Launched in collaboration with the University of Nankai, the business institute will work in collaboration with local schools and universities to offer Chinese language courses, cultural workshops and other business modules for individual students and companies.

“Major players in the Chinese corporate world are now more than ever willing to cooperate with Europe”

Director of the NEOMA Confucius Institute for Business – Rouen Haiyan Zhang told The PIE News: “Major players in the Chinese corporate world are now more than ever willing to cooperate with Europe.”

“French companies have a key role to play here and our Confucius Institute for Business is an indispensable asset to help them.”

The creation of the NEOMA Confucius Institute for Business-Rouen is part of the ongoing relations established more than three years ago between municipal government bodies in Rouen and Tianjin, located 120km from Beijing.

“Since the beginning of this project, we also had tremendous support from France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Laurent Fabius and from Geneviève Fioraso, Minister of Higher Education and Research,” added Zhang.

While there are already 440 Confucius Institutes worldwide, 17 in France alone, the launch marks just the seventh CI Business in the world. Campuses in New York, Sao Paulo, Athens, Copenhagen, London and Leeds are also hosts.

In it’s mission to help individuals and businesses “discover China” and “develop new markets”, the centre has space for offices, classrooms and conferences as well as a library and resource center.

It has been approved by HANBAN (the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) and is partly funded by the Upper Normandy Chamber of Commerce and Industry.