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(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) will unveil a national ad addressing our country’s spending addiction, the dangers of relentless deficits, and the corrosive nature of our national debt.
NEW YORK -- "Soft power", as defined by author and political analyst Joseph Nye, is a nation's ability to entice others through the use of positive cultural engagement. Utilizing soft power, one might convince others to "want what you want," Nye wrote in 2004.
As America's power wanes on a variety of fronts, China is taking action to match its own increasing wealth with greater soft power. In 2007, Hu Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China must work on enhancing its cultural capital.
"Culture has become a more and more important source of national cohesion and creativity and a factor of growing significance in the competition in overall national strength," Hu said.
The Beijing Olympics was widely regarded as a successful attempt to introduce Chinese culture to the rest of the world. In a less showy manner, the government is aiming to accomplish much more by establishing language centers called Confucius Institutes in 87 countries.
The first Confucius Institute opened in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in June 2004. Since then, 523 institutes or classrooms have been established all over the world, according to Han Ban, China's Office of Chinese Language Council International. The government aims to increase that total to 1,000 by 2020. As many as 3,000 scholarships will be given to foreign candidates to study Chinese teaching by 2013.
Controversies
Government officials, educators, and journalists have disagreed over Confucius Institute programs.
Members of the Swedish parliament expressed concerns that the Institute provides a platform for the Chinese government.[6] A declassified intelligence report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says, "Beijing is out to win the world's hearts and minds, not just its economic markets, as a means of cementing power."[7] The Government of India rejected the idea of Confucius Institutes in schools, and called them "a Chinese design to spread its soft power – widening influence by using culture as a propagational tool."[8][9]
When the University of Sydney was negotiating to establish a Confucius Institute, some professors called for it to be segregated from the Chinese studies department, and Jocelyn Chey criticized it "as a propaganda vehicle for the Chinese communist party, and not a counterpart to the Goethe Institute or Alliance Française."[10] Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania decided academic freedom outweighed the advantages of a Confucius Institute; G. Cameron Hurst III explained, "There was a general feeling that it was not an appropriate thing for us to do. We feel absolutely confident in the instructors that we train here, and we didn't want them meddling in our curriculum."[11] After school board members of Hacienda La Puente Unified School District opposed establishing a Confucius Institute, history teacher Jane Shults described their criticisms as "... jingoistic, xenophobic, not overly rational and it’s really shades of McCarthyism all over again."[12]
Journalists have commented on the use of Confucius to name these institutes. The Asia Times Online lamented that the Chinese government was using Confucianism as "an assistant to the Chinese god of wealth (and a representative of Chinese diplomacy) but not a tutor for Chinese souls."[13] The Economist noted the irony of the Chinese Communist Party using Confucius to name the institute, saying that "Mao vilified Confucius as a symbol of the backward conservatism of pre-communist China. Now the philosopher, who lived in the 6th century BC, has been recast as a promoter of peace and harmony: just the way President Hu Jintao wants to be seen. Li Changchun, a party boss, described the Confucius Institutes as “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up”."[14] A China Daily editorial accused opponents of hypocrisy for not calling "Goethe Institutes, Alliances Francaises or Cervantes Institutes as propaganda vehicles or tools of cultural invasion".[15]
Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
I'm gonna have to watch the 'China Problem' South Park episode now.
Pretty hilarious really, what makes them immune? China will fall down too at some point.
Originally posted by neo96
stating the obvious
the ad was spot on
Originally posted by harrytuttle
Who cares who we work for? We work for rich Americans today, and rich Chinese tomorrow. What's the diff?