ABSTRACT
Communism is such a cliche for a changing China constantly exploring its development road of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Although promoting cultural pluralism and constructing a harmonious world is claimed to be the goal of China’s cultural diplomacy. A change of China’s cultural image may only happen when a new counter-discourse begins to gain access to the centre of legitimate knowledge, that is, host universities in the case of the Confucius Institute (CI). As a matter of fact, many posts of CI Directors and members of the Board are taken by pro-China scholars, such as Tim Wright, professor of Chinese Studies and executive board member of the CI at Sheffield University. One of the goals of China’s cultural diplomacy is to fight against the subjectivity of Western media by unveiling the “true” face of China to the rest of the world, or to give the world an ‘accurate’ understanding of China.
