Beijing (CNS) -- China has successfully founded over 300 Confucius Institutes and 400 Confucius Classrooms in 104 countries and regions around the world, covering 86% of the global population, according to a CNS report on October 12.
Another 260 organizations from some 50 countries are in the process of applying to the Chinese for opening up a Confucius Institute in their home countries.
In the single year of 2010, over 18,000 programs and 8,000 cultural activities were offered by worldwide Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, with over 500,000 registered students and some five million participants.
"Chinese culture provides foreigners a new angle to explain the Chinese economic legend in the past 30 years," said Secretary-general Xu Lin of the Confucius Institute Headquarters.
Practices of the Confucius Institutes are adjusted to the local conditions. They provide language and cultural services to a wide range of organizations from primary schools to colleges, from communities to companies.
Some foreign officials and scholars have directly questioned the applicability and purpose of Confucius Institute, said Xu frankly. "We only discuss language and culture in the classroom."
During a governmental seminar on cultural industrial reforms, Zhao Qizheng, member of the standing committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee, addressed that China's international impacts have been widely neglected.
"Most foreigners are only aware of the Great Wall, pandas, and kung fu when speaking of China," said Zhao. "The attempts by Confucius Institute will create another path for Chinese public diplomacy and contribute to the country's soft power substantially."
Xu admitted that the Confucius Institute is still exploring a perfected and duplicable mode to effectively combine language teaching and cultural exchanges in a more approachable way to non-Chinese speakers.
