Purpose
The proliferation of Confucius Institutes around the world has multiple purposes: the promotion and teaching of Chinese culture and language abroad, the encouraging of trade ties, and the extension of the Chinese Party-State's campaign of "soft power" into the educational sphere in foreign countries.
CIs develop Chinese language courses, train teachers, hold the HSK Examination (Chinese proficiency test), and provide information about contemporary China. The director of the CI program, Xu Lin, says CIs were started to cater to the sudden uptick in interest in Chinese language around the world; they also provide Chinese language teaching staff from the Mainland. As of 2011 there were 200 such teachers working in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Confucius Institute
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