Globally recognised UMP Confucius Institute offers Mandarin learning for community benefit

BEIJING, CHINA, 21 July 2023 - The Joint Conference of Southeast Asian Confucius Institutes 2023 in Beijing, China successfully gathered 300 representatives of the Confucius Institute (CI) from ten countries in Southeast Asia.

In his opening speech, the President of the Chinese International Education Foundation China, Professor Yang Wei said he hoped that CIs in Southeast Asia could strengthen development involving CI with the development of universities and communities through collaboration between CIs and promoting Mandarin TVET in line with CI’s global development trends.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Director General, the Center for Language Education and Cooperation, Ministry of Education of China, HuZhiping in his speech also said that Mandarin language teacher resources, Mandarin language teaching materials, Chinese scholarships and others would continue to be channelled to provide support to international Mandarin Language Education in Southeast Asia CIs to increase collaboration in various fields between China and Southeast Asian countries.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International Affairs), Professor Ir. Ts. Dr. Ahmad Ziad Sulaiman also had the opportunity to share the progress and achievements of CI UMP activities in Malaysia with the presentations titled‘Developing & Achievements of ’Mandarin + Railway‘ and ‘Mandarin + Metallurgy’ Courses in Confucius Institute Universiti Malaysia Pahang’.

The Confucius Institute UMP (CI UMP) was established in 2018 in collaboration with Hebei University (HBU) in China.

CI UMP is proactive in providing Mandarin language courses and training to students, communities and industries especially on the East Coast.

According to Professor Ir. Ts. Dr. Ahmad Ziad, the role of CI UMP since its inception has helped a lot to the success of Mandarin language students at UMP.

“In addition, through a collaboration with Hebei University, UMP has successfully offered dual degree programmes with Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) and Tianjin University (TJU).

“A total of 45 students of the first cohort who joined the rail engineering programme at BJTU left for China in February 2023.

“CI UMP has also provided training to East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) trainees at China Construction Communication Company (CCCC) and Alliance Steel (M) Sdn. Bhd. (ASSB) in Kuantan,” he said.

A total of 14 Mandarin Railway classes have been offered to 380 ECRL trainees who have attended training at UMP since 2018.

Since 2022, CI UMP has offered 18 Metallurgy Mandarin classes for 541 ASSB Malaysian employees involving Coking Plant, Iron Making Plant, Steel Rolling Plant and Steel Making Plant.

At the community level, CI UMP is also collaborating with Yayasan Terengganu to create a Mandarin Language Learning Institute at Yayasan Terengganu and a total of 168 secondary school students will be trained to be proficient in Mandarin in preparation for the UMP-China dual degree programmes fully sponsored by Yayasan Terengganu.

A forum session was also involving the Education Counselor of the Malaysian Embassy in China, Muhammad Sallehuddin Mohd Dilif, titled ‘Initiative on Strengthening Cooperation of Language and Education between China and ASEAN’.

The two-day programme also held a sharing session themed ‘CI collaborative development with China, local, social and Mandarin TVET course development and implementation’.

The sharing session was presented by the Director (Malaysia) of the Confucius Institute UMP, Yong Ying Mei and the Director (China) of the Confucius Institute UMP, Associate Professor Dr. Wang Haiyan.

By: Mimi Rabita Abdul Wahit, Centre for Corporate Communications

Translation by: Dr.  Rozaimi  Abu  Samah, Faculty   of Chemical and Process Engineering Technology