If an institute opens a new branch every three days, will it be called "overheating"? Obviously not, says Xu Lin.

The chief executive of Confucius Institute Headquarters draws an analogy from war times. "It's like a continuous campaign, one battle leading to another. Before you have the time to clear the battleground, another battle has started."

She is talking about the opening of Confucius Institutes around the world. At the end of last year, there were 100 institutes, but by the end of last month the number had reached 209, that is, one in every three days.

"We're trying our best to manage our growth," says Xu, who is also director of the Office of Chinese Language Council International, known as Hanban. "There have been so many applications from all over the world. We have been very selective, but we still granted 100-odd of them."

With China's rapid rise on the global stage comes the growing need for knowledge about the country. "We happen to work during good times. We don't need to push foreigners to learn Chinese. Instead, we are being pushed by them to accommodate their need."

During a visit to Egypt, Xu saw a tour guide reading a textbook of Chinese language. Since it was a photocopy of a book endorsed by her headquarters, she struck a conversation with him. What he said came as a revelation: "Tour guides proficient in Chinese could earn twice as much as those who speak French." He was among the 20,000-odd people who applied for admission when Cairo University opened its Confucius Institute and was among the first to enroll.

Xu was told of another reason why so many non-Chinese wanted to learn the Chinese language when she was in England. "Of all the 10-year-olds here, most will need to have contact with China, its people and its language on one occasion or another," said a local school authorities.

So far, 46,000 people from 64 countries have benefited from Confucius Institutes' language programs, most of who have been very pragmatic in choosing the language, says deputy chief executive of the institutes' headquarters Zhao Guocheng. "They want to improve their job prospects. The knowledge will come in handy to many, irrespective of whether they're in trading or other fields."

Take the example of a businessman in Nairobi. He enrolled in a Confucius Institute so that he could translate the user manuals of the disks imported from China, says Zhao.

Teaching Chinese overseas requires special methodologies. What is useful here in China may not work in other countries. "The way we speak differs from the way we write, and writing is the most daunting obstacle. You'll scare people away if you start with written words." That's why most Confucius Institutes emphasize listening and speaking, and then graduate to reading. Even for writing, only recognition is necessary for most people because much of the writing is done on the computer nowadays.

Will Confucius Institutes become a competitor for overseas Chinese language schools? No, says Zhao. In fact, the opposite has happened. In places like North America, children of Chinese emigrants are sent to weekend language schools, but they are often unwilling to learn because it won't heighten their sense of belonging to the mainstream. Now that Chinese is being offered in their own schools, their relative ease at learning the language, compared with classmates of other ethnic groups, instills a sense of pride in them.

Since Chinese - as a second or third language - is being understood and spoken by more and more people, it will inevitably, like English, lose some of its "purity". But this is not something to be feared, argues Zhao, because it is inevitable. "Linguistic purity is an academic and artistic pursuit. It's not a major requirement for communication. Language is learned for pragmatic reasons. A language used worldwide won't be pure and does not need to be so."

But teaching Chinese is only "half the job" of Confucius Institutes. You cannot separate the language from the culture. Many institutes offer all kinds of services. Xu recounts several examples to illustrate the point: People consult local Confucius Institutes to seek advice on what places to visit in China, what gifts to buy for their Chinese counterparts on their business trips, what etiquette faux-pas to watch out for.

Language is a facilitator and a launching pad. Screening movie is a very useful tool, too, says Zhao. It puts a language in the proper perspective and provides a much more relaxed way of learning. The institute in South Korea's Woosong University also has Chinese cooking classes. The institute at Kazan State University in Russia held a special party to celebrate China's National Day, while the one at the University of Dusselfdorf in Germany threw a Mid-Autumn Festival party. On the more serious side, the institute at Dublin University held a conference on "The Rise of China in a Global Era".

The opening of so many outlets requires a major financial commitment, part of which comes from the headquarters. "Our headquarters and its foreign partner split the investment in half," Zhao says. "We can't break even and we're not looking to earn a profit. We are an NGO, after all. But that does not mean we can't charge for our courses."

There are exceptions, though. The one in Japan's Aichi University has enrolled 1,500 students and can cover its own cost.

Zhao denies the allegation that Confucius Institutes are set up to brainwash foreigners with Chinese ideology. "Learning a foreign language means respecting another culture, not embracing it in its entirety. Cultural differences have their benefits. The old colonialists had a way of using language for brainwashing. In the era of globalization, our goal is to facilitate mutual understanding of multiple cultures, their mutual accommodation and even blending. We seek harmony with differences intact."

The real challenge for Confucius Institutes is a severe shortage of teaching resources. "There simply aren't enough teachers in China or elsewhere who can teach Chinese as a foreign language," Zhao says.

He refuses to hazard a guess on how many more Confucius Institutes will be set up. "We don't have a preset number. It all depends on the need and whether everything else is ready."

(China Daily December 12, 2007)