Introduction to the Special Issue— Contending Confucius Institutes in Southeast Asia

Since 2004, China has initiated a grand strategy to implant the Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms worldwide. Its global proliferation was listed by Xinhua News Agency as one of the top 10 notable cultural news events for 2012. This was described as “nothing short of a miracle” as it took only eight years to achieve its current global reach. In contrast, similar efforts by the colonial powers of old achieved that across a span of decades and centuries.