A fascinating article in the Herald Tribune about China's efforts with its 'Confucius Institutes' (like the Alliance Francaise or Goethe Institutes for France and Germany) that promote Chinese language instruction in America, Europe and Asia. It discusses the growing importance of learning Chinese in Thailand, a country that forbade formal teaching of the language just two decades ago. The growing bilateral ties between China and Thailand, a nation with many ethnic Chinese, is the backdrop by which language instruction is examined as a projection of Chinese 'soft power' in the latter country. I will quote the article:

Beijing recently established the Confucius Institute, modelled on the British Council and German Goethe Institute, as a nonprofit outfit with the stated mission of "promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching." Eleven of the centers have been established in the United States, Europe and Asia. China's national office for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, which runs the Confucius Institutes, will provide textbooks for schools in Southeast Asia with the catchy title "Happy Chinese."

All of this is a sign of expanding Chinese soft power. But what are the implications of the spread of Chinese language and culture? It's a more important question in a region like Southeast Asia where as many as half the people living in urban areas like Bangkok are of Chinese descent. Many of the young students who attend Jiang's class in the Chiang Mai school have Chinese roots - their fathers and grandfathers came from China. Learning Chinese has deeper implications than the earlier fad in the 1980s of learning Japanese. For one thing, it's hard to become a Japanese citizen...

There's certainly a reason in business circles to learn Chinese; Thailand has already signed a bilateral free-trade agreement with China and is negotiating one with the United States. Over a million Japanese visited Thailand last year, but this year a million Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand, according to the Ministry of Tourism.

Thailand has been the first of the ASEAN states to have done an about-face with regard to its Chinese population - with the previously ethnic Chinese going from being suspicious harborers of dual nationalisms (and previously, Maoist sympathies) to ambassadors and prized links between themselves and the growing regional hegemon. Clearly the fact that race relations in Thailand have been far better than in other ASEAN (particularly Muslim) countries has been a factor.

But to what extent will this trend be replicated, eventually, in other parts of Southeast Asia? And to what extent will the identities of ethnic Chinese in these countries blur as China's presence in Southeast Asia becomes daily more tangible, and it becomes economically more advantageous to identify oneself as one of the 'Happy Chinese' as opposed to Thai or Malaysian?