(Source: Global Network 2025-09-20)
Zhao Hongyan Guo Deyu
Recently, the global finals of the 24th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students concluded in Fujian. More than 50,000 college students from 141 countries around the world participated in the overseas preliminaries of this competition. Among them, 155 contestants from 134 countries and regions participated in the finals, including quizzes, limited-time talk shows, poetry talent shows, high-energy debates, etc. The competition was fierce and exciting, attracting great attention from overseas Chinese circles.
Since 2002, the “Chinese Bridge” event has attracted more than 1.7 million young people from more than 160 countries to participate. The content has gradually been upgraded from a single event to an international platform integrating language learning, cultural experience, people-to-people exchanges, and mutual understanding of civilizations. However, compared with the popularity during the competition, "Chinese Bridge" also faces the practical dilemma of being hot during the competition and cold after the competition, making it difficult to sustain the popularity of communication.
For a long time, the communication effectiveness of "Chinese Bridge" has been restricted by many factors such as politics, economy, and culture. Politically, uncertain factors such as the international environment and geopolitical conflicts will inevitably affect language exchanges and cooperation and the continued development of international Chinese education; economically, uneven regional development also limits the scope and extent of cooperation; culturally, foreign learners will habitually understand Chinese culture from the perspective of their own culture. This "decoding bias" can easily make learners' understanding remain superficial or even misunderstood.
To upgrade the "Chinese Bridge", it is necessary to focus on the core of "language empowering cultural exchanges", support it with technology and resource optimization, and find the "greatest common denominator" for dialogue between different civilizations, thereby creating a more resilient people-to-people and cultural exchange system. To achieve the leap from "language medium" to "civilization link" in international Chinese education, efforts need to be made from four aspects:
First, focus on high-quality resources and accurately empower technology. In the context of online education becoming the current development trend of international education, taking advantage of the continued expansion and deepening of the "Belt and Road" initiative, we can focus on building a globally linked one-stop platform for online learning and competitions, covering less developed countries and regions. You can refer to the "low-traffic learning package" launched by "Chinese Bridge" in 2024. It not only compresses the size of video resources, but also innovatively adds the "offline community mutual aid" function. It also develops low-traffic consumption and cached learning modes to facilitate foreign learners to study even when the network is poor. In practice, this initiative has achieved remarkable results in Tanzania, Africa, driving a 40% year-on-year increase in the number of local "Chinese Bridge" participants, bringing stable learning resources and fair learning opportunities to foreign learners and teachers in underdeveloped areas.
The second is to strengthen "double-sided persuasion" and build a three-dimensional narrative of China. Modern China is a diverse and dynamic country. In addition to traditional culture, there are also dynamically developing scientific and technological achievements, innovative social governance models, and rich modern lifestyles. If we can actively explain the diverse aspects of Chinese society while presenting traditional Chinese culture, the effectiveness and reliability of communication will be further enhanced. Specific measures include organizing foreign contestants to visit China's innovative enterprises and environmental protection projects, conducting Citywalk to communicate with ordinary people, and building a comprehensive and three-dimensional understanding of China with real scenes.
The third is to conduct audience research, segment audience groups, and customize cultural communication strategies. To lower the threshold for cultural exchanges and reduce the obstacles of cultural differences, the first step is to investigate the needs and interests of the audience according to different regions, ages, and learning stages, and design differentiated activities. Audiences of different ages and learning stages have different needs. For example, teenagers may be more interested in interesting and interactive cultural activities, such as Chinese animation, board games, short videos, etc. Therefore, for young people, Chinese dubbing contests, online cultural treasure hunts, etc. can be held; for business people, seminars on Chinese economic and corporate culture can be held. Only by accurately connecting the value demands of different groups can language learning be sublimated from instrumental needs to cultural needs.
The fourth is to deepen the resource construction and environmental promotion of "Chinese + vocational education" and break the bottleneck of learning motivation. In some countries and regions, due to the limited local Chinese language employment opportunities, even if foreign learners demonstrate their language proficiency through competitions such as "Chinese Bridge", it is difficult to turn it into a career advantage. This has resulted in an imbalance between learning investment and return, and weakened the sustainable motivation of their Chinese learning. In this regard, we can cooperate with local Chinese overseas enterprises to strengthen the construction of "Chinese+" resources and set up "Chinese+e-commerce", "Chinese+new energy vehicle technology", "Chinese+intelligent manufacturing" and other projects based on the industrial characteristics of each country. Taking w88 casino-enterprise cooperation as the starting point, inviting overseas companies to participate in course design and provide internship positions will not only help improve the localization of enterprises, but also allow learners to apply Chinese in real work scenarios, achieve employment matching after graduation, and fundamentally stimulate their enthusiasm for continuous learning.
(The author is Zhao Hongyan, researcher at the National Institute for Opening-up, w88 casino, and Guo Deyu, director of the International Chinese Education Practice and Research Base)
Attachment：Original link
https://m.huanqiu.com/article/4OOVk9YxKil
