12th Dec the 12th Confucius Conference was held in Xi’an. The conference focused on building the community with a shared future of mankind through cooperation and innovation. On this topic, the first conference forum, and 15 Directors’ and Presidents’ forums were held. About 2500 people attended the conference.
Liu Yandong, Vice-Premier of the State Council and Chair of the Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters presented and addressed the conference.
Representatives of Nottingham Confucius Institute (NCI) participated this conference. They met CI Directors from Sydney University, Auckland University, Edinburg University, Frankfurt University, Hamburg University, and Luxembourg University in the meeting on ‘How to Enhance the Role of Confucius Institutes in Bolstering Cooperation between the Host Universities’ organized by Fudan University. The joint meeting was chaired by the Assistant President of Fudan University Professor Zhihong Chen.
Vice-Director of Hanban (Headquarter of Confucius Institute) Mr Guocheng Zhao met delegates from NCI and discussed work on developing UNNC as CI short-term scholarships receiving university, launching CI in Malaysia campus, and so on.
NCI met with delegates from Beijing Language and Culture University and reached agreements on cooperation in Mandarin teacher training programme.
Pro-Vice Chancellor of UoN, Provost of UNNC, Chairman of NCI Council, Professor Chris Rudd delivered speech in the forum of ‘Confucius Institutes’ Strategies of Development through Innovation’.
The Conference was successfully closed in 13th Dec. Jun Tian, Deputy Minister of Education and executive member of the Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters attended the closing ceremony. He presented the performance of China’s education in the new era, the policy, and reform and innovative strategies in the opening up and international cooperation.
Up to now, there are 525 Confucius Institutes and 1113 Confucius Classroom in 146 countries over the world. In the year of 2017, over 2.32 billion students registered Mandarin class in the Confucius Institute and 12.72 billion people participated in cultural events.