The Soft Power Paradox: China’s Confucius Institutes and Perceptions in Western Media

Abstract

By analyzing 2,847 articles published between 2010 and 2024 from major newspapers, this research explores the conflicting portrayal of China’s Confucius Institutes within Western media frames. It highlights key discrepancies between intentions of cultural outreach and geopolitical analyses. The study uses content analysis and discourse analysis to uncover framing in the media that constructs Confucius Institutes as security threats, with negative sentiment rising from 23% to 71% during the study period. The findings illustrate three forms of cognitive paradox where cultural exchange initiatives are dualistically framed as political and educational but predominantly branded as politically aggressive, showcasing a mechanism of cognitive “trap.” Such a framework, laden with bias, persisting instead of adapting to evidence, actively distorts projections of soft power due to pre-determined narratives resisting logical appraisal. Comparative cross-national analysis shows Anglophone media to contain far greater volumes of threat perception compared to Continental European counterparts. This implies that national media systems operate as communities of interpretation, filtering soft power attempts through culturally defined evaluation lenses. The main gap this research seeks to fill focuses on the impact of media mediation on the processes of transmitting soft power, while discussing cross-cultural binary oppositional frameworks puts the need of complexity and ambiguity in the limelight. Ultimately, this advocates for multiple perspectives beyond reductionist frameworks.