Confucius Institute Representatives on the Online Conference for Sinologists

Representatives of the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka participated in the online conference for sinologists, held on 7 December 2020, on the topic of ,,China and the World – Language, Culture, Politics and Methods of Chinese Language Teaching”.

Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Banja Luka Ljiljana Stević talked about the role of the culture in the Chinese public diplomacy.

She talked about cultural diplomacy, the academic and cultural exchange, as well as the experiences of the Confucius Institute as a mechanism of public diplomacy in this process. Stević emphasized that the Chinese perception of "soft power" is based on the attractiveness of its culture as an opportunity for a country to transfer its culture internationally and thus help others understand and accept its cultural values.

Chinese language professor at the University of Banja Luka Confucius Institute Anja Mudrenović talked about her experience in the work, as well as deficiencies of different methods of Chinese language teaching.

According to her, it is a great challenge to organize lectures for students of different ages and interests in regard to studying Chinese. She also talked about the advantages of everyday communication with native speakers, as a challenge in studying Chinese during the pandemic.

At the end of the conference, the participants emphasized the importance of studying the Chinese language in understanding the role of China in modern trends. As they said, there is a noticeable increase in the number of Chinese language teachers, which in the future gives hope for a sustainable and quality way of studying it. This was an opportunity to talk about personal experiences, as well as the employment of sinologists, but also about the characteristics of Chinese diplomacy and the history of Serbian-Chinese relations.

In addition to the representatives of the University of Banja Luka, this event was attended by the Director of the Philological Gymnasium Dragana Ćećez, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade Dragana Bajić, representative of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of in Serbia Milena Nikolić, Chinese Language Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad Nataša Pešić, professors at the Philological Gymnasium in Belgrade Selena Pjević and Tatjana Šuković, as well as professors at the Karlovci Gymnasium Ljubica Čudanov and Marijana Marković.

This was the second time the conference was organized for sinologists by the Philological Gymnasium and the Confucius Institute in Belgrade.