Celebrating 10 years of Confucius Institute

Remarkably significant and far-reaching impact

Confucius Institute is an important measure to strengthen teaching Chinese as a foreign language and international cultural exchanges, and it is of remarkable significance and far-reaching impact.

Confucius Institute has met the real demand of Chinese language learning by people of all countries and pushed the growing wave of Chinese language learning. With the heating-up “Chinese language fervor”, more than 2,500 universities, around 10,000 primary and secondary schools in over 100 countries in the world are offering Chinese courses. In order to encourage its people to learn the language, Chinese has been listed among the strategic languages by the government in many countries. Furthermore, more than 60 countries have incorporated Chinese language instruction into their respective national education system.

The Chinese Bridge Chinese Language Proficiency Competition organized annually by the headquarters has been successfully hosted for 13 times, so far having attracted over 400,000 college students in total from the world to take part. In recent years, the headquarters have invited and organized a total of more than 1,300 primary and secondary school principals and head teachers from over 90 countries to visit China, trained more than 6,000 Chinese language teachers from other countries and sponsored over 6,400 students to study Chinese in China, all of which have further contributed to the fashion of learning Chinese around the world.

Confucius Institute has provided a new and multi-dimensional platform for international communication. Confucius Institute has proactively contributed to cultural exchanges, for language is the most important carrier of culture. The Chinese language crystallizes the history, culture, customs, philosophy and humanistic thought of China. With its language instruction and cultural events and lectures, Confucius Institutes help more people to sample Chinese culture, understand Chinese philosophy and way of thinking and appreciate the charm of Chinese traditions, thus making the Chinese culture more attractive.

As China is growing its overall national strength, it is imperative to help other countries to know better about China. In this aspect Confucius Institute can play a unique role. To enable foreigners to master the Chinese language is conducive to enhancing the status of Chinese language in the international community and laying a solid foundation for them to further understand and learn about the country. Centering on the concept of “Harmony”, Confucius Institute can be an active player in letting China known by other countries, increasing the friendship between the Chinese people and peoples of other countries and reducing the misconceptions on China. Confucius Institutes all over the world have already become one of the best platforms for “people-to-people” exchange. Furthermore, the teachers and volunteers dispatched from China, through their face-to-face teaching and interaction with the general public in other countries, are sounding the beautiful voices of China, telling fresh and live stories of today’s China and showcasing the images of a peaceful, open and culturally advanced China.