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[PONOROGO, Indonesia — The rice fields in this part of East Java are still plowed by buffalo. There is little in the way of manufacturing or tourism. Every year thousands of residents follow a well-worn path to jobs as domestic helpers in Hong Kong or construction workers in Saudi Arabia.
Ziofani Alfirdaus, however, believes he will have a career and a future here. The 16-year-old is clear on the source of his optimism — China.
His local school hosts a Luban Workshop, a Chinese-funded and -directed vocational training program that teaches students how to service Chinese electric-vehicle engines, operate Chinese commercial drones and assemble Chinese robots. The educational assistance, all provided at no cost, has revolutionized the provincial school here with new technology and machinery to train students, as well as trips to vocational schools in China to build the skills of Indonesian educators.
Students who have gone through the workshops emerge sold on the merits of Chinese technology and, by extension, China itself, teachers and alumni say. Alfirdaus said he didn’t know what drones were until he started studying how to operate them, and now hopes to make a career using drones to make video and other visual content. China’s technology, he said, “will be helpful to all of mankind.”
There are more than 30 Luban Workshops in 25 countries around the world, largely in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, offering a host of skills training programs, from manufacturing systems using artificial intelligence to traditional Chinese medicine. Tens of thousands of young people have graduated from them. And in April, Beijing formed a special committee to help plan and construct new workshops, which are increasingly being trumpeted by China as an example of its generosity and a rebuttal of criticism that large infrastructure projects paid for with Chinese loans and constructed with Chinese labor were doing little for the development of other economies.
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When they were first introduced in 2016, the workshops were a component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global network of infrastructure projects to cement China’s industrial power and economic influence. They have expanded in reach and sophistication, emblematic of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to extend his country’s soft power alongside its economic might, especially in the Global South. They showcase an accelerating effort by Beijing to wield its companies and educational institutes as an arm of diplomacy, positioning China as an alternative power and model to the United States by harnessing China’s technological prowess.
Students who have gone through the workshops emerge sold on the merits of Chinese technology and, by extension, China itself, teachers and alumni say.
There are more than 30 Luban Workshops in 25 countries around the world, largely in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, offering a host of skills training programs.
A 16-year-old workshop student sits for a haircut, which all male students must get each month. The haircuts are meant to maintain a semi-military atmosphere at the school.
They are also part of a wider shift to modulate the coercive foreign policy that emerged in Xi’s first years by striking a variety of tones in Beijing’s approach to the world and forging unexpected forms of engagement. China in many ways has begun to emulate the American approach of developing a menu of hard- and soft-power options to advance its national interests.
“China’s overseas economic aim is to tie the emerging economies of the world more closely to China’s industrial system,” said Dirk van der Kley, a research fellow at the Australian National University and author of an upcoming report on the workshops. “Xi Jinping is trying to create a new world order in which the U.S. role is reduced. … In the case of Luban, which can provide genuine benefits for recipient states, the underlying goal of reshaping the world order does not go away.”
Indonesia’s working culture, said Syamhudi Arifin, the school principal in Ponorogo, tended to “lean more toward America, Japan and Europe,” especially when it came to training and operational standards. But it was China that was willing to donate its technology and underwrite instruction.
“We wanted to enhance our students’ competence,” Arifin said.
The workshops have echoes of and sometimes operate in tandem with Confucius Institute learning centers. Confucius Institutes on American and other Western campuses have closed in recent years over concerns that they were propaganda arms of the Chinese government and limited discussion on issues that Beijing considers politically sensitive, such as Tibet or Xinjiang. At their height in 2018, there were 530 Confucius Institutes in 149 countries.
With their emphasis on practical training, the workshops and other forms of vocational education sponsored by China or Chinese companies have drawn much less scrutiny than the institutes — and, ultimately, may serve China’s ideological goals more effectively through the accretion of goodwill.
Hosting leaders from Central Asian countries in May, Xi singled out for mention the recently opened Luban Worshop in Tajikistan, the first in the region, with more under construction as part of a billion-dollar Chinese assistance package. Addressing Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Xi urged him to “run the Luban Workshop well” as part of broader efforts to deepen economic cooperation and tell “China-Tajikistan friendship stories.”
‘Small and beautiful’
The school grounds of SMK PGRI 2 Ponorogo, which hosts a Luban Workshop.
The first Luban Workshops were led by the local government in Tianjin, a coastal area just south of Beijing dominated by industries like petrochemicals, car manufacturing and metalworking and with a large network of vocational schools. A chemical supply company based in Tianjin and a vocational school in the same city sponsored the first workshop in 2016, in Ayutthaya, Thailand. Students learned to operate hydraulic systems and digital circuits used in high-skill manufacturing, using equipment that was donated by the company.
Analysts said the involvement of Tianjin authorities and regional companies was a way for local officials and businesspeople to endear themselves to the central government by showing they were committed to Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, implemented just a few years earlier. In an official document, the Tianjin municipal government said it was building the workshops based on the needs of Belt and Road projects, opening a “new era of the Chinese model” through vocational education.
“China’s overseas economic aim is to tie the emerging economies of the world more closely to China’s industrial system.” — Dirk van der Kley, a research fellow at the Australian National University and author of an upcoming report on the workshops
In May 2017, the second Luban-branded workshop opened, at Crawley College, south of London, offering a one-year diploma in Chinese culinary arts. It was sponsored by another Tianjin-based company, the Tianjin Food Group. Chefs from the city flew in to teach students how to make Chinese pastries and kung pao chicken. The program ended in 2020, but Crawley College was “proud to be involved in the pilot,” a statement from the college said.
The Luban Workshop in Ponorogo was the third to open, in late 2017, facilitated partly by a Chinese-born business executive, Jasper Ho, who had ties to both Tianjin and Indonesia. The Ponorogo school focused on automotive manufacturing skills, drone technology, robotics and IT. A Tianjin-based company that provides IT services and tech products, Qicheng Technology, helped train Indonesian teachers and provided technological support. The workshops, Ho said, represented a business opportunity for the Tianjin companies. If more people were trained on their systems and technologies, they could grow a bigger market share in those countries.
Students attend a class at the SMK PGRI 2 Ponorogo. Shoes outside a computer network engineering classroom.
The workshop area of a Luban Workshop in Ponorogo.
The Luban Workshops — named after Lu Ban, a 5th-century master carpenter and inventor revered in Chinese legends — then started to appear in Chinese Communist Party speeches and bilateral meetings between China and other countries. With Beijing now promoting the initiative, the Luban Workshops expanded into Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Lahore, Pakistan. A workshop opened in Portugal, one of China’s closest partners in the European Union, focusing on electrical automation and industrial robots. The president of the Tianjin Vocational College of Mechanics and Electricity, which co-founded the Portugal workshop, said the export…
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