The first college dedicated to the Portuguese language in mainland China wants to complement the teaching of the language with “deeper” knowledge on Portuguese-language countries and “increase international exchange,” the director Patrícia Jin told Lusa on Monday.
“It is a natural step that will allow us to have more resources, more possibilities and more students and teachers,” said the director of the Portuguese department of the new Faculty of Hispanic and Portuguese Studies, at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai).
Until 1999, only Beiwai and the Shanghai International Studies University offered degrees in Portuguese.
Since then, mainland China’s higher education institutions to include degrees in Portuguese have increased from three to 25. In total, over 1,500 Chinese students now attend courses in Portuguese.
The faculty will allow “to build a system of deeper, more systematic knowledge” on Portuguese-language countries, said Patrícia Jin.
“With this evolution, we will open more classes in five study areas: linguistics, translation, literature, political science, economics and commerce,” she said.
The increase in the budget will also extend the teaching staff, which currently has eight Chinese teachers, one Portuguese and one Brazilian reader, and organise lectures.
The Beiwai investment reflects the growing need to form better frameworks to work with the Portuguese-language countries, regarding the evolution of trade, which in 2018 amounted to $147.354 billion (€131.206 billion), an increase of 25.31% in annual terms.
The highlight is mainly to Angola and Brazil, which see trade with China as the majority in this commerce.
