From Multicultural Experiment to Performing “China's Story”: Complying With Shifting Norms at a Chinese–Hungarian Bilingual School

Abstract

Adopting a broad understanding of compliance as adherence to norms , this study examines the role of the Chinese–Hungarian Bilingual School in Budapest in the propagation of institutional, educational, and civic norms, through an anthropological inquiry into the discourses and practices embraced and enacted by teachers, parents, and students. Set up by bilateral agreement between China and another state, the school we discuss is a unique K‐12 educational institution that exemplifies both the potential and the complexity of harnessing education for the globalization of Chinese institutional, educational, and civic norms. Against the background of Hungary's “Opening to the East” and China's “going global,” we situate our study at the intersection of foreign propaganda, institutional globalization, and education. The node of contact created by the encounter between the Chinese and Hungarian education systems, each struggling with their own paradoxes and mediated by China's overlapping frameworks of foreign propaganda and overseas Chinese policies, stands at the center of our inquiry. By analyzing the daily interactions among students, parents, and educators, the article focuses on the borrowing, appropriation, rejection, and coexistence of dual sets of norms. In contrast to Confucius Institutes, where interaction is typically between Chinese instructors and non‐Chinese students, the school, with its diverse community of Chinese and Hungarian educators, parents, and students, fosters a complex environment where Chinese teachers and students actively participate in norm propagation while also being influenced by it. Similarly, Hungarian teachers and students emerge as active contributors beyond their role as recipients, showing the context‐dependent and oftentimes unexpected nature of the adoption or rejection of norms.