On April 12, Ms. Wang Fang, Secretary of the CPC Committee of FLTRP Group, Chair of the Board of FLTRP Group, and President of FLTRP, held a video conference with Ms. Emma Bourne, Managing Director of Schools (K12) and Higher Education Division of Macmillan Education, and Christine Zhu, General Manager of Macmillan Education Asia. They exchanged in-depth views on the business development of the two sides in the past year, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the publishing industry and online education, and the progress of the ongoing projects.

Ms. Wang Fang said COVID-19 has accelerated the development of digital transformation and online education. During the pandemic, FLTRP actively responded to MOE’s policy of “Class suspended but teaching and learning continues” and made its online resources freely accessible to teachers and students. FLTRP has been offering free and downloadable resources and platforms such as “Unipus Foreign Language Teaching Solutions” to support the teaching and learning of the schools across the country. Thanks to FLTRP’s continuous development and investment in digital products of New Standard English (NSE), the printed textbook market of NSE series has further expanded. Ms. Wang Fang stressed that at present, the hybrid teaching mode combining online and offline has become a new trend. FLTRP will actively face new technical challenges, bring better resources and services to every school and user through the integration of paper textbooks and digital products, and try to maintain the market strength of NSE. Ms. Emma Bourne said that the pandemic has brought great challenges to the international publishing industry and also spawned new development trends. E-books, audio books, online courses, supportive digital resources and other forms of products have been developing rapidly, and the online and offline integration of publishing has been deepening. Ms. Bourne expressed her sincere admiration and appreciation to FLTRP for sparing no effort to promote NSE in Chinese market, and for its efforts to develop digital products for meeting the demand of teachers and students.

FLTRP and Macmillan Education have a 20-year history of cooperation, and 2021 also marks the 21st anniversary of NSE. Both Ms. Wang and Ms. Bourne agreed that the two sides will take this opportunity to explore more cooperation fields and deepen all-round partnership.