Dec. 1st and 2nd, the Annual Meeting of BFSU Partner CIs 2018 was successfully held at BFSU, with the theme being “the Running Mode and Teaching Qualities of CIs”. Attendees include Wang Dinghua, Secretary of the CPC Committee of BFSU; Peng Long, President of BFSU; Yan Guohua, Vice President of BFSU; Miquel Nicolau, President of Andorra University; Reneta Vankova Bozhankova, Vice Rector of Sofia University, Bulgaria; Guseynova Innara, Vice Rector of Moscow State Linguistic University; Alejandro Aguilar Vila, Vice Rector of the University of Barcelona; Montserrat Riba, Secretary General of Casa Asia, as well as 44 board members and directors of BFSU partner CIs and over 100 heads of BFSU offices & faculties and ecxperts of various languages.
The opening ceremony was chaired by Vice President Yan Guohua. During the opening ceremony, Secretary Wang Dinghua awarded Zhang Xiaohui, former director of BFSU Office of Confucius Institutes as “distinguished contributor”. President Peng Long and Vice Rector Alejandro Aguilar Vila gave keynote speeches, while American Director Cynthia Ning of CI-UHM and Chinese Director Du Wei of CIZU delivered speeches on behalf of CI directors. In the two-day panel discussions, representatives made theoretical and example analysis in both macro and micro levels on the basic running capacity, construction of teaching resources, and teacher’s core abilities of the CIs, which set a clear path for the future work of CIs. Jin Limin, Director of BFSU Office of Confucius Institutes summarized the conference, pointing out that under the background of the two-decade development, CIs should follow the value of “harmony in diversity” and the principle to “adapt to local conditions” and fully analyze themselves so that more distinct specialization and clearer aims can be found. In the future, CIs should focus on enhancing the teaching quality, developing in a diversified and specialized way, and promoting the combination of information technologies, teaching, and researching.
Up to November, 2018, BFSU held a total number of 23 Confucius Institutes in 18 countries across three continents. Six of these are “Model Confucius Institutes”, in addition to two “Pilot Cultural Confucius Institutes”, one “Academic Confucius Institute”, nine in countries along the routes of the Belt and Road. 15 Confucius Classrooms and 214 teaching centers are affiliated to these Confucius Institutes, with 588 organizations and institutions as partners and a total number of students reaching 36,683. 10171 participants have taken their Chinese tests in all levels, an increase by nearly 25% as compared to that in 2017. CIMSLU alone hosts 3,218 test-takers and ranks the first. In 2018, BFSU Partner CIs hosted altogether 332 academic events attracting over 22,193 participants. They also organized 907 cultural events and entertained 314,987 participants.
