President Ma Ying-jeou has told the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs to work out a plan for the academies, his spokesman said, in what could become a new competition about the spread of "soft power" abroad.

"Ma ordered the council to draft the plan as soon as possible... so that traditional Chinese language and culture can be preserved and spread around the world," presidential office spokesman Wang Yu-chi told AFP.

China has launched dozens of Confucius Institutes since the first one opened in Seoul in 2004, catering to a new hunger for knowledge about the world's most populous country, fuelled by its economy's extraordinary growth.

The Confucius Institutes are similar to the British Council or Germany's Goethe Institutes and mainly aim to teach the language to foreigners.

However, observers also see the push for opening up Confucius Institutes as an attempt to spread Chinese "soft power", which is a form of influence based on ideas and values rather than military might or economic muscle.

The Chinese endeavour may have annoyed Taiwan's Kuomintang government, which originated in the mainland and fled to the island in 1949, but still sees itself as the main guardian of traditional Chinese culture, observers said.

Currently, Taiwan has cultural centres in some foreign capitals and operates some Chinese-language schools abroad.

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