September 9, 2012
2012 Joint Conference of European Confucius Institutes was heldfrom September 7 to 9, 2012. The conference played host to theChinese and foreign deans of 44 Confucius Institutes with historyof less than three years and based in 22 European countries,officials of Chinese embassies in 14 countries, and delegates from8 Chinese partner universities. SIFT VP Xu Xiaowei and permanentdeputy director of CI office at SIFT Prof. Ye Rong attended theconference.
Hanban Director-General Xu Lin addressed the opening ceremony andsummarized the work of European CIs with history of less than threeyears. She particularly mentioned the sound development ofbusiness-oriented CI at the University of Ljubljana established inpartnership with SIFT. VP Xu was invited to share SIFT’s experiencein running CI.
Before the joint conference, VP Xu visited the newly established CIat the University of Zagreb and met with its VP (international),director of foreign affairs office, assistant to the President, andCI deans from both sides, project manager, and volunteer facultyrecently sent by SIFT’s department of Chinese as a ForeignLanguage. Agreement was reached between the two universities onstudent exchange.