RSUH Confucius Institute is the best

By Vestnik Kavkaza

The RSUH Confucius Institute has been named the best Confucius Institute in 2013 at the Beijing World Conference of Confucius Institutes. A permanent member of the State Council of China, Ms. Liu Yandong, the head of the World Council of Confucius Institutes, presented the rector of RSUH, Yefim losifovich Pivovar, with a memorial plaque and a certificate. This title is considered the highest form of recognition of a Confucius Institute by the Office of Dissemination of the Chinese Language. The evaluation of a Confucius Institute nominated for this award is made based on several criteria, namely the dynamics of development, quality of education, variety of courses and organized events as well as teaching. These criteria allow to strictly but objectively assess the efforts of each Institute. 

“The first Confucius Institute in Russia was founded in the Far Eastern University, and we were the first ones in our capital,” Yefim Pivovar, the RSUH rector, says. “That was in 2007. Since then not much time has passed, there are many stages in the development of this Institute. First, even in comparison with the early stages of this process, we currently have more programs. There are 20 groups of students studying the Chinese language at the moment, including 3 groups for primary school pupils. The University of International Business and Economics in Beijing is the base of the Confucius Institute in our university. Not only teachers, the university also provides us with methodologies. We have held several conferences, festivals and various other projects, youth meetings. In 2011 we opened our own center at the university, which is the base of our Confucius Institute, it is the Center of the Russian State Humanitarian University, the Center for Russian Language and Literature. Our teachers are working full-time at the university and teach classes for those who study the Russian language, Russian literature, i.e. for Russian scholars. It is a two-way street. Overall, it is a unique practice. At the moment in Russia there are 30 Confucius Institutes in different universities, but as far as I know there is no cooperation like that in other universities.”

Taras Ivchenko, Director of the RSUH Confucius Institute, stated that the general orientation of the development of the Confucius Institute is maximum diversity of activities: “The Confucius Institute teaches those who come here to study from various other places, who are not RSUH students but also teach courses to RSUH students. The number of these locations, the number of faculties and specialties will expand. Maximum diversity also means the maximum variety of courses. Thus, for example, during the existence of the Confucius Institute 38 different courses have been taught. These courses included such courses such as Chinese language, business Chinese, history, Chinese history and the history of the Chinese language, as well as special linguistic disciplines such as dialectology, the reconstruction of the proto-Chinese language, etc.”

Ivchenko says that “people of different ages study at the Confucius Institute. However, lately we have been paying even more attention to the development of Chinese courses for school kids in order to achieve our long-held dream, namely so that after graduating from secondary school a person would be able not just to say a few words in Chinese, but will already know Chinese to the extent that would allow him to study his discipline in Chinese at a Russian university or in China.”

The head of the Confucius Institute says that it is a rare Russian-Chinese structure, meaning equal rights in organizing and doing everything: “It shows how effectively Russian-Chinese cooperation in education and other areas can be organized.”