Cultural exchange and cooperation is an important part of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. It plays an irreplaceable role in enhancing mutual understanding between people and in promoting the value of our relationship. At the 14th China-EU Summit in 2011, our leaders pointed out that cultural exchange is one of the three pillars of China- EU relations. 

Finance and development ministers from around the world next week will warn of considerable downside risks to the global economy, and call for an effort to protect the world's poor, according to the draft of a communique they plan to issue after a meeting on Saturday.

In the last decade, the European Union has made China a priority of its international strategy. China's fast economic development and its growing importance in the global economy and politics put the country in the focus of the EU's interest. Differently to the US, though, Europe has intensified its educational links with China relatively recently.

Beijing sees the Confucius Institutes as a way to promote its own soft power overseas, similar to the British Council or Germany’s Goethe-Institut.  Yet recently, criticism has come hard and fast. 

In truth, the fears about CIA infiltration and those about Japanese cartoon characters are part of the same anxiety: a feeling that China's lack of soft power presents a weak underbelly to the outside world.

Beijing received more than 540,000 tourists in 26 major scenic areas on Wednesday, also the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, up 33 percent year on year, local authorities announced on Thursday.

China’s effort to project soft-power has suffered another serious setback after a second US university in a week announced it would close its on-campus Confucius Institute because of an apparent disagreement over Chinese government controls.

On the surface, the turmoil in Hong Kong is caused by Beijing’s decision regarding general elections. In reality, the deep sources of the conflict are not so different from the recent large-scale outbreaks of social tensions in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan.