If Britain Phases Out Confucius Institutes at Home, the UK Should Send Future China Experts to Learn Mandarin Abroad
Earlier this week, Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi proposed a new amendment to the Higher Education Bill which would curtail international culture and language partnerships if free speech were stopped. The move follows Conservative backbench MP Alicia Kearns’ proposal to ban Confucius Institutes – China’s de facto state-funded soft power arm – in the UK. These moves are the latest in a broader trend in UK-China relations: universities have been politically transformed from mere institutions of research and learning to critical battlegrounds over Britain’s intellectual and ideological integrity, amplified by undergirding national security risks.
As a PhD student working on UK-China relations, it’s clear to me that Chinese language learning in the UK is a fundamental national security interest. It’s not simply because language instruction can be a contested battleground for free speech, as is most often covered in the press and the proposed legislation. Arguably, more critically, the students who are studying China now – and particularly Chinese language – in Britain’s universities will someday be the businessmen, professors, and diplomats guiding the UK’s engagement with China. Teaching Chinese the right way today is an essential investment in Britain’s foreign policy future.
Confucius Institutes have become controversial due to allegations that they are used for spying by the Chinese government in a limited number of cases and engage in censorship discussion of politically sensitive topics. There may be good reasons to prefer British control over the design and teaching of its Mandarin courses (even if some of the concerns are universalized when they are not in practice), but banning Confucius Institutes – or even reducing their presence without a clear pathway forward – would leave a gaping hole in the UK’s Chinese language infrastructure. Legitimate security concerns, including what the latest Higher Education bill rightfully proscribes as “undue influence”, must not leave us poorer, more ignorant and underprepared for a century in which China is likely to be critical.
This is why if Confucius Institutes are phased out from the UK, the UK must embrace a new foreign direction to cultivate language learning: they should systematically fund students to learn Chinese in both Mainland China and Taiwan. These students today will eventually form the bedrock of its China-focused foreign policy community when they enter the workforce. Developing this on-the-ground expertise will allow the UK to use the skills built through these programmes to harness talent and therefore improve policy formulation and implementation.
The need for such a programme is obvious: the UK faces a tremendous shortage of fluent Mandarin speakers and resources toward developing new Chinese experts. This is clear even at the highest levels of diplomacy and national security. A Freedom of Information request last year revealed that only 41 British diplomats speak fluent Mandarin, down from 45 five years earlier. GCHQ, meanwhile, has been recruiting Mandarin speakers, with reportedly very low levels of Mandarin knowledge required to take up these positions. These shortages can be traced through the UK’s education system. While England has invested significantly in building Chinese knowledge in its state schools through its Mandarin Excellence Programme, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all rely on limited funding from either the Swire family or Confucius Institutes. Meanwhile, China Centres across the UK are perpetually underfunded at the university level, with very limited funding for students to gain language training in the Chinese-speaking world itself.
Protecting free speech is only one portion of academic freedom; protecting the freedom to develop and manifest competences and skills is critically intertwined. As the UK tries to develop a concrete strategy for its relationship with China, failure to protect language skill and cultural awareness development will not only create barriers to navigating the diplomatic space, it will become a national security issue. Addressing this shortage means attacking its root cause – a lack of meaningful opportunities to gain on-the-ground experience.
Even if the UK is able to develop its own programmes that develop theoretically fluent Mandarin speakers, there is a qualitative difference between ‘speaking fluent Chinese’ and ‘being able to interface effectively with China’. Ask yourself: do you really think that Chinese diplomats would be able to communicate effectively with their British and American counterparts if so many didn’t first study abroad in the English-speaking world? The answer is almost assuredly not.
The UK has many models it could use as inspiration as it builds ties with foreign institutions. The United States funds critical language training from the beginning of age 15 through its National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). Other funding opportunities, such as its Boren Awards, designed for undergraduate students and beyond, offer language training for students entering national security professions. This is only the tip of the iceberg for US-based government and NGO Chinese language funding opportunities that the UK could replicate.
Ultimately, it is the people with these long-standing on-the-ground connections and local knowledge – built as a student through education exchange and developed as a foreign policy professional – that eventually should build the foundation for British foreign policymaking circles around China. Many positions in FCDO and GCHQ require astute judgment, nuance, and thorough vetting of policies to be effective. Methodically building this extensive knowledge will ensure that critical posts are filled by people who possess such expertise.
Universities like mine are training the UK’s next generation of China specialists. They should be the heart of a long-term student-to-practitioner pipeline, designed to facilitate deep linguistic and cultural exchange and expertise as a guiding principle for the UK’s foreign policy toward China.
Scott Singer is co-founder and director of the Oxford China Policy Lab and a DPhil candidate in International Relations at Oxford.