News.hust.edu.cn (Correspondent: Wei Jingjing/Wang Ying/Yin Xinlin) - The 2019 HUST Joint Conference of Confucius Institutes took place at the Wutongyu Academic Exchange Centre on December 7. Present were leaders of Wayne State University (WSU), University of Canterbury (UC) and Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), as well as Chinese and foreign deans of their Confucius institutes. Chen Jianguo, Vice President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), hosted the conference.

Chen noted in his welcome address that the three Confucius institutes have played irreplaceable roles locally in terms of influence and cohesion since their founding, gaining wide popularity among students, teachers and communities. They have become strong links between HUST and the three universities, important windows via which American, New Zealand and Brazilian people learn about Chinese culture, as well as important carriers for people-to-people exchanges. He hoped that the three Confucius institutes would stay true to their mission, renovate development connation and become global model Confucius institutes, pledging that HUST would continue to strongly support Confucius institute building.

Jonathan Peter Le Cocq, Vice President of UC and Alessandro Fernandes Moreira, Vice President of UFMG expressed thanks to HUST for its strong support on behalf of respective universities. The Chinese and foreign deans of the three Confucius introduced institutes work reports (2018-2019) and development plans (2020) to council members.

Foreign Dean John Richard Brender and Chinese Dean Liang Li of WSU introduced a variety of cultural activities in the Confucius institute, such as Tai Chi, Spring Festival gala, winter ball, table tennis matches, Chinese cooking competition and Chinese food salon. Foreign Dean Wu Jiarong and Chinese Dean Yu Qianhua of UC said that UC would further bring its role into play, go deep into local primary and secondary schools, and attract more people to study Chinese. Foreign Dean Barbara Malveira Orfano and Chinese Dean Cheng Jin of UFMG told that the Confucius Institute of UFMG would focus on cultivating local Chinese teachers in the future.

The conference voted through the final accounts and next-year budgets of the three Confucius institutes, and determined that the next joint conference would take place at WSU in June 2020. The representatives of Confucius institutes held a heated discussion and preliminarily reached broad consensus on strengthening cooperation and exchanges. With the joint conference as an opportunity, the universities will vigorously promote exchange visits of teachers and student exchanges, share teaching resources, and jointly hold summer camps and academic workshops, to build a cooperation model of "Confucius institute +".

Following the joint conference, the representatives of the three Confucius institutes headed to Changsha for the 2019 International Chinese Language Education Conference.

Representatives of member entities of HUST's Confucius institutes, as well as heads of the International Exchange Center and the School of International Education attended the conference.