HAMBURG, Germany -- Taiwanese centers for learning Mandarin are springing up in Germany, taking the place of Chinese facilities as universities grow wary of Beijing's influence on their academic freedom.
The expansion comes as Taipei increasingly turns to soft power to compete with China, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be brought under its control by force if necessary.
A new branch of the Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning (TCML) is preparing to launch in Berlin, local staff told Nikkei Asia -- Germany's third such site teaching the Chinese language to adults after Hamburg and Heidelberg.
In recent months, universities in Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Ingolstadt and Trier have bowed out of or started to phase out cooperation with China's Confucius Institutes. That is due to practical challenges as well as political headwinds, with the Confucius Institute in Heidelberg telling Nikkei that students did not sign up for classes as China suspended student exchange initiatives during the pandemic.
Thirty-five of the 45 TCMLs around the world are in the U.S., with two each in the U.K., France and Germany, and single sites in Austria, Ireland, Sweden and Hungary. As shown by the upcoming branch in Berlin, Taiwan is pushing to expand.
That is still dwarfed by the number of Confucius Institutes globally. By the end of 2019, 550 institutes and 1,172 classrooms had been established in 162 countries around the world. Europe alone had 187 institutes in 41 nations.
The Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi in 2022. 550 such facilities were open in 162 countries as of the end of 2019.
© Reuters
TCMLs only employ Mandarin teachers that do not hold China, Macao or Hong Kong passports. Students learn only traditional Chinese characters -- rather than the simplified characters used in mainland China.
Potentially indicating teething problems, however, the TCML Hamburg branch turned down an interview request from Nikkei Asia, and an agreed interview with staff at the school in Heidelberg, which opened in late-February, was canceled on short notice after a senior official in Taiwan intervened.
"It seems odd that these schools are hesitant of being interviewed, given that OCAC [Taiwan's Overseas Community Affairs Council] emphasizes that the schools are not government controlled, promote democratic free teaching and nurture awareness for Taiwan's democracy," said Barbara Pongratz, a researcher at the Merics China think tank in Berlin.
"Whether the TCMLs will become a formidable competitor for the Confucius Institutes will hinge on whether the OCAC program will be extended after 2022 and whether the German government will come up with its own version of the U.S. Taiwan Education Initiative," she said, referring to a Washington initiative launched in 2020 to end educational alliances with China and encourage more Taiwanese people to teach Mandarin in the U.S.
According to the OCAC, an overseas compatriot group opening a TCML will receive a maximum of $20,000 for setting up expenses such as venue rental and building repairs. In the second and third year after establishment, the group will get a maximum annual subsidy of $10,000. That comes on top of admission fees, course fees and donations.
According to Pongratz, that compares to the between $100,000 and $150,000 a Confucius Institute receives from its Chinese partner university for its initial establishment, with additional funding coming through fees and from sources such as the host universities and, in some cases, Germany's federal states.
Students study Mandarin at a branch of the Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo provided by the organization that operates the TMLC Hamburg.)
In Germany, Taiwan's Mandarin teaching push comes at an opportune time, as the coalition government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that "Asia and China competencies must be strengthened discernibly," while, in the same statement, breaching some of China's core policies by calling for the international participation of "democratic Taiwan."
According to a new but unpublished parliamentary inquiry by the German opposition obtained by Nikkei Asia, the coalition government said that "stakeholders from Taiwan can be valuable partners for the provision of independent China competencies" in response to a question on whether Germany aims to create a Taiwan education initiative for the recruitment of Taiwanese Mandarin teachers.
In April, Germany-based NGO Society for Threatened Peoples International called on policymakers to decouple Confucius Institutes from universities and stop public funding. The NGO also said financial contributions by German companies such as Audi and Siemens to the Confucius Institutes were "bribes" meant to smooth business operations in China. Neither company have explicitly countered such allegations.
Nevertheless, Merics researcher Pongratz doesn't believe the TCMLs will elbow out the Confucius Institutes in the foreseeable future.
"Even after their partner agreements with universities here were canceled, most Confucius Institutes remain active, with lost local funding probably being replaced by Chinese or other funding sources," Pongratz said.
"Germany is unlikely to shift public funding from the Confucius Institutes to the TCMLs, as this would be deemed too provocative in terms of Germany's overall China policy," she added.
