The British council and four decades of deepening cultural and educational ties

WITH a commitment to a step change in the range and level of relations between the two countries, the Peoples Republic of China and the United Kingdom established diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level on March 13, 1972. In the 40 years since, the British Council has established itself as a key facilitator of UK-China cultural and educational bilateral exchanges, and its presence in China continues to grow. To examine how the British Council is advancing cultural communications between the two nations today, China Today sits down with Joanna Burke, director and cultural counselor of the British Council in China, for an exclusive interview.

The British Council, which operates as the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy in China, was first present in China from 1942 to 1952, with the eminent sinologist, scientist and polymath Joseph Needham as its first director. While programs facilitating Chinese students studying in the UK were continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Council returned to operations on the mainland in 1979, which happens to be the same year Ms. Burke, a subscriber to China Todays predecessor China Reconstructs since 1975, studied as an undergraduate student in Beijing. At that time, the Beijing office of the British Council was small, with a dedicated British staff of three. Nevertheless, in this first year of renewed operations a cultural exchange agreement was signed, and 25 annual postgraduate scholarships for language students were inaugurated. These scholarships provided the basis for a broad range of exchanges in the fields of English, the arts, education and society.

Of the late 70s and early 80s, Ms. Burke says China-UK mutual understanding was limited by a lack of regular contact between the two peoples and a dearth of information on each others contemporary affairs. Opportunities for travel between the two countries were limited. Chinese studies in the UK were largely historical in focus and Chinese anglophiles had to resort to viewing the UK through the prism of 19th English literature. “One of the main factors strengthening bilateral cultural exchanges nowadays is that people can travel and see the countries for themselves,” Ms. Burke says.

Ms. Burkes first official posting to China was from 1990 to 1995 as the Assistant Director (Beijing) and Second Secretary (Cultural) of the British Embassy. She says in the early 90s a major focus of the British Council was on developing and enhancing English language education on the mainland. “We managed 30 projects in leading Chinese universities to improve the provision of English language teaching in higher education institutions. We helped in setting up English language and applied linguistics masters degree courses, developed materials and facilitated teacher training and brought in British Council English language specialists to pair with local Chinese colleagues, who would then further their study under scholarship in the UK,” she says. “We also introduced an international standard for English language testing under the English Language Testing System (ELTS), which today, prefixed with ‘International, has become IELTS, the international standard for English language testing.”

The 1990s also saw the genesis of the British Councils work in China in the realms of civil society, governance and law, as well as in gender issues. Pioneering academic links forged at that time are now among the most successful inter-institutional relationships that exist today.

Education Is Forever

In the last two decades the scope of British Council Chinas activities has broadened immensely. Since expanding from its headquarters in Beijing, the council now boasts offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, from which it runs activities in 50 cities across the country. Through its Hong Kong branch, 30,000 students receive faceto-face English language instruction annually. Although teaching English falls outside the mandate of the councils branches on Chinas mainland, its influence still reaches learners. Ms. Burke and her team are working closely with provincial and municipal education commissions to conduct teachertraining programs throughout China.“So far 13,000 teachers have been trained through our teacher training projectin Shanghai. Similar projects ran in Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces and are in development in Yunnan and Anhui.”

These days, spreading the English language is merely the tip of the educational iceberg when it comes to the British Councils efforts to promote bilateral educational ties. In addition to administering the British Foreign and Commonwealth Offices prestigious Chevening Scholarships, the largest proportion of recipients by country of which come from China, as well as the Councils highly successful BOND industry work placement program, the organization continues to support and expand bilateral university and research ties. The council works closely with the Chinese Ministry of Education, and a UK China Education Framework Agreement is in place to strengthen education collaboration.China hopes to draw on international expertise in establishing worldclass universities to foster domestic creativity and innovation into the future. China is interested in the UK experience in areas that contribute to that goal, such as widening access to higher education while maintaining quality, facilitating technology transfers and internationalizing university campuses

Ms. Burke says a key education imperative of the Council is to ensure the continued attractiveness of British higher education to Chinese students. Almost 300,000 Chinese students went abroad to study in 2011, and Britain hopes to maintain and expand its share of these students. Every single university in the UK has university-to-university or research links with mainland education institutions. “But what we do is much more than student recruitment,” Ms. Burke points out. “We are aware that many Chinese students study in the UK in order to better their employment prospects on return to China. To this end, we work closely with HR managers in China to promote our Chinese graduates. We invite employers of leading Chinese companies to tour British campuses, and last year 85 percent of Chinese graduates from UK universities found relevant employment in China within six months of graduating. We want to ensure these benefits continue.”

Culture Never Dies

Besides education, promoting bilateral cultural exchanges is the main mission of the British Council in China. The council has been undertaking initiatives to present UK culture to China and vice versa for over two decades now, but Ms. Burke is keen to highlight two programs of which she is especially proud. The first is Connections Through Culture, which has been in place for five years and grew out of an older initiative, Artist Links.

Connections Through Culture aims to bolster bilateral links between cultural and artistic organizations and institutions of the two nations. To date, 1,200 organizations from both countries have joined the initiative and, aided by development grants and logistical support and advice from the Council when necessary, have embarked on cooperative projects. “There are many examples of the success of this approach,” Ms. Burke says. “One memorable collaboration was the Dazu Stone Carving Exhibition last year (2011) in Cardiff, which was jointly held by Three Gorges Museum and the National Museum of Wales.. Another was the exhibition in Beijing of 110 works from the Tate Museums collection of one of Britains greatest artists, J.M.W. Turner. This was regarded as one of the biggest events in Chinas artistic calendar for 2008.” The British Council itself maintains one of the best collections of contemporary art in Britain, and last year invited curators from China to the collection in London to choose pieces for a “Made in Britain” collection, which was subsequently shown in Xian, Chengdu, Suzhou and Hong Kongs New Territories.

Alongside the Connections Through Culture is the “New Work New Audiences” project, which includes initiatives like the Edinburgh Showcase whereby the British Council brings Chinese promoters to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and organizes their viewing of their own selection of 200 new performances. Last year, one promoter brought four plays from the Fringe to China and toured around the country, during which the plays gained rave reviews.

Ms. Burke says that one of the Councils goals with Connections Through Culture is to expandhigh quality cultural and artistic collaborations beyond Chinas super cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong and toward soi-disant second tier cities, such as Chongqing and Hangzhou. “Theres such a wealth of wonderful galleries, magnificent theaters and stunning artistic spaces in these cities; we want to make sure these see their fair share of collaborations,” she says.

The olympics Are Not Enough

Besides Connections Through Culture, Ms. Burke is keen to highlight another countrywide cultural program, known as“UK Now,” which is kicking off in 2012, a year when Britain will be under an intense media spotlight with the staging of the London Olympics in July and August. The British Council hopes to turn some of the attention on London and sport to the UK and British culture in general.UK Now, the website launched in February, certainly aims to harness this interest toward Britain in 2012, and promotes 100 events in 12 cities across China. Events will include orchestral performances, dance displays and art exhibitions. Through these events the British Council hopes to advance bilateral ties and cooperation between participating Chinese and UK organizations.

The UK Now program will also introduce a number of major collaborative initiatives alongside the plethora of cultural events to be held over eight months. “We plan to continue advanc-ing our arts management ties with China by inviting Chinese arts managers to the UK to work with major institutions there. Many big names in Chinese arts management circles today have already passed through this program,” Ms. Burke says. An additional focus of UK Now will be skills training. “Outside Beijing and Shanghai there is a shortage of skilled technicians in the arts. We plan to draw on the technical prowess of British organizations taking part in UK Now, such as the Royal Opera House, to further develop the skills of Chinese technicians in such fields as lighting and sound engineering. Our hope is that UK Now will leave a lasting legacy of increased artistic and cultural collaboration between our countries.”

As for the Olympic Games themselves, a number of events are planned in China to draw attention to Britains cultural profile in addition to its (hopedfor) sporting stripes. One such event will be the linking up of giant screens placed in Trafalgar Square, London and a yetto-be-determined park in Beijing for a 2,000-person-strong dance-off between denizens of the two capitals.

A View to Civil society

Providing access to the rich British experience in the development of civil society is also on the Councils agenda. Once a foreign concept to a populace that looked to its government as the sole provider of social services, an idea of the role played by social enterprises is gaining recognition in China. As new social needs arise in Chinas rapidly changing society, social enterprises have a role to play in areas into which the government cannot or is not best placed to step.

The UK has a lot to share, says Ms. Burke. “In China, we have a project that has been running for three years now which supports and grants recognition to outstanding domestic social enterprises. Part of our support involves the technical matters of running a social enterprise – training, marketing and project management.”

As the British Councils joint work with local foundations and domestic social enterprises is becoming better known, ‘“social innovation” and “social enterprises” are turning up in government reports, and there is growing official cognizance of the public good these organizations can provide. Some of the enterprises with which the Council has worked have become well-known in their own right – one project, initially started by the BBC Worldwide Trust and run with support from the UK charity China Vision, provides radio production training for blind people in China, whose career prospects have traditionally been regarded on the mainland as beginning and ending in massage. Another successful social enterprise project which has received an award under the Councils project ties in with Chinas drive to revitalize its traditional culture industries. This project, called Miaolosophy, aims to create more structured ways for the Miao ethnic minority in Guizhou Province to bring their traditional craft products to the mass market.

Flourishing civil society is usually accompanied by an explosion in fresh and adventurous literature, and this is certainly the case in China. As more and more contemporary Chinese authors are being translated into English and presented to Western readers, there is increased scope for cooperation in Chinese and British publishing industries, Ms. Burke says. “UK publishers are always looking for promising new talent, and China certainly has that at the moment. We are running a cultural program and working very closely with Chinas General Administration of Press and Publication to bring popular contemporary Chinese writers to this years London Book Fair. Which authors will go hasnt been determined at this stage, but there is a lot of excitement in the UK about the possibility that some big names in contemporary Chinese fiction could attend.”

The sky Is Not Falling

Despite cuts to the British Councils overall budget at home, Ms. Burke says no cuts have been made to the Councils China presence. “China remains one of the key countries in which we operate. Budget cuts – no, but change – yes. Our operations here continue to change with the times, and whereas in the past the majority of funding for projects in China came from the UK side this is no longer the case. Today our strength is in facilitating the exchange of experiences, knowledge and ideas between Chinese and UK individuals and organizations. Chinas rapid urbanization and increasing numbers of youg people with an international outlook signify an increasing demand for our work, but the development of the Internet and our own digital products negates the need for more staff.”

If the future of China-UK bilateral cultural and educational ties can be judged by looking to younger generations, we have reason to be optimistic. Chinese primary school students are learning English in greater numbers than ever before, and thanks to the work of the British Council are being exposed to the wealth of British civilization and culture. British pupils are also taking up the study of Chinese with great brio, in part aided by efforts by the Council to increase the number and quality of UK-based Chinese language teachers and improve learning materials for younger students. It is this younger generation that will write the script for Sino-UK cultural relations over the four decades to come. It looks set to be a great story.