Confucius Institutes v2 (1)

CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF CHINA’S SOFT POWER 39offered particularity, through the embodied performance of tradition,there remained a level of incommensurability between the CI modelof particularity and that desired and/or expected by the students. Theframes of reference through which the different actors attempted tocreate value remained mutually illegible.The CIs’ second mechanism to construct soft power, theembodied performance of tradition, also failed to resonate with thestudents, for the form of particularity it involved highlighted theparadoxical notions of authenticity that the various actors broughtto the setting. On most days, following several hours of Chineseinstruction, students were gathered into a common area for lectureson traditional arts and crafts that they later practiced themselves.The topics included examples of what Geremie Barmé 10 felicitouslycalls “History Channel-friendly” Chinese culture: globally availablesymbols of recognition that locate value in an essentialized andexoticized but depoliticized and palatable past.Such activities are staple practices for CIs around the world, andstudents who had been studying Chinese had “performed” Chinathis way many times before. One afternoon on opera mask-paintingday, alongside eye-rolling and nap-taking, students took poeticlicense and several of the resulting masks more closely resembledcharacters from Planet of the Apes and Batman rather than standardChinese opera characters. Nonetheless, the activity was featuredduring our send-off ceremony in a video the host CI produced,entitled “Achievements of the Summer Camp.” Although many ofthe students were phenotypically Chinese, including adoptees fromChina or children of immigrant parents, this video featured close-upsalmost entirely of Caucasian and/or African-American students. Theracial connotations evident in this video emerged in multiple contextsthrough the CI program, locating a “target” policy audience largelyin the white body. 11 Yet, while being “removed” from the picture,in this case literally, the Chinese-American students by and largerejected the “brother” and “sister” appellations they were subject towhile being called upon to purchase products in public markets orin the expectation that they felt some sort of “natural” affinity for