Free University of Brussels to open Confucius Institute

The Free University of Brussels (VUB) has signed an agreement with Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang to open a branch of the Confucius Institute. The two parties met when Li was in Brussels on a state visit earlier this month. 

The institute will provide lessons in Mandarin at academic and professional levels, as well as providing an interface for Chinese and European culture and academic research on China-EU affairs.

There is already a VUB-China network, and its director, Tong Xiaohong, explained that the establishment of the institute should be completed by the beginning of the new academic year. “The plan is to start in the autumn,” she says. “The institute will open sometime in September.”

The institute is named after the foremost Chinese philosopher who greatly influenced Western Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire and Leibniz, as well as 19th-century philosopher Henri Poincaré, whose maxim on free enquiry is a guiding principle of the VUB.

A few students at the university are already studying Mandarin, also known as Standard Chinese. “There is currently just one group of students, about 12, studying Chinese in the first semester in one specific programme,” says Tong. “But the Confucius Institute will be open to everyone; it’s a slightly different target audience.”

The number of students the new institute will attract isn’t being estimated, but VUB could be looking at an entirely new group of students not only from Flanders but also the Netherlands and further afield. Confucius Institutes are widespread in the US, Korea and Japan, but less so in Europe. The first European university to host one, Stockholm, terminated the programme last year.

Courses will be given at least partly in English. “The language of instruction depends on the lecturer,” Tong explains. “We simply have to see what the demand is, but many VUB courses are taught in English.”

Photo: From left, Chinese ambassador Qu Xing, VUB rector Paul De Knop and vice-rector of international policies Jan Cornelis

©Chancellery of the Prime Minister Belgium