenance of the Grand Inquisitor. Rather, publishers had to self-censor authors’ manuscripts before they were published. If anything slipped through that would rankle higher-ups, the entire publication run could be confiscated and months of hard work and piles of renminbi would be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Given this system of self-censorship, it was inevitable that publishers would err on the side of caution and that self-censorship would, in effect, out-inquisit the Grand Inquisitor.

So I resigned myself to the reality that a billion-plus Chinese would have to survive without access to my magnum opus in its native language.

Fast-forward to November 2007. I was packing up for a trip to China when an email arrived from a certain Rao Jiarong. Mr. Rao identified himself as a recent graduate from the history department of Xiamen University who had taken a job in Beijing. There, a friend of his had lent him a copy of my book. So enamored was he of my work that he finally quit his job to devote full time to writing a translation. After a year’s work, he had completed the manuscript, which he attached to the letter.

Would I help him find a publisher? I was awestruck by this intrepid young man who had poured his financial and spiritual resources into this labor of love, the beloved object being my own literary progeny. But I had already said no to more than one ardent suitor, including a good friend, so what could I tell Mr. Rao? Maybe, I pleaded rather lamely, he could find a publisher in Taiwan or Hong Kong, but I had little hope that this unknown recent college graduate would have access to such remote realms.

I had underestimated Mr. Rao. Within a few months, he had a contract from the Zhuanji Wenxue Chuban She (Biographical Literature Publishers) in Taipei. The Taiwan edition appeared in 2010, complete with a preface that lay bare the realities of literary censorship on the other side of the Taiwan Straits. Now my work was available to some 20 million Taiwan Chinese. I took some solace when I found the book advertised on a Mainland website, but I realized that few people in the PRC would go to the trouble of ordering an expensive book from the Unliberated Province, printed in traditional Chinese characters.

Then, in the summer of 2011, I received an email from Mr. Rao. The Jiuzhou Chuban She – Nine Continents Publishers – in Beijing was prepared to produce an uncensored simplified characters edition. We soon had a contract guaranteeing that not a single word would be changed for political reasons.

This seemed too good to be true. And it was. In December 2011, Mr. Rao forwarded from the publisher a list of about a dozen “sensitive passages,” as he called them, with suggestions for softening the wording. Would I approve them? I went down the list, wrote “No!” next to each item, and returned it to Mr. Rao. He replied, to my amazement, that, in every instance, the Press had accepted my decision. Then, a couple of weeks later, I got an email from the Press. The fact that they were writing me directly underscored a note of desperation. Three particularly sensitive passages had to be dealt with before publication. We finally agreed to place controversial words in quotation marks, followed by footnotes attributing the quotation marks to the publisher rather than the author. Here is how the passages appear in the translated version:

After seizing power in 1949, the Communists were able to impose unprecedented restraint upon the words and deeds of liberal academics.

Quotation marks around “restraint.”

Academic freedom, which reached its apogee in Beijing during the warlord era and in Kunming under the patronage of Long Yun, was challenged by the Guomindang and finally crushed under the Communists.

Quotation marks around the word “crushed.”

The frenzied reassertion of political and ideological control following the destruction of the democracy movement in June 1989 is a further reminder of the official strictures that limit political and philosophical discussion.

Quotation marks around “democracy movement.”

Here is a poignant example of the inanity (if not insanity) of censorship. The translated version not only retains criticism of the Communists for political and ideological oppression, but actually calls attention to these passages!

So much for my experience with China’s system of censorship. Equally intriguing is what I learned about China after the spring of 2012, when the Beijing translation hit the bookstores.

First of all, my history had appeared in the middle of a phenomenon called “Lianda Re” – meaning Lianda Fever. What was going on was the familiar Chinese passion for using history as an oblique way of commenting upon the contemporary scene. There had been a minor tsunami of books, articles, reviews, and commentaries identifying Lianda as a high point in modern Chinese higher education. Such publications, as not even the dullest reader could fail to observe:

1. Highlighted the inadequacies of Chinese higher education in the 21st century
2. Provided a Chinese pedigree for ideas, values, and institutions that might otherwise have been dismissed as bourgeois American intrusions
3. Reminded people, sometimes quite explicitly, that under Chiang Kai-shek’s (Jiang Jieshi’s) officially reviled Guomindang regime, China’s universities had reached a height unequalled under the People’s Republic.

Because my subject was so hot, the author also became a hot item. Reviews of my book proliferated; reporters besieged me with requests for interviews. And my history of Lianda, of which the English edition had sold fewer than 500 copies from 1998 to 2013, reached the 20,000 mark less than two years after the publication of its Chinese translation.

Most interesting was my personal experience in talking about my book in universities and book stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen, and Qingdao. For the first time I came into contact with audiences of educated young Chinese. I quickly had to reassess my preconception of the political mentality of the younger generation, an image left over from the 1990s. I had assumed that these young men and women were chauvinists, supportive of ultra-nationalist rants, hostile to whatever their leaders labeled as foreign interference in the realm of ideas and values, and more receptive of ideologies that bordered on fascism than on anything akin to Jefferson or even Mao.

My moment of truth came at my very first public lecture, at Xiamen University. Following my talk, a gentleman in the back row stood up and asked how an American, whose armed forces ran around the world seeking excuses to interfere in the affairs of inoffensive nations, could stand up in front of an audience and prattle on about liberal values.

My own response to this question is less interesting than the fact that virtually the entire audience sprang to support an old American professor’s defense of liberal values against a challenge from this young Chinese critic of U.S. imperialism.

Wow!

On a broader level, I realized that I was seeing up close what I already sensed from daily life in China: In striking contrast to a political elite – self-perpetuating, insulated from the people in whose name it ruled, and paranoid in defense of its privileges – sectors of China’s civil society were creative, energetic, vibrant, searching fearlessly for answers.

The question remained as to how widespread and how representative was the kind of critical thinking and open discourse in which I had been privileged to participate. But the fact that it existed at all gave reason for hope.

The post Found in Translation appeared first on China Research Center.

Q:Many trends in the economy point to growing internationalization of business, such as growing exports, more foreign investment, growing tourism, etc. Does the growth in your industry track these trends closely?

A: Yes, there is a very close parallel to the internationalization growth of business and the continued growth and high demand experienced in the language services industry, not only in North America, but worldwide. In fact, in 2013 the language translation services industry in North America alone is expected to grow from U.S.$11.7 billion to U.S.$13.1 billion or 12%. Looking forward, the language translation industry in North America is projected to grow to U.S.$16.5 billion in 2015 and to U.S.$47.3 billion worldwide.

Q: Did the financial crisis of 2008-09 stall this growth? And if so, has it recovered?

A: Prior to the 2008-2009 recession, the industry had been experiencing growth of approximately 20% annually, but during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the growth never really stalled or receded, instead it decelerated to very respectable and sustainable annual growth numbers of approximately 10%. I am not so sure the industry will get back to the level of 20% annual growth, but based on the five-year projections that I have seen, the industry is expected to continue growing at a very healthy rate of 12%.

Q: Is there a rising need for translation into, or from, Chinese?

A: While we don’t specifically track growth metrics for each client-requested target language, I can tell you that the demand for translation from English to Chinese remains very strong, and Chinese translation requests remain in the top five to six of our most requested languages.

Q: Where do you find your talent for Chinese translation?

A: We have a Vendor Management team that works very closely with our Chinese linguists. The Chinese linguist teams that we select must pass a very rigorous vetting process that includes certification from an association belonging to the International Federation of Translators, a degree in translation from a recognized institution of higher learning, years of experience (our linguists average over ten years of experience), previous project references, and sample translations. In addition, there are ongoing proficiency tests each linguist must pass on an annual basis.

Q: What are the most sought-after services in your sector? How much of your work is written translation as opposed to oral translation?

A: The greatest demand for services in the industry is in the form of written content, which is either printed material or digital content for websites. Approximately 10% of the services we provide fall into the oral category, which can either be simultaneous or consecutive interpretation or what is known as OPI (over the phone translation). Conducting a deeper dive, the manufacturing vertical represents the biggest share of where the need for language translation services exists, and this vertical represents about one third of all of the market for outsourced language services.

Q: If a conference needed your services to provide simultaneous translation in Mandarin, how would the process of a bid and delivery work?

A: The most important pieces of information needed in order to successfully fulfill a Mandarin simultaneous interpretation request are: subject matter, duration of the event, number of attendees, venue location, date(s), and whether or not equipment is needed. Once we know these components we can prepare a firm project estimate for the client and secure the services of the appropriate linguists. Of all of the components involved with the scope of the project, the subject matter is the most critical piece. Linguists are very specialized, and if the subject matter is biosciences-related, then an interpreter with translation experience in the biosciences field would need to be used.

Q: How has the delivery of translation changed over time? How does technology facilitate the delivery of your services now?

A: Technology has certainly played a vital role in the development of the industry. One of the biggest technological tools is something called Translation Memory or “TM.” TM is a client and client language specific database that stores every translation completed for that client. TM ensures accuracy and consistency of translations by keeping track of what was previously translated and then allowing the linguist to incorporate those translations into future translation projects, when the identical source words or “fuzzy matches” of sentences appear in the source text that is in need of translating. In addition to a cost savings for the client, TM helps improve the speed of translations. Two important items to emphasize are that a separate TM file by target language is kept for each client, and the TM is the client’s intellectual property and is treated as such.

Q: How did you become involved in the translation services sector?

A: I was in the midst of a career transition and I was looking for an opportunity in a growth industry. In addition, I felt very strongly about Keylingo’s business model and their client centric approach. As I investigated the industry it became clear that the demand for language translation services would be strong for many years to come and that Keylingo was positioned very well to meet this demand.

The post Language Services Go Global: An Interview with Bernie Colacicco at KeyLingo appeared first on China Research Center.

John Garver also sees continuity in China’s approach to the Iranian nuclear controversy. He argues that China in the final analysis is unlikely to change course and use its influence to extract concessions demanded of Tehran by the United States. The unappealing but very real prospect in Garver’s analysis is a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Far removed from the realms of economic policy and geopolitics, change is spectacularly evident in the use of language in cyberspace. Li Hong and Shanshan Wang document how new words are flooding into the Chinese language from online shopping sites and Internet advertising. Linguistic purists may take umbrage, but creativity and innovation online are altering the spoken language in significant ways.

We encourage you to take your time absorbing these important contributions to China Currents and thinking about change and continuity in China.

The post Editor’s Note appeared first on China Research Center.

Degrees of willingness to communicate vary from culture to culture, even in online customer interactions involving the same product. The communication literature suggests that members of different cultures have different communication predispositions and preferences based on how they utilize context as a source of information.

In general, western cultures, in which individualism is highly valued and members are taught to vocalize their desires, privilege personal over collective goals. People from these cultures tend to utilize low-context communication through which “the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code.” A low-context culture favors a communication style in which information is incorporated into the message and detailed background is provided in the course of interactions. Said simply, people within this culture are more likely to be explicit, direct, factual, and provide sufficient evidence. On the other hand, Asian cultures, greatly influenced by Confucianism and collectivism that emphasize developing and maintaining harmony within interpersonal relationships and society, tend to utilize high-context communication in which “most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message.” In other words, a high-context culture such as the Chinese culture has a communication style in which most of the information is derived from the context, leaving very little information transmitted explicitly. Additionally, in conflict situations, people in high-context cultures tend to use more abstract, indirect and avoiding styles to let others make inferences from the context so that they can protect interpersonal relationships from embarrassment or disagreement.

The above mentioned differences between low-context cultures and high-context cultures in terms of communication style can be used to develop hypotheses about how groups in American culture and Chinese culture differ in their online engagements and to provide the rationale for such differences since, as Rubin (1998) pointed out, culture plays a critical role in shaping individuals’ emotional experiences and the ways they express themselves.

Within a low-context culture, people are more likely to be explicit, direct, factual, and provide sufficient evidence, as is the case western cultures (e.g., American culture). In this type of culture, members tend to speak out, expressing positive and negative emotions, and are more likely to show a high level of willingness to deliver sufficient information and support their opinions.

However, in a high-context culture where the underlying values differ from Western cultures, the behaviors and interactional patterns of online discussions are very likely to be different. Chinese culture, for example, has communication styles in which most of the information is shared by people in society, leaving very little information in the explicit transmitted part of the message, as opposed to the low-context Western cultures. Therefore, members in this type of culture prefer to use indirect messages and deliver them in an abstract, implicit manner. By employing this community style, they can preserve others’ face and avoid confrontation.

In an effort to gain a better understanding of the impact of culture on the willingness to communicate, we examined online customer interactions regarding Amazon and Taobao products. Amazon and Taobao are among the largest E-commerce trading platforms in the U.S. and China respectively. In addition, they have similar and active online customer-to-customer posting communities. The study investigated potential culturally related differences in online reviews of the same product, Apple Corp.’s iPad, by Amazon and Taobao customers. Linguistic features of online reviews were analyzed by using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program.

Based on previous research examining communication styles in different cultures, we hypothesize that behavior in relation to the willingness to communicate and the interactional patterns of online discussions is very different between low- and high-context groups. Since Americans from a low-context culture tend to speak out, regardless of positive or negative emotions, and Chinese from a high-context culture are more likely to employ an implicit and avoiding style to communicate, we further predict that American customers will demonstrate a higher level of willingness to deliver sufficient information to support their opinions than their high-context Chinese counterparts. Specially, low-context Americans are expected to be more willing to express their opinions toward iPad, even their critical negative thoughts, compared to Chinese customers. On the contrary, Chinese customers are hypothesized to demonstrate a lower level of willingness to express their opinions toward iPad, and in particular, to express negative thoughts because they are more indirect and more sensitive to interpersonal relationships. From a linguistic perspective, we hypothesize that low-context Americans, driven by the underlying culture of individualism, are more likely to utilize first-person, singular pronouns than high-context Chinese counterparts, who are highly influenced by the philosophy of collectivism, which can be used as further evidence of their greater willingness to speak out during online interactions.

Data Collection

The data for this study are customer reviews for the iPad G found on the Amazon website http://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPad-MB292LL-Tablet-16GB and the Taobao website http://site.taobao.com/1101/site-100256024-0-0-0-updown-8.htm. The reviews on Taobao were available only in Chinese and were translated into English. Considering the possibility of bias occurring during the translation, the Chinese version was used as a secondary reference.

Next, randomly selected online postings were analyzed using Pennebaker et al.’s (2001) Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC). The LIWC tracked and counted the number of words fitting the definition of several meaningful dimensions. For example, the number of times a customer wrote us or our was counted and categorized as the customer using social words. Those linguistic categories that resulted in significant differences in willingness to express themselves by American customers and Chinese customers are reported in the data analysis section.

Lastly, the online postings on both the Amazon and the Taotao websites were coded for Applause and Criticism functions in order to gain a greater understanding of the difference between these two groups in terms of the impact of culture on the willingness to express oneself on the Web.

Data Analysis

Apple’s iPad has attention in international markets as well as in the United States. Even before its release in China, growing numbers of authentic iPads were distributed in the country through all kinds of channels, including individual online retailers, friends, relatives or online American stores. In this regard, American and Chinese users have had a great opportunity to share their experience in using iPad and to comment on such issues as price, features and problems. Accordingly, comments or reviews on iPad by American and Chinese customers were available on both Amazon and Taobao websites. Overall, on these two websites, some customers gave supportive reviews while others displayed negative ones.

In the U.S., 139 customers participated in online reviews, 75 (around 54.0%) of whom wrote very supportive comments with ratings greater than 3 points. Seventeen posted neutral comments that equaled 3 points in ranking, and 47 (roughly 33.7%) expressed a very negative opinion toward iPad by giving ratings lower than 3 points. Conversely, the Chinese data from Taobao have a total of 228 customer reviews, in which 167 (about 73.2%) left very positive reviews with ratings greater than 3 points, 44 (around 19.3%) gave neutral comments that are equal to 3 points, and 17 (roughly 7.5%) provided very critical reviews with ratings lower than 3 points.

On all three levels of ratings, Amazon customers used more first person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me, my) and social words (e.g., we, us) compared to Taobao customers. Interestingly, among 1-point, very negative reviews, Taobao customers used more social words than Amazon customers.

In order to understand the difference in communication by Amazon customers and Taobao customers, all the online postings were coded for two major functions: Applause and Criticism. Representative words associated with these two pragmatic functions were listed as follows:

Applause: Customers give positive comments on iPad in terms of its significance in the history of the tablet PC, style, quality, performance, etc.

• American Amazon: a tremendous leap in the right direction…/ very fast/ impressive/ absolutely gorgeous/ easy/ the least bit sorry to have bought one/ iPad isn’t just making history, it’s making an impact on the future of media reading on a whole new level…/ delight/ far easier and better to use than I had expected/ web browsing experience/
• Chinese Taobao: epoch-making product/ more powerful hardware specifications bring outstanding performance/ color quality/ although not the first tablet PC, definitely now the number one. It is a stunner…/ performance/ admire the design/ not a bad choice/ stylish/ very portable/ stylish and very attractive/ the future of tablet PC/

The above data of applause function demonstrate that Amazon customers gave credit to iPad because it is “impressive”, “superb”, “gorgeous”, and “a delight” from their personal perspective and experience. In contrast, Chinese Taobao customers approached iPad’s advantages mainly from others’ points of view because it looks “stylish”, “fashionable”, “attractive”, and was “a stunner.” One possible explanation for this finding is that Americans as individualists focused more on whether the product satisfied their own needs. Conversely, Chinese affected by collectivism put their emphasis on whether iPad can bring others’ attention or give them “face.”

Criticism: Customers express one kind of disapproval usually by pointing out faults or shortcomings of product, displaying emotions about iPad’s price, configuration, and other aspects such as screen, apps, performance, and so on.

Criticism on Price: Both American and Chinese customers showed their disappointment with the high price but they approached it in different ways: Americans directly criticized the price without any reservations; Chinese shied away from sharp criticism in depth by using “little bit” or relatively neutral tones.

• American Amazon: overpriced/ price/ How much money do I have to have so I can enjoy this thing…/ nice device, but high price…/ will I get one? Probably, but not at this price…/ Price tag too high for what it does…/ For $600 you can buy a netbook and a Kindle and have WAY more capability…/ price
• Chinese Taobao: It is for a profligate…/ bit expensive/ / without any logic/ if the price is a little bit more affordable for ordinary people, more people would choose to buy it/ it’s not affordable

Criticism on Configuration: Both American and Chinese customers criticized the iPad for its configuration. American customers listed clear and detailed factual evidence in order to support their opinions whereas Chinese made similar criticism without providing too many details.

• American Amazon: brainless browsing board/ if Apple manages to put a CPU into this, I’ll be the first to buy one…/ Photoshop, no memory card reader means useless for photographers…/ Even if you could, you still would not be able to compress or decompress zip files or transfer any files in or out of the device via USB, there is no USB…
• Chinese Taobao: The configuration is too low/ USB/ hardware.

Criticism of Other features: Both groups made negative comments on other functions, including screen, connections as well as lack of printing support.

• American Amazon: The screen resolution for movies really sucks, you need to see it…/ serious connectivity problems with the iPad, for which there are no fixes…/ iPad only runs a few truly useful applications, the other 300,000 apps are gimmicks of dubious value…/ it’s really fantastic for all the reasons everyone else wrote but it doesn’t have flash that’s the only stupid thing to me…/ one major flaw – no external video for viewing iPad screen or movies…/ iPad is NO replacement for a netbook, in fact, I don’t know what it is at all…/ [printing] is a potentially huge flaw, especially for people who want to use the iPad for editing office documents…/ to hold without a case.
• Chinese Taobao: WiFi is not good/ connection/ It doesn’t support multiple-task processing/ camera/ compatibility/ to transfer the data or file.

Criticism based on Holistic Negative Feeling:

• American Amazon: Now I am disappointed because my idealist expectations have not been lived up to…/ I bought one, tested for a week and then resold. And guess what: I don’t miss it at all…/ Not bad, but seriously limited…/ I’m frustrated with iPad.
• Chinese Taobao: Overall it is not very good because there are so many accessories that you need to purchase additionally…/ what do we do with this iPad? Probably we can only use it until China is as developed as the U.S.

Data in Criticism show that American customers use more factual information collected from their first-hand experience to support their comments, while Chinese customers employed more implicit and conclusions without providing sufficient factual details to back up their negative thoughts. The differences in the use of factual information showed American customers’ full engagement while the prevalence of abstract words demonstrated the Chinese customers’ detachment especially from negative comments. As we know, American culture endorses individualism and encourages members to express themselves overtly, emphasizing independence from groups by highlighting individual accomplishment and personal goals. So speech acts such as criticizing sharply or refusing directly are acceptable. Conversely, culture is known for its implicit and face-oriented way of communication driven by collectivism. With the purpose of maintaining harmony with others or society, speech acts such as making negative comments or refusals are considered face-threatening, and members often utilize implicitness or abstractness to help mitigate the potential possible damage to interpersonal relationships caused by full confrontation. In addition, research has shown that the degree of context and the amount of information in a culture effectively differentiate the communication styles between communications in Eastern as opposed to Western cultures. High-context Chinese customers are more likely to employ an implicit abstract manner to communicate than their low-context U.S. counterparts.

Discussion

The present study utilized Hall’s (1976) concepts of high- and low-context- cultures and major cultural factors identified in previous research, such as individualism-collectivism, to examine how cultural aspects relevant to these two components may influence in willingness to express one’s opinion in online interactions by American customers on Amazon and Chinese customers on Taobao about the iPad. As hypothesized, the analysis presented in this article demonstrated that these two groups’ willingness to speak out differed in several ways. First, customers appeared to be more direct and more willing to speak out, regardless of positive and negative opinions, whereas Chinese counterparts developed indirect means of communicating, making a greater use of implicit and information. In the Chinese culture, openness and frankness can at times be considered positive, but they can also be viewed as negative, especially when dealing with negative emotions, which explains why Chinese customers expressed themselves in a more avoiding, abstract style. Another aspect of the impact of culture on the willingness to express oneself is the heavy use of first person singular pronouns and references to the self by American customers in the American data, compared with their Chinese counterparts. According to Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, & Richards’ notion (2003), the use of the first person singular pronouns is a method of declaring ownership of a statement, which might be explained by the individualist nature of American people in which the self-value is relatively emphasized versus the group or society. American customers emphasize me in order to have their individual accomplishments, thoughts, and abilities recognized by others or society.

Limitations

One limitation of this study is that a convenience sample was used. Another is the sample size. Specifically, the data analysis was solely based on online reviews of one product, iPad. The third limitation rests with the fact that only the impact of cultural dimensions related to low/high contexts and individualism-collectivism were explored in the study. Differences in willingness to speak out by American and Chinese groups might also result from other factors such as individual differences (e.g., age, gender, education, etc.). Thus caution should be exercised in interpreting the findings. The fourth limitation of this study is that a small number of randomly selected reviews were chosen using the Pennebaker et al.’s (2001) LIWC. Ideally, mean differences should be sought by using a large sample. Therefore, the generalization of the results is limited. Finally, online reviews of iPad by Chinese users might have been affected by the fact that the iPad had not been officially released into the Chinese market at the time of this study. However, the study’s findings provide directions for future research. Although the assumption that the U.S. and China are considered to be lower and higher context cultures, respectively, has been widely accepted, there are few studies in which this assumption was tested in the context of online reviews. The imitativeness and findings of the present study should be considered valuable in this regard. Additionally, the current study attempted to integrate cross-cultural communication with asymmetric online discussion in a business setting. It would be interesting to see whether the findings also apply to face-to-face communication. In sum, this small-sample study lends support to the validity of the hypotheses proposed, which can be further tested with a well-designed, large sample study in the future.

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Fortunately, the state of Georgia, with the financial support from China, has expanded Georgia’s ties to China with the recent establishment of two Confucius Institutes, non-profit public institutions established for the purpose of promoting Chinese language and culture around the world. The Institutes are under the supervision of China’s “Hanban” or Office of Chinese Language Council International, a division of the Chinese Ministry of Education. There are currently more than 282 Confucius Institutes in at least 88 countries worldwide, and the United States has more Confucius Institutes than any other country with more than 63.

Emory University

In March 2008, Emory University, the Atlanta Public Schools, and Nanjing University partnered to establish the first Confucius Institute in Georgia. It is also the first and only Confucius Institute to be jointly administered by a private university and a public school system. The Emory-APS-Nanjing University collaboration is comprised of the following three components:

• K-12 Chinese language and culture learning via partnership with the Atlanta Public School system
• Scholarly exchanges with Nanjing University, including lectures and conference such as the March 2010 conference at Emory on Chinese literature, culture and media
• Public outreach and community activities including Evening at Emory classes on Chinese language and culture

Located in the Kirkwood neighborhood, just a few miles east of downtown Atlanta, Coan Middle School is one home to this Institute. Along with Toomer Elementary, Carver, North Atlanta and Maynard Holbrook Jackson high schools, Coan Middle School is one of five Atlanta public schools that currently offer modern standard Chinese language instruction. (Toomer Elementary has offered Mandarin Chinese for its K-5 students for the last four years.) Last summer, three Atlanta Public Schools educators – Dr. Shirlene B. Carter, principal at Maynard Holbrook Jackson High School; Tonya Saunders, principal at Toomer Elementary; and Dr. Lisa West, model teacher leader with the Office of High Schools – joined a large delegation that traveled to China to expand Chinese-language programs in U.S. schools. This trip was sponsored by Hanban, the Confucius Institute’s headquarters in Beijing, and provided the delegates with a more in-depth look at China’s educational system as well as the opportunity to learn more about Chinese culture. (APS website article, 7/23/09)

One element of regular programming at Confucius Institutes has been teacher training workshops. These workshops were established to help Chinese language teachers improve their teaching skills. In addition to sharing best practices for teaching Chinese to non-native speakers in grades K-12, the workshops also provide tools such as new software and textbooks donated by Hanban. The teachers receive Continuing Education Units through the Emory Center for Lifelong Learning, and teacher certificates from Hanban. In the fall of 2008, the Confucius Institute in Atlanta sponsored a teacher training program with the High Museum of Art and more than 180 K-12 teachers with backgrounds in the language arts, history, math and art participated. With support from China, the Confucius Institute of Atlanta also offers intensive summer training workshops for Georgia’s Chinese teachers to help them keep abreast of new developments in the field of Chinese language instruction. The Institute also organizes Chinese culture workshops for teachers who want to incorporate Chinese calligraphy, holidays and folklore into their language classes.

One of the most popular of the Confucius Institutes-sponsored educational exchanges has been the Chinese Bridge Summer Camp program, during which U.S. high school students travel to China for two weeks. Last year, 29 Georgia high school students (out of more than 1,000 U.S. students) participated in this program, and interest in the camp continues to rise this year. Students attend language classes and cultural workshops, and go on sightseeing tours of China’s rich cultural history. Students get a glimpse of their Chinese counterparts’ lives by living in high-school dormitories and spend at least one night with a Chinese family.

The promotion of Chinese language and culture at Georgia schools and universities has already begun to pay off. The Confucius Institute in Atlanta organized a Chinese Speech Contest and sent the first prize winner, Jack Kelleher, to the bi-annual Chinese Bridge Chinese Proficiency Contest in 2009, where he won third place and a scholarship to study in China.

As part of its public outreach effort, the Emory-based Confucius Institute is collaborating with The Evening at Emory program to offer both classes in conversational Chinese language and in calligraphy. The Confucius Institute has also organized and sponsored a wide variety of cultural events and activities around the city, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival Gala, the Sino-U.S. Friendship Photo Exhibit at the Emory Woodruff Library, and the Carter Center exhibit celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sino-U.S. relations.

Kennesaw State University

Georgia’s second Confucius Institute is a partnership between Kennesaw State University and Yangzhou University that was formally established in August 2009. The director, Ken Jin, had developed a strong academic exchange relationship with China many years ago. According to Mr. Jin, there are five programs associated with Kennesaw State University’s Institute that are simultaneously promoting Chinese language and culture in Georgia:

• The Chinese Language Education is a statewide program that provides support and training for Internet-based Chinese instruction in collaboration with Georgia Virtual Schools, as well as Chinese language instruction for Pre-K students.
• The Study in China program develops overseas study opportunities for high school and university students, as well as for teachers and education administrators from all over the state.
• The International Business Education program develops Georgia-based programs for Chinese business executives and MBA students to learn from top business leaders in Georgia.
• The Chinese Cultural Events program sponsors Chinese New Year celebrations and the Lake Lanier Dragon Boat Festival, as well as other cultural events.
• The Life Enrichment program provides classes for the general public covering a variety of topics such as Chinese cooking, calligraphy, painting, martial arts, and Chinese medicine

The KSU Confucian Institute has most recently focused on Chinese language education at the Pre-K level. There are already numerous K-12 programs throughout the state, and now the directors of both the Emory and KSU Confucius Institutes are responding to requests from Pre-K administrators and offering Chinese language classes to their pupils. According to Mr. Jin, there are approximately 82,000 pupils in Pre-K classes throughout the state.

One of the most exciting and potentially far-reaching of programs is the collaboration between Georgia Virtual Schools (GVS) and KSU’s Confucius Institute. Since 2005, GVS, a department of the Georgia Department of Education, has been providing technology services to middle- and high-school students. Although GVS already had been using a first year Chinese-language software program for the past two years, they were interested in improving this software. Last summer, GVS teachers and administrators went to China as a part of the Education Leadership program sponsored by the Confucius Institute at KSU, and they are now working with software developers in China to develop a new language learning program that will include three versions: online, CD-ROM and LAN. This new software (called “Great Wall”) will be launched this fall, according to Jay Heap, program developer for GVS. Third- and fourth-year Chinese language learning programs should be ready for the 2011 school year.

The dearth of qualified Chinese language teachers in Georgia, as well as lack of funding for in-school language programs, is the driving force behind this new educational software. On the bright side, the availability of Chinese language software that can reach thousands of school children all over the state of Georgia at minimal cost is an exciting prospect. Without this technology, Chinese language instruction would not be available to most of Georgia’s students. In one notable exception to this general situation, KSU’s Confucius Institute is working with the staff development program for Cobb County (Georgia) schools and has placed Rong Li, a KSU graduate and Chinese language teacher, at North Cobb High School, where he teaches Chinese language and culture.

Shirley Davis, assistant professor and director of North Georgia Colleges and Universities, met Ken Jin at the World Language Academy in Hall County to discuss the possibility of her students, a group of educators known as “North Georgia-Pioneer Rising Stars Leadership Collaborative,” going to China for their yearly international trip to study best practices. In July 2009, 12 education leaders went to China and over 13 days, they visited middle schools, Yangzhou University and the Hanban Institute in Beijing. This summer, Ken Jin and Shirley Davis will return to China. About 60 educators from Georgia and neighboring states already are interested in joining them. Due to the overwhelming interest in the program and the target participation of 30 educators, all interested participants are required to submit a written proposal stating how they will use the knowledge gained from this experience.

The Study in China program known as “Chinese Bridge” began last year with 28 Georgia high school students and 3 teachers spending 2 weeks visiting Chinese students and sightseeing in Beijing and the Shaolin martial arts school in Henan Province. This summer, more than 100 students have expressed interest in attending the Chinese Bridge study abroad program. The Coca-Cola Foundation, a supporter of youth leadership programs, has reached out to KSU’s Confucius Institute to discuss plans for a specialized program to send a smaller group of high school students to China.

Dr. Binbin Jiang, associate professor of Educational Leadership at Kennesaw State University, recently developed and implemented a “Multicultural Education and International Education” graduate seminar and in conjunction with this course, led a group of 8 students to China last summer. The Confucius Institute helped to organize and provided some financial support to the students participating in this overseas educational exchange.

As part of the graduate seminar, the students are required to write a paper about what they learned from their trip to China and how they will use that knowledge in their teaching plans. After completion of this assignment, Dr. Jiang’s students presented their papers at the 2009 Southern Regional Council Education Conference held in Atlanta last fall. One student who works as a school counselor wrote about how this trip helped her empathize more with non-native English speaking students and another who teaches high school level Spanish has already spoken with her school’s principal about collaborating with a Chinese high school to establish a sister school relationship. Another graduate student wrote about how principals worked with teachers in forming “distributive leadership” whereby the teachers are involved in school leadership activities.

Conclusion

It is impossible to learn a new language without learning something about the culture that utilizes those words and expressions. With the support of the Chinese Ministry of Education, Georgia educators and modern technology, Georgia Virtual Schools is providing students a unique and cost effective opportunity to learn Chinese. Through Chinese language and culture courses as well as study abroad opportunities, Georgia students are broadening their horizons by learning about the world’s most populous country and fastest growing economy. The two Confucius Institutes recently established in Georgia present a wonderful opportunity for both students and educators to learn more about a country with a people, history and culture very different from their own.

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In the months immediately following, a number of globally minded schools in Atlanta began the process of teaching Chinese, joining the one Georgia school with a long-running high school Chinese program – North Atlanta High School. Others quickly followed, and by 2008, the aforementioned school had jumped on the bandwagon as well. Seemingly overnight, nationwide demand has made Mandarin Chinese one of the “hottest” languages for K-12 schools to teach.

National Demand for Chinese

Across the country hundreds of Chinese programs have been started in the past few years. Growth has been particularly noteworthy in California, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Boston, Chicago, Portland (Oregon), and the Bay Area. The Language of the Future Sounds Like Chinese¹ and The Future Doesn’t Speak French² have become familiar headlines, as Chinese language learning in K-12 schools has taken off. While there are no precise statistics for the number of K-12 students studying Chinese, when the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages conducted a survey in 2000, only about 5,000 students were studying Chinese in primary and secondary schools. By 2006, they estimated that number to have reached 30,000 to 50,000.³ By the end of 2008, that number is likely to be exponentially higher, given the number of schools planning to start programs as soon as they can secure qualified teachers.

A number of converging forces are fueling this rapid growth.

Fear – By way of comparison, some experts have cited the language trends of the 1960s – i.e., the study of Russian after Sputnik – and the 1980s – i.e., the study of Japanese as Japan’s economy soared – and pointed to Chinese as next in this line. In fact, Chinese is similar, yet also different: Perhaps never before has a single nation combined an economy with China’s massive potential, a huge and increasingly well-educated population, and political and military influence to boot.

Competition – Forward-thinking parents are always anxious for their children to secure the very best academic and professional opportunities. In a global economy, with increasing ties to Asia, and China in particular, learning to communicate in Chinese seems like the perfect ticket ahead. “There are unbelievable opportunities to do business in China, so there’s a need for Americans to learn the language, so we’re not left out,” says one proponent of Boston’s first Chinese immersion program.⁴Similar sentiments can now be heard nationwide.

Interest – One only needs to visit one of the Chinese language classrooms in the inner city of Chicago or Atlanta, to appreciate how enthralled elementary students are with the language and culture. Chinese, with its sharp difference from both spoken and written English, has a strong attraction for many children, and arguably youth and adults as well. In the mid-1990s, when the author was first teaching Chinese to elementary school students in New Haven, Connecticut, this strong sense of fascination was clearly on display – long before the current push for Chinese, a decade later. Give American children a choice between studying a language more closely related to English and studying Chinese, and the latter will win out, hands-down.

Educational Reform – U.S. education is troubled in more complex ways than revealed by weak standardized reading and math scores. Schools must globalize the curriculum, if they are to effectively train students for the real world of the future. Integrating Chinese into the curriculum as early as possible offers a clear way to shake things up across the board. “Efforts to improve reading, math and science skills may be on the nation’s educational forefront, but quieter efforts are being made by educators and the government to prepare children for the future by teaching them languages such as Arabic and Chinese.”⁵

China’s “Soft Power” Revolution – The Chinese government has stated that it “wants 100 million Mandarin students worldwide by 2010 (compared to the current estimate of 40 million)” and is putting real money where its mouth is. Since 2004, Beijing’s National Office for Teaching Chinese (commonly known as Hanban) has been opening Chinese language and cultural centers – Confucius Institutes – at a quickening pace across the globe.⁶ At the most recently established Institutes, moreover, one finds an increasingly direct focus on K-16 Chinese language and culture education. Hanban has also been involved in developing teacher exchange and training programs, to help fill the void of qualified Chinese language teachers. Since 2006, it has invited and sponsored thousands of school administrators from around the U.S. to visit and “experience” China.⁷ Further, it has supported the development of significant language assessment measures, including the Chinese Advanced Placement test and a revamped version of the Chinese Proficiency Test.⁸

Chinese in Georgia

The Southeast has lagged somewhat behind other regions, in the development of K-12 Chinese programs. But things are changing quickly and with the proper support, and continued collaboration along the lines we have seen in recent years, the region could quickly catch up.

In Georgia, only four high school Chinese programs existed in 2000.⁹ By 2008, more than twenty K-12 schools¹⁰ were teaching Chinese. Another ten to fifteen, meanwhile, plan to offer Chinese in the coming year. The outstanding challenges for Georgia, the region, and the nation, however, remain significant:¹¹

• Lack of well-trained teachers and educational programs to train, certify, and mentor new teachers.
• Problems of standardization and the need to develop strong performance and standards-based curricula for a new language track.
• Absence of an effective K-16 continuum or “pipeline” – In most foreign language disciplines, there is some lack of continuity between K-12 and university-level programs. With Chinese, this division is exacerbated by a number of factors, including issues of standardization, traditional teaching approaches vs. proficiency-oriented instruction, negative attitudes towards Putonghua speakers from different regions of China, and issues of hierarchy among educational institutions.
• Limited state support for K-12 foreign language programs – With only 44% of American high school students¹² taking a foreign language class, this challenge is clearly national in scope. However, in 2006 and 2007, Governor Sonny Perdue revealed a troubling lack of appreciation of the importance of teaching foreign languages, by vetoing (in 2006) and then vetoing and redirecting (in 2007) funding for Georgia’s elementary foreign language model program. Operating at 29 schools, this program has been applauded by the Center for Applied Linguistics as “a state of the art model within the field of foreign language,” “excellent by any measure,” and showing “continuous renewal of curriculum and professional development…of a high quality.”¹³ Additionally, the State has been considering removal of the two-year high school foreign language requirement for several years. With Chinese in particular, states with strong support from their legislative and executive branch officials have been doing groundbreaking work in creating some of the top K-12 Chinese language programs in the country.¹⁴ Nationally known programs in the state of Minnesota and the City of Chicago exemplify the results of such support from the top.¹⁵

What Next?

Although Georgia is on track to develop a good network of K-12 schools teaching Chinese, much remains to be done.

• Networking among as many parties as possible is particularly crucial to new Chinese programs. Formal and informal networking should take place between:

(1) K-12 schools with Chinese programs

(2) K-12 Chinese language teachers themselves, at all levels

(3) Students of Chinese – An annual conference for Chinese language students in the state or region should be organized, along with a rigorous summer language and culture program

(4) Post-secondary institutions and K-12 schools, with both having much to gain from the interaction

(5) K-12 schools and Chinese heritage schools. Since the largest teacher pool in the new and growing field of Chinese language instruction comes from Chinese heritage schools, this communication is essential. It is also useful in help bridging the native and non-native Chinese language learning gap.

• Standards and assessments for K-16 Chinese language learning need to be in place in all institutions, at all levels, and concrete, standards-based curriculum needs to be developed, based on successful, proven models. In order for this to happen at the K-12 level, Chinese teachers in new K-12 programs must be given the time, training, and outside resources necessary to develop such curriculum. University-level programs should work to create overall, broadly uniform standards, especially as they prepare to receive a “new generation” of Chinese language learners in the near future.

• Teacher Training and Mentoring – All public school teachers must be “certified,” but Chinese teachers in private schools and even those with certification (whether provisional or permanent) usually require further basic training in current pedagogy, classroom management skills, and cross-cultural issues, among other things. The majority of K-12 Chinese language teachers in Georgia come from a background of teaching at heritage schools¹⁶ – a specific, insulated atmosphere with different goals and standards of instruction. In Georgia, as in other parts of the country, there is also a need to build new pipelines for Chinese instructors (e.g., university students who are studying and majoring in Chinese), in order to create a field as diverse as the Chinese speakers of the world.

• Support from a Wide Range of Players – The most successful Chinese programs around the country have had the outspoken support of mayors, governors, state boards of education, the business community, and neighborhood communities in which the Chinese programs are being implemented. On a small scale, support from within the communities where the first Chinese programs are being started, such as the Kirkwood neighborhood surrounding Toomer Elementary, in the City of Atlanta, or the private school community of parents at The Lovett School, has proven critical. Ultimately, however, in terms of a wider support network, there is room for more direct and open involvement and support from a variety of entities across the state.

Conclusion

As every journey must begin with a single step, in Georgia, the first step toward making Chinese a language of the future has been taken. Educators and communities now need to work in collaboration, to create programs that are strong from the outset and viable for the long term.

Examples of pioneering Chinese language programs, from across Georgia’s varied primary and secondary schools, include the following:

Toomer Elementary School (Atlanta Public Schools)

In the heart of Atlanta, this K-5 elementary school began planning for implementation of its Chinese program in 2005. The local parents association was closely involved as the school applied for and received a planning grant from the State of Georgia, to support a year of careful preparation and the inauguration of the first mainstream public elementary school Chinese program in the state.¹⁷ During the 2006-07 planning year, a core group of Atlanta Public Schools, Toomer administrators and foreign language consultants visited three cities around the country where Chinese had been successfully implemented, in order to learn from their programs. They also initiated a national search for experienced and enthusiastic teachers to start the program, engaged the community in efforts to educate parents about why teaching Chinese had been established as a priority, and worked with classroom teachers to give them ideas about how to better integrate Asian studies into their classrooms, thereby facilitating a fuller integration of Chinese. A partnership with Emory University, only two miles from Toomer, was also established, which led to a successful application for the first Confucius Institute in the state of Georgia, which will open officially in March 2008 and be housed at Coan Middle School, just down the street from Toomer. When visiting Toomer’s classrooms – and especially those of the kindergarten students, who receive daily language instruction – one can immediately sense the energy and enthusiasm with which the students have embraced Chinese.

Southeast High School (Whitfield County Schools)

In the northwest corner of Georgia, at the tail end of the Appalachian mountains, lies Whitfield County. In 2005, the principal of Southeast High School expressed interest in starting Chinese, and with the assistance of the Whitfield County Schools, this idea came to fruition in the fall of 2007. Beyond the rural character of Whitfield, it is also worth noting that the school-age population in the district is approximately 46% Hispanic. For a substantial number of the 150 students who have enrolled in the first year of the program, Chinese is their third language. Given this level of enthusiasm, the other two high schools in Whitfield are also planning to start teaching Chinese in the fall of 2008 . The students at Southeast High “report that [Chinese] is a challenging language to learn.” But their teachers have seen them “rising to the challenge!”¹⁸

The Lovett School (Atlanta)

With just over 1,500 students, this independent K-12 school located in Northwest Atlanta first considered offering Chinese in the late 1990s. In 1999, the then-headmaster, Dr. Jim Hendrix, charged a team of faculty to assess the possibility of offering Chinese, and develop an implementation plan for doing so. By 2000, Chinese culture classes and elements of Chinese language were being integrated into the existing curriculum, from the elementary through the high school level, in order to pave the way for the planned introduction of Chinese. By 2002, a Chinese language class was initiated in the seventh grade, as part of the regular 7-12 foreign language course offerings – making Lovett the first school in Georgia with a six-year Chinese continuum . Five years into the program, Lovett now has three Chinese language teachers and over sixty Chinese students, and plans to offer the Chinese AP exam to the first class to come up through the ranks next year, when they will be in the twelfth grade – another first for Georgia.

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The program begins with a long weekend in Beijing touring many historical sites in and around the capital including the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and Tian’anmen Square. From Beijing, students travel via overnight train with soft sleepers south to our beautiful host city of Yangzhou on the Yangzi River in Jiangsu Province. Students live and attend classes at the Overseas Students Residence on campus. The residence includes a cafeteria, classrooms, laundry facilities, and a small kitchen. The double rooms are comfortable and equipped with air-conditioning, beds with sheets and blankets, desks, ample closet space, and an attached bath (toilet, sink, and shower) with Western fixtures. The rooms are pre-wired and internet-ready.

Over the past eight years, the program had almost 100 participants from eleven state and private universities and colleges in Georgia and Alabama, and about one fourth of the participants returned to China to either teach English or do business. This program is open to all university students in Georgia. We hope to see students from more universities in the coming year. For further information, please contact Dr. Dan Paracka at dpracka@kennesaw.edu or the program director Dr. Yan Gao atygao@cau.edu.

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