| Public diplomacy refers to a government adopts diplomatic policies that aim to influence foreign public through mass media communication and culture exchange programs. As a form of public diplomacy, exchange of language and culture has been highly valued by the Chinese government. Confucius Institute, one of the new public diplomacy channels, is formed by Hanban (Confucius Institute Headquarter) partnering oversea institutions. It leverages Chinese language education as well as communicating the facts of China to introduce Chinese culture, convey China’s national situation and interpret the national policies, which helps China to improve soft power, build the country’s image proactively and master international discourse power.Japan is one of the first countries to set up Confucius institute in the world. As of February 2014, a total of 13 Confucius Institutes and 7 Confucius Classrooms were established in Japan. The Confucius Institute in Japan has facilitated the emotional communication among the citizens of China and Japan and deepen the mutual understanding through education, civic activities, and the exchange of teachers and students. At the same time it has also created new space for China’s diplomacy, provided a new stage for the bilateral diplomacy between China and Japan, and boosted the development of the relationship between the two countries from both official and unofficial aspects. Based on the above, the Confucius Institute did achieve part of the goals of public diplomacy.However, due to the lack of trust for the Confucius Institute in Japan, both the Japanese Government and the National Universities stay cautious about it, which affects its role in public diplomacy. Despite the continuous development of the Confucius Institute in Japan, it has encountered the bottleneck, including the trust issue, lack of proper Chinese teachers, funding difficulty, decline of Sino-Japanese communication and the contradiction between unified planning and differential solution. Facing these problems, Japan’s Confucius Institute needs to follow the principles of adapt locally, act accordingly and plan long-termly. It has to adopt measures suitable for Japan to address the issues during operation and development to better serve the public diplomacy. |
