Jiangyu, Li. Practicing nation-state work abroad: international Chinese teachers of Confucius institutes in Thailand. Doctoral Degree(Social Science). Chiang Mai University. Library. : Chiang Mai University, 2020.
Practicing nation-state work abroad: international Chinese teachers of Confucius institutes in Thailand
Abstract:
Western scholarship has tended to evaluate the Confucius Institute (CI) in a dichotomous way, exploring whether it is ""bad"" or good"" in response to its high global visibility and the controversies that surround it. This research takes Thailand as a case study to explore the CI phenomena, taking up a ""sense of problem"" that asks questions that go beyond a ""West-versus-China either or binary mode"" and focus instead on the local engagement of CI workers as agentive actors. This study examines the internal mechanisms and heterogeneous dynamics of CIs by applying the notion of ""Nation-state Work,"" which combines how ""China"" is ""told,"" ""practiced"" and ""articulated"" in respect to nationless, nationhood and national identity. The practitioners of nation-state work interpret and negotiate heterogeneously to redefine and reinvent Chinese nationality according to their own understanding. This research employs the long-standing anthropological tradition of participant observation. I joined in with CI's local engagement as an approved part-time assistant for sixteen months, in order to collect information with regarding to the practices of CI workers in different positions and the interaction between Thai and Chinese staff and institutions. The study puts forward three findings. First, when exploring CIs in Thailand as a Chinese state apparatus wielding soft power, it is found that the recent historical development of Sino-Thai relations, amid a process of "" desecuritization "" and depoliticization of the image of China and a shifting of its status from ""a threat"" to ""a friend,"" has eased the establishment of CIs n Thailand and given them a distinctive developmental path when compared to CIs in Western countries and elsewhere. Besides the state-to-state political endorsement, the bond with overseas Chinese and their prior involvement in the education system in Thailand, the effects of China's economic rise on the demands of the job market and the going out"" policy have also accelerated the boom in CIs and Chinese language instruction in Thailand. Second, although there is an official repertoire for nationalism and nationness as ""nation-work"" that has been designed by the Chinese state (represented by CI headquarters in Beijing), this research found that CIs in Thailand, as ""nation-state workers,"" demonstrate heterogeneity in their agentive actions at both the institutional level and the individual level of everyday practice. At the institutional level, CI teachers were found to redefine and reproduce national identity according to their personal capabilities and work maneuverability. Unlike the previous scholarship, which has generally analyzed the CI at a macro-level, this thesis argues that Chinese foreign policies were appropriated at various levels of collaborative leadership and finally into CI workers' everyday practices in their Thai locality. At the individual level, heterogeneous agency is found in the CI teachers' attempts to blend their practice with elements of Thai culture, which probably challenge the official discourse of Chinese national identity, and their decoration of ""CI-work"" as evidence of the strength of their nation-state work for the Chinese state, nation and people. Third, the thesis agrees with one strand of the literature in finding that the Chinese state is only one player in Chinese nationalism and that the Chinese national identity reflects a relational identity, a site of competing representations and discourses that are constantly shafting. Accordingly, the concept of nation-state work not only comprises a dominant top-down exercise of power by the Chinese state, but also the human desires and agency that the CI teachers realize and exercise in their everyday practices when engaging with Thai society. In terms of method, the thesis argues that for analyzing the issues surrounding CIs, there is a need to take a praxeological approach that is configured to investigate the local engagements, interactions and agentive actors within the local context. Such an approach can generate a better understanding of how the Chinese state and the institutional and individual practitioners of nation work differently contribute to nation branding in the international arena.