Introduction

There has been a growing international interest in China and Chinese language teaching and learning since the millennium. This interest has accelerated with the rapid development of Confucius Institute, a language promotion initiative sponsored by the Chinese government. However, little research on Confucius Institutes is about Chinese language teaching and learning, a core activity of Confucius Institute. This research is concerned with the Chinese language teaching and learning in the Confucius Institute and studied how the “Chinese as an international language” policy promoted by the Chinese government was interpreted, incorporated, and managed by local host institutions and manifested in the daily practices of Confucius Institutes, especially in the classrooms of Confucius Institutes. This research was conducted from the perspective of language management, a modern theory of language policy and language planning, with an ethnographic approach examining two case Confucius Institutes. It analysed the Chinese language teaching and learning based upon the data collected from the field study at three different levels: the institutional level involving the institutional partners; the institute level involving the managers of the institutes; and the classroom level involving students and teachers.