On 28th April, the Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes University (CIOBU) held the annual board meeting via Zoom. Directors from Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) and Oxford Brookes University (OBU), which were Ms. Wang Fang, Chair of FLTRP Group and President of FLTRP, Ms. Zhang Siying, Deputy Editor-in-chief of FLTRP, Mr. Shao Lei, Director of International Cooperation Division of FLTRP, Professor Alistair Fitt, Vice-Chancellor of OBU, Professor Joe Tah, Pro Vice-Chancellor of OBU and Mr. Leslie Henderson, Head of TDE (Technology, Design and Environment) Finance of OBU, all attended the board meeting. Attendees also included Mr. Angus Phillips, Director of CIOBU, Ms. Hou Hui, Co-director of CIOBU and Ms. Spring Zhang, Deputy Director of CIOBU. The board meeting was presided over by Professor Alistair Fitt.
Angus Phillips, Director of CIOBU, reported to the board on the 2021 activities of CIOBU, as well as the 2022-2024 strategic plan. Leslie Henderson, Head of TDE Finance, presented the 2021 financial statement of CIOBU accounts. In 2021, CIOBU has achieved significant growth in student numbers for Chinese language courses, attendees for cultural events and candidates for language proficiency examinations, although the Covid-19 pandemic brought challenges to many offline activities and events. In the meeting, the board of directors approved a number of documents and matters including 2022 Operational Plan and Budget, Strategic Plan for 2022-2024 and Agreement between Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes University and Dicot Girls’ School on the Establishment of the Confucius Classroom at Dicot Girls’School.
In the meeting, Ms. Wang Fang highly appraised the achievements of CIOBU in 2021, especially the growth made by constantly exploring new opportunities in online and offline business during the pandemic. She extended her sincere thanks to OBU for its consistent support on the CIOBU collaboration and expressed that FLTRP would continue to support such collaboration. Professor Alistair Fitt expressed that the university would be willing to continue providing follow-up support for the further development of CIOBU. Both parties held the belief that CIOBU would play an important role in the cultural and educational exchange between China and UK in the future.
The CIOBU was jointly established by FLTRP and OBU in September 2015 and started operation in April 2016. CIOBU is the first Confucius Institute in the world co-established by a university and a publishing company. Publishing is the specialist focus of CIOBU, making CIOBU a unique presence among all the Confucius Institutes around the globe. Since 2016, CIOBU has been working toward promoting Chinese language and culture, as well as offering publishing-related activities. CIOBU commits to aiding co-operation between Chinese and UK publishing whilst encouraging Chinese language teaching or China-related publications.
