BEIJING(INP): China\u2019s Confucius Institute is playing a major role in popularizing Chinese language in Pakistan and promoting people to people contacts, sources said here on Friday.
\nAccording to the Institute\u2019s sources, some of the educational institutions in Pakistan\u2019s major cities are running well the Confucius Institute and hopping more will be coming up in the next few months.
\nIn countries including Pakistan, Cambodia, and Bangladesh have shown particular interest in blending language skills with future Belt and Road projects
\nConfucius Institutes take Chinese language and culture to a global audience eager to learn more about the country
\nThe opening lines of The Analects, one of China’s most famous historic texts, read: “Is it not a pleasure to study and practice what you learn? Is it not good when friends visit from far-off places?”
\nMore than 2,000 years after they were written, the aphorisms of its author – the Chinese sage Confucius – might well refer to China’s rising language centers.
\nIn a mere 12 years, Confucius Institutes have opened on 500 campuses and are now teaching Chinese language and culture to almost 2 million people.
\nAttached to foreign universities, the Confucius Institutes – overseen by the Office of Chinese Language Council International, or Hanban – are a network of not-for-profit Mandarin language-teaching schools and cultural centers for those who seek to learn about China.
\nThe first institute opened its doors in Seoul in 2004. By the following year there were 33 in operation. Today there are more than 500, spread across more than 134 countries and on every continent apart from Antarctica.
\nOne of the reasons for the institutes’ current popularity, says Chu Hung-lam, director of Hong Kong’s own Confucius Institute, is that China is genuinely interested in getting people to learn firsthand about its unique – often misunderstood – culture.
\n“China wants to tell and show herself and be understood,” explains Chu, who is also head of the Chinese culture department at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
\nAs well as offering Chinese courses to the general public, the institute provides tailored language classes to a range of would-be Mandarin speakers, including undergraduates and university staff, businesspeople and government officials.
\nThe Chinese economy is driving global interest in Mandarin, placing the Confucius Institute network in an enviable position. Thanks to China’s economic clout and expanding diplomatic links with the 60-plus countries included in the Belt and Road Initiative, there is little work needed to promote the language.
\nXu Tao, director of international cooperation and exchanges at the Ministry of Education, says: “We help people in countries along the Belt and Road learn Chinese, and these countries help us learn their languages.”
\nHowever, the reality is that the majority of Confucius Institutes are currently located in only a handful of countries. More than 100, for instance, are in the United States, and more than two dozen in the United Kingdom.
\nIt is unlikely that China’s economic power, on its own, can maintain a deep, widespread interest in learning a second language, says Molly Huang, who teaches Mandarin in South China’s Guangdong province and Hong Kong. Instead, she says that first and foremost, language is entwined with culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING(INP): China\u2019s Confucius Institute is playing a major role in popularizing Chinese language in Pakistan and promoting people to people contacts, sources said here on Friday. According to the Institute\u2019s sources, some of the educational institutions in Pakistan\u2019s major cities are running well the Confucius Institute and hopping more will be coming up in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lead-cpec","8":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n