Celebrating 10 years of Confucius Institute

Pamela Yang, a 16 year old a junior, participates in the Chinese language class at Chaparral High School in Parker, Colorado, April 6, 2006. [Photo/IC]

To combine Chinese language teaching seamlessly with cultural exchanges. As President Xi Jinping points out: “Mastering a language is just like acquiring the key to the culture of another country.” When holding the key of Chinese language, people will be intrigued to explore profound Chinese culture. Therefore, it is the objective needs as well as the duty of Confucius Institutes to introduce the Chinese culture to and provide high quality cultural products to students while teaching Chinese. Intensified efforts should be devoted to research, mining and preservation of fine traditional Chinese culture and enhancing the international cultural communication. On the platform of Confucius Institute, we should advance the comparative studies between Chinese culture and other cultures and absorb the achievements of other civilizations

The 10 years of Confucius Institute is an extraordinary journey, a fruitful journey as well as a thorny and bumpy journey. Looking into the future, Confucius Institute will embrace new opportunities and make ever more contribution to the international education of Chinese language, Sino-foreign cultural exchange and a harmonious world.

Today we are delighted to see over 100 million people studying Chinese, Confucius Institutes and other Chinese teaching institutions sprouting everywhere, scholars from home and abroad and different cultural elements gathering together. Meanwhile, three million Chinese have studied abroad and absorb the essence of cultures of other countries. In China, there are several hundred million Chinese people learning foreign languages, particularly English. All kinds of foreign language schools and programs are seen everywhere. China is highly inclusive, open and culturally confident to embrace this cultural harmony and prosperity. In contrast, we hear some jarring noise from time to time somewhere and can’t help think how impropriate, how narrow-minded and how biased those people are. Of course they will never impede the advance of Confucius Institute to the future.

I hereby wish an even brighter future to Confucius Institute!

The author is the first Chairperson of the Confucius Institute Headquarters Council.

(The original headline: A successful practice in Chinese language international education and cultural exchanges between China and other countries —— Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Confucius Institute）