The "Confucius" Institute is an institution for spreading the Chinese language and culture around the world, established by the State Office for the International Promotion of the Chinese Language. The first "Confucius" Institute was established in November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea. The inauguration of 10 new Confucius Institutes at the opening ceremony of the 13th Confucius Institute Conference in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in recent days brought the number of new institutes to 30 this year.
10 new Confucius Institutes were opened in the Dominican Republic, Mauritania, Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, Antigua and Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, Palestine, El Salvador and Burkina Faso, the headquarters of the Confucius Institute (Hanban) announced.
In total there are 548 Confucius Institutes, 1,193 Confucius classes in primary and secondary schools and 5,665 teaching sites in 154 countries and regions of the world. A total of 47 full-time and part-time teachers from China and other countries teach classrooms to 1.86 million students from various academic fields, and 810 are registered online students.
There are 54 Confucius Institutes and 153 Confucius classes in schools in the 149 countries involved in China's One Belt, One Road Initiative, according to the headquarters.
The two-day conference, sponsored by the headquarters of the Confucius Institute and the Sichuan Provincial Government and organized by the Sichuan Department of Education and the Chengdu City Government, attracted over 1,500 participants including university chancellors and representatives of Confucius Institutes and Classes from over 150 countries of the world.
The Confucius Institute and Sheffield University in the United Kingdom has about 200 classrooms and 14 people have learned Chinese there, said a former adviser at the university.
Confucius classrooms in Africa, Europe, Asia and America have taught several thousand children, he said, and the Chinese teachers and staff of the Confucius Institute are excellent ambassadors, enabling people from communities from different parts of the world to feel the kindness and devotion. of China.
In addition to teaching Chinese to children and students, the Confucius Institute at the University of Sheffield partnered with local companies to tackle challenges facing all of humanity, such as health care and industrial efficiency, he said.
Isaac Meroka Mbeche, a former dean at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, is the director of the University's Confucius Institute, which offers a curriculum to teach students practices relevant to the One Belt One Road Initiative.
About 20 graduates are contributing to the smooth running of the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Railway as conductors, maintenance workers and attendants, he said.
During the "Opening Day," the Confucius Institute Headquarters interacted with seven institutes in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Europe through video chat, as well as cultural activities.
About 400 people participated in this event, including diplomats sent to China and representatives of foreign cultural institutes and Chinese schools that cooperate with the Confucius Institute.
China will deepen the reform of Confucius Institutes by raising the quality of education, improving systems and offering more innovative programs, according to a recent article from China Education Daily.
The distribution of Confucius Institutes will be optimized and there will be more flexible and diverse classes, writes the article by Ma Jianfei, deputy chief executive of the central Confucius Institute.
"With this, they will strongly support Chinese language learning in primary and secondary schools overseas and provide more quality teaching services," said Ma.
The local faculty will be upgraded with enhanced support from China. More Chinese deans and teachers will be hired, Ma added.
Confucius institutions are being encouraged to launch various cultural activities, expand the China Confucius Studies Program, and organize competitions such as the Chinese Bridge.
Ma added that institutes should increase communication and exchanges between China and the rest of the world and learn from the achievements of foreign countries.
Confucius Institutes have played a role as ambassadors of Chinese culture abroad since 2004. In 2017 alone, over 12.7 million people participated in cultural activities organized by Confucius Institutes around the world.
At the opening ceremony in 2017, a blind student of the Confucius Institute attracted a lot of attention. She is a third-year student at the Chinese language department of the University of Khartoum in Sudan, as well as a student at the Confucius Institute near this university, and her Chinese name is Li Can. Li Can has a congenital retinal defect, and her experience of learning Chinese under the condition of blindness was greatly applauded by those present at the conference. She said:
"At first I could only see the very large hieroglyphs, but gradually they also disappeared from my sight, so from that time I began to learn Chinese by listening. Although it is very difficult, I do not give up . Before the lesson, I listen to the new words three times, then I recite the text, otherwise I cannot understand the lesson."
Due to her visual impairment, Li Can cannot write Chinese characters, so she cannot take the Chinese language exam. To make her dream come true, this year the Confucius Institute Headquarters organized a special exam for Li Can, which she successfully passed, winning a Confucius Institute scholarship to study in China. Li Can said that learning Chinese has changed her life. /CRI/
