Between 31 May ─ 3 June 2017 a University of Gdańsk delegation took part in a series of official meetings with representatives of Chinese universities and other institutions which foster Polish-Chinese academic exchange, and with which the University of Gdańsk has already cooperated or with which it is planning to initiate cooperation. One of the delegation’s main tasks was to maintain the current organisational and financial status of the UG’s Confucius Institute (IK UG) in the face of structural changes in the organisation at the level of government administration of the People’s Republic of China.

The UG delegation comprised:

• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Stepnowski – UG Vice-Rector for Research and International Cooperation
• Dr hab. Monika Bąk, associate professor – Dean of UG’s Faculty of Economics
• Prof. Dr hab. Mirosław Szreder – Dean of UG’s Faculty of Management
• Dr hab. Jakub Stelina, associate professor – Dean of UG’s Faculty of Law and Administration
• Dr hab. Józef Włodarski, associate professor – Director of the UG’s Confucius Institute
• Dr Wu Lan, associate professor – Head of Sinology at the UG, delegation interpreter.

The delegation visited:

• The China Youth University of Political Sciences (CYU) in Beijing
• The Beijing Foreign Studies University
• The Harbin Normal University (HNU)
• The Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine
• The Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban)
• Dongfang International Center for Educational Exchange, the largest recruitment agency and part of the China Scholarship Council
• EIC Education, China’s largest education counselling agency.

The meetings were a chance to achieve the following key objectives of the visit:

• initiating joint research activity with Chinese partners
• organising new forms of education between the UG and Chinese universities
• signing a cooperation agreement between the UG’s Faculty of Law and Administration and the Faculty of Law of the CYU with regard to organising joint summer schools, the School of Chinese Law at the UG and exchange of visiting professors
• interesting the Chinese partners in the concept of establishing a consultancy centre at the IK UG in connection with the One Belt -One Road Project
• establishing cooperation with the Beijing Foreign Studies University with regard to the legal and economic sciences
• renegotiation of the conditions for conducting a field of study in Polish philology at the Harbin Normal University
• signing a cooperation agreement regarding scientific cooperation and doctoral studies with the Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine
• obtaining consent from the Office of Chinese Language Council International to change the IK UG’s partner university to the Academy of Social Sciences
• renegotiating the recruitment contract with the Dongfang agency
• establishing preliminary conditions for cooperation with the EIC Education agency.

Prepared by: Office of the UG’s Press Spokesperson