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I came across this headline today. I expected to find something about the topic in the first paragraph or so. I hoped to see some mention of teaching Hanyu at the University of Surrey.

The first paragraph’s topic was Led Zeppelin.

Several paragraphs later, after learning that the dean of international relations speaks Portuguese and is going off to Brazil, we get to the nitty-gritty:

“But the strongest evidence of Surrey’s commitment to becoming a global institution is in China’s rust belt where a Surrey International Institute has been launched with the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics [东北财经大学], one of the top universities in China.”

The penny dropped. This article was not about teaching the western world about China like, for example, the China Institute at the University of Alberta does.

This was an “in China” institute – not an “about China” institute. Surrey, rather than build its own campus in China like other western universities and colleges have, will have a partnership with 东北财经大学 and get the use of a building at 东大 where they will offer business courses. No mention of language here so far, though.

But Surrey does offer an evening course in Mandarin. So I wonder if in future we will see programs in Business Management and Mandarin to complement their existing language degrees in Business Management and French and Business Management and Spanish.

It’s worth keeping an eye open for new developments.