In a first-of-its-kind deal, the Chinese government has agreed to train 300 Indian teachers at top Chinese universities in a bid to boost Mandarin learning across India. The teachers will then return to India to help promote the uptake of Mandarin language study. The agreement is between the Confucius Institute and India's Central Board of Secondary Education.

India's Karnataka-based Manipal University is in talks to open India's first ever branch campus in China, as well as China's first all English institution offering training in IT and health sciences. Manipal is keen to recruit Western students too and such a venture would follow campuses set up in Dubai, Nepal, Antigua and Malaysia...

A memo from the US State Department forcing Chinese teachers on American campuses to leave by June has been reversed. The directive would have led to the deportation of up to 51 teachers at state-backed Confucius Institutes in the US, and has caused a huge backlash on Chinese media, with one blog reporting 500,000 posts on the issue.