Sufficient Human Resources

The CI’s power structure, according to its specific purposes and hierarchical design, is distributed into thousands of small spaces, and each space needs an individual to fill in and play his part in the operation of the whole structure. For example, in the first half year of 2015, 2,497 Chinese volunteer teacher vacancies needed to be filled (Notice 15). Thanks to China’s ample human resources and the CI Headquarters’ recruitment strategies, the provision of such a large workforce becomes possible.

According to the 2016 Chinese Universities and Subjects Evaluation Report published by Wuhan University’s Research Centre for Chinese Science Evaluation, as of 23 February 2016, 278 Chinese universities offer degree courses of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (Research Centre for Chinese Science Evaluation, 2016), and 108 Chinese universities offer a Master of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (MTCSOL) degree course (National Education Steering Committee for MTCSOL, 2016). The current students and new graduates of these courses account for the majority of CI teachers who initially join in the role of Volunteer Teacher. Chinese university students studying other subjects can also apply to become a CI

teacher so long as they pass Hanban’s interviews, tests and training. Additionally, current teachers at Chinese educational institutes can apply to become a CI teacher, usually in the role of Gongpai Teacher. The Gongpai teachers whom I interviewed include university teachers and secondary school teachers. These Chinese educational institutes provide enough candidates to fill in the CI’s teacher job vacancies.

Additionally, the Chinese educational institutes have sufficient candidates to fill the CI’s Chinese director vacancies. The Chinese partner university can select a candidate from its current employees or from other qualified individuals. Six CIs’ Chinese directors whom I met are from the CIs’ Chinese partner universities and one director was selected by the CI’s Chinese partner university through open recruitment, although her employer is another Chinese university. According to these Chinese directors, the selection of higher level members of the CI, such as the Chinese director, seems to be more difficult than provisioning low level volunteer teachers because of the conflicts of interest between the CI and the Chinese educational institutes. This point again will be further elaborated on in the next chapter where the discussion of the co-existence of power and conflicts takes place.

From my interviews, I also realised that most Chinese teachers did not choose African CIs as their first choice of work place because they associate Africa with difficulties, diseases, wars and less developed situations (Interviews 46, 21, 3, 25, 30

& 34). In order to encourage people to work in Africa, the CI Headquarters provides more subsidies and other material benefits. For example, CI volunteer teachers in Africa receive 1,000 US Dollars a month from CI Headquarters, 200 US Dollars more than those working in developed countries. According to the 2016 University

Graduates Employment Quality Research Report, new Chinese university Bachelor’s

degree graduates’ starting salary is 3678.8 RMB (about 550 US Dollars) per month (Zhang, 2016). Comparing this salary with the monthly salary of 1,000 US Dollars for CI volunteer teachers, the volunteer teachers feel satisfied. As several volunteer teachers mentioned, they are very happy with this job because this is their first job after graduation which not only gives them a good salary, but also provides an opportunity to see the world outside China (Interviews 14, 16, 34 & 21). For Gongpai teachers, their salary doubles the amount of volunteer teachers’ salary and their employment with their Chinese educational institutions must be securely maintained. This is required by the Ministry of Education and Hanban (Interviews 3 & 53, Notice 1, Notice 2).

Also, the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Education classify poor, developing and unsafe countries into five categories depending on the level of hardship (in a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being slightly difficult and 5 being extremely difficult). Nearly all African countries fall into these categories: 7 African countries in category 1; 10 African countries in category 2; 18 African countries in category 3 and 14 African countries in category 4. If a Chinese Gongpai teacher chooses to working in a country

belonging to category 1, they can receive 180 US dollars extra subsidies a month; if they choose to work in a country belonging to category 5, the extra subsidies will rise to 1,500 US dollars per month. If the teacher’s partner also goes to this country, the partner can receive one third of the subsidies as well. At a higher level, a CI Chinese director can receive 400 US dollars extra as position allowance. Moreover, Chinese teachers working in those countries can also receive 400 US dollars (for category 1) or 600 US dollars (for category 2 and above) transportation allowances if the CIs’ foreign partners do not provide any vehicle or transportation allowance. Those teachers who have worked in the countries belonging to category 2 and above will be given priority in promotion of jobs and academic titles (Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Education, 2011).

Apart from the material benefits offered by the Chinese central government, the CI’s Chinese partner universities may provide extra incentives too. One CI’s Chinese partner university sets up a CI Director Fund, which allows the Chinese director to manage and use an extra 100,000 RMB per year (fieldwork note 3 August 2015). Another CI’s Chinese partner university gives its African CI Chinese director and Gongpai teachers an extra amount of 50,000 RMB per year as a form of position subsidy (Summary and report 1). Since the CI Development Plan 2012-2020 states clearly that in the long term locally employed Chinese teachers will account for the majority of CI teachers, the CI Headquarters encourages the CI students who receive CI scholarships and complete a degree in TCSOL in China to teach Chinese in the local

CIs by offering to pay 5 to 10 years’ salary for them (Ren, 2012). By doing so, the local CIs can expect to have continuous waves of local human resources to fill in the CIs’ teacher vacancies.