As a city with deep historical and culturalbackground in China, Tianjin shoulders animportant mission in the course of establishingConfucius Institutes overseas. Up to now,Tianjin has established 11 Confucius Institutesand 2 Confucius Classrooms which powerfullypromotes the cooperation and communicationbetween Tianjin and other countries.

In order to meet the rapid growth of the demandof Chinese language learning in othercountries all around the world and help foreignersto understand Chinese language andculture better, China began to establish “ConfuciusInstitute” overseas since 2004.

The Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classroomsthat Tianjin established overseas scatterin 13 regions of 9 countries, including the US,Japan, South Korea, Poland, Colombia, Portugal,Slovakia, Thailand and Kenya.

It is introduced by Tianjin Education Committeethat although the Confucius Institute, ConfuciusClassrooms contracted by Tianjin governmentspread in different countries, they have threecommon missions as a whole: a center base ofinternational Chinese learning network; a communicationstage to strengthen to cooperationof Chinese and foreign education; a bridge topromote the economic and cultural exchangesbetween China and the world.

Tianjin Normal University cooperated withNairobi University (Kenya) to establish thefirst Confucius Institute in Africa—ConfuciusInstitute of Nairobi University, which developsChinese classes to the students of NairobiUniversity, people of Kenya and communitiesof various fields. In 2007, the courses inConfucius Institute of Nairobi University weredesigned gradually to the qualifications anddegree courses, and its Chinese languageteaching was also listed in the Kenyan nationaleducation system. The Confucius Institute ofNairobi University enjoyed the reputation of“the landmark of cooperation and communicationbetween China and Kenya.”

Since Nankai University cooperated with Universityof Maryland to establish a ConfuciusInstitute in November, 2004, it has cooperatedwith other universities to establish ConfuciusInstitutes, such as Aichi University in Japan,University of Andes in Colombia, Universityof Minho in Portugal and University of SouthFlorida in the United States.

In 2007, Tianjin University established its firstConfucius Institute in Slovak University ofTechnology, which symbolized the formalestablishment of the first Confucius Institutein Slovakian Republic as well as in Europeanengineering universities.

Tianjin Experimental High School undertakesthe first Confucius Classroom in the world —Confucius Classroom of Daimi High School inThailand. Since November 2006, the ExperimentalHigh Classroom has sent nearly 20backbone teachers to Thailand to teach Chinesefor short and long term and train Chineseteachers as well. They have trained nearly 3,000students and 500 local Chinese teachers.In order to meet the demand of internationalChinese language education and the workrequirement of Confucius Institutes and ConfuciusClassrooms overseas, Tianjin has sentmore than 300 international Chinese teachersand Chinese education volunteers. They notonly assume the task of international Chineseteaching, but also assume the important missionof spreading Chinese culture like envoys.

Although the average running time of overseasConfucius Institutes and Confucius Classroomsin Tianjin is less than two years, they have setup nearly 100 kinds of lessons of various levelsand various forms with more than 10,000 participants.At the same time, they held a varietyof activities like cultural seminars, exhibitions,and national culture performances. The overseasConfucius Institutes have become animportant place to learn Chinese language andculture and know contemporary China. Theyare widely welcomed by the local community.

It is known that, there will be 500 Confucius Institutesand Confucius Classrooms all-aroundthe world until 2010. These Confucius Instituteswill make use of their advantages to developvarious teaching and cultural activities as wellas form their special schooling pattern.

Confucius is famous Chinese thinker, politician,educator and the founder of Confucianism. Hisideology and doctrine have deep influence tolater generations. Confucian doctrine began tospread to the West 400 years ago when Italianmissionary translated a book called The Analectsof Confucius which recorded the words anddeeds of Confucius and brought it to Europe.