国内英语新闻:Senior CPC official opens first Confucius Institute in Baltic region

TALLINN, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Li Changchun, a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), opened here on Wednesday the first Confucius Institute in the Baltic region.

Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau, said he hopes the facility, jointly launched by Estonia's prestigious Tallinn University and China's Guangxi University with the help of the Chinese Language Council ( also known as Hanban), would serve as a regional center for spreading Chinese culture and offer quality courses for Estonians who are interested in the Chinese language and eager to understand the Chinese culture.

Tallinn University is the sole university in this Baltic country that boasts a Chinese major. It has enrolled Chinese- learning students in the past two decades.

Rein Raud, rector of the university, reached an agreement with China's Hanban to set up a Confucius Institute on campus during a visit to Beijing in February. Guangxi University was chosen at the time to be its Chinese partner.

The Confucius Institute at Tallinn University will offer the public three-month-long courses that teach both the Chinese language and the Chinese culture.

The first set of those courses has been overbooked by Estonians, as more and more people in the country become interested in the language and culture of a booming China.

Li, while talking with students majoring in Chinese at Tallinn University, encouraged them to study hard and learn more about the Chinese culture.

"I hope you can be ambassadors of cultural exchanges between China and Estonia, proponents of bilateral economic and trade cooperation and even Sinologists," he said.

He added that cultural exchanges are meaningful projects which can "sow the seeds of friendship between China and Estonia" and play an important role in the overall bilateral relationship.

"The steady development of state-to-state relations is based on favorable public opinions toward each other, which can be nurtured through cultural exchanges," he said.

Raud said the establishment of the Confucius Institute at the university was a landmark event in Chinese language learning and the spread of the Chinese culture in Estonia.

He pledged to work closely with Guangxi University to build the Confucius Institute into a center for spreading the Chinese culture in the Baltic region.

Earlier in the day, Li met with a senior Estonian parliament member on bilateral relations.

He also paid a visit to the Port of Tallinn and was briefed on its latest development plans. The port has been trying to build itself into a regional maritime transportation center by seeking support from Chinese partners.

Li arrived in Tallinn on Tuesday for a three-day official goodwill visit. Estonia is the first leg of his four-nation tour which will also take him to Montenegro, Ireland and Iran.