A Political Approach to China’s Confucius Institute: An observation of its understanding of ethnicity, language and identity

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine the ideas of the Chinese government regarding concepts of ethnicity, language and identity. This examination will provide clarity by which to estimate the direction towards which Chinese government policies are committed. Particularly, this research will focus on the language policy pursued by the Chinese government through the Confucius Institute. In this sphere, I will research the activities and specifics of the Chinese government’s language policy conducted both internally and externally in order to understand the whole aspect of its language policy. After analyzing the connection between these activities and the specifics of the Chinese language policy, I will finally extract and summarize the characteristic features of the Confucius Institute as the external language policy instrument of the Chinese government. 要旨 本稿は、中国政府側の対外中国語普及の巨大プロジェクトである「孔子学院」の政策的な性格を明らかにするものである。それを明らかにするために本稿では「民族」「言語」「アイデンティティ」という概念に着目し、国内言語政策におけるそれらの概念に対する中国政府側の姿勢の分析を行う。分析により言語政策が有する国内と国外との固い結びつきが発見される一方、その発見により国内言語政策から孔子学院の実体も解き明かされる。