Aggregate data are not available, but figures from local language centres across the continent suggest that the number of people in Europe enlisted in taking the official Chinese Proficiency Test - or HSK - over the last two years has grown by close to a factor five.

China’s ability to get what it wants through attraction and persuasion rests on a number of factors: its culture (witness the Confucius Institutes it promotes); its values (particularly a successful growth model); and its foreign policies (for example, the pledge not to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries).

China is pushing its soft power agenda with an aim to quash debate on the issue of Tibet, where self-immolation protests will continue until Beijing ends its policy of state-sanctioned discrimination in the region, a Tibetan advocacy group said Wednesday.

Mandarin officially became part of the SPFL Program when CI-AUF signed a Memorandum of Agreement with DepEd through the Bureau of Secondary Education on May 23, 2011. The areas of partnership include training of local teachers, joint development of a curriculum, syllabus, and teaching guide for Mandarin as a foreign language.

Prof. Alexander Alexiev, Bulgarian Director of the Confucius Institute in Sofia, told Xinhua he and prof. Gu Weiping, the new Chinese Director of this institute, have decided to introduce this gymnastics in Bulgaria..."Ideally, this gymnastics should be practiced twice a day, like a person brushing his teeth: the same way one has to do exercises in order to be healthy," Alexiev said.

Stating that CIKU has been playing an essential role in cultural exchanges and people to people relations by bridging the language barrier, Liang said that Nepalese people have been showing immense enthusiasm to learn the language as a result of which Chinese language has been included in the curriculum of many colleges in Nepal.

Chinese culture enjoys increasing influence in the world. What makes it so attractive? What are the challenges facing it? Over the past eight years, the Confucius Institute has made remarkable achievements in promoting the Chinese culture and language worldwide.

The Confucius Institute’s project has been developing Chinese language and culture programmes in schools across Wales for the past five years. Lansdowne Primary School has been a pioneer, having established additional classes every week. The school was the first in Wales to submit children for the YCT Official Chinese Language Proficiency test in 2011.