The Role Played By Non-governmental Organizations In Cultural Diplomacy Of China—Taking The Confucius Institute As An Example

The failure of government's interference of social affairs under the background of national crisis originated in modern countries gives rise to the birth of the non-governmental organizations (NGO), which plays a crucial and supplementary role to practice the responsibility of public administration for the government. With the fast social and economic advancement, this kind of role acted by NGO is becoming more and more apparent.As one of the most important functions of the government and an externalized behavior of a country's policy, the diplomacy makes a remarkable contribution to the realization of a country's overall interests. After the cold war, the means by relying on the country's traditional "hard power", such as military, politics and economy to attaining country's interests were changed, as those ways appeared to be more and more pale and insufficient to ensure the success in national diplomacy, while the means by basing on one country's "soft power" to carry out more active culture exchanges have gradually developed into the necessary complement for achieving the interests and have attracted more and more attention from different countries over the whole world. The NGO adds more vigor and vitality to government's cultural diplomacy by employing more mild but diverse ways to promote culture interaction and collaboration, which lays the new footstone for the country's development of "soft power"The Confucius Institute, as one of the newly up-raising NGOs with Chinese characteristics, are now committed to not only actively prompting Chinese language and traditional Chinese culture, but also fulfilling its significant role as the pioneer for pushing forward China's strategy of cultural diplomacy.