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Pakistani students show keen interest in learning Chinese language

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) — The first ever “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign Secondary School Students was held in Pakistan on Wednesday where nine middle school students participated in Chinese language debate and cultural performance.

A student of Roots Millennium School Flagship Campus Abeeha Shoaib secured the first position, and won a fully-funded plan to visit China to participate in the final round of the competition to be held in Beijing where she will compete with other students winning the competition from the world over.

Pakistani students are developing more and more interest in the Chinese language, and to provide them opportunity to learn the language, many local educational institutes have started Chinese language classes at primary and university level.

Presently, many top-rated universities and schools of the country including the National University of Science and Technology, Comsats University Islamabad and Roots School System are offering Chinese language classes in their curriculum, and over 25,000 students across the country are learning the language in these institutes.

Besides the “Chinese Bridge,” competitions are also frequently held in schools where students actively participate to show their fluency of Chinese language and their love for Chinese culture.

Head of the Chinese Language Department at Roots Millennium Education Mona Kanwal told Xinhua that the commencement of the Chinese proficiency event in Pakistan will encourage more students to learn the language and participate in the event in the future.

She said that in her school system, which has campuses across the country, over 8,000 students are learning Chinese language, and the trend is on rise.

“We started Chinese classes a decade ago, and at that time it was very hard to convince parents to let their kids learn Chinese, but now after the initiation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, more and more students are showing keen interest to learn the language.”

Source: Xinhua

Dated on: 28/8/2019

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Colorful cultural exchanges between China and Pakistan

China and Pakistan are not only friendly neighbours but also two major ancient civilizations that have maintained close ties in cultural exchanges and mutual learning.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1951, the two countries have made great efforts to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation. The Cultural Cooperation Agreement between China and Pakistan was signed in March 1965. During her official visit to China in February 2018, Marriyum Aurangzeb, federal minister for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage, signed the Executive Programme of the Cultural Agreement for 2018-2022 with Luo Shugang, minister of Culture and Tourism of China, which outlines the overall framework for China-Pak cultural exchanges and cooperation in the next five years.

In 2018, the CPEC Cultural Caravan was implemented with the support of the Ministry of Information of Pakistan. Artists from China and Pakistan carried out a series of exchange activities along the ancient Silk Road and CPEC construction sites. This further strengthened China-Pak friendship and promoted the mutual understanding of our two peoples. Apart from that, artists from the two countries have visited each other frequently so as to learn from each other and enhance the oriental civilization jointly.

The Pakistani government attaches importance to the development of broadcasting and film industry. The programme has made it clear that the two sides will strengthen the mutual cooperation in the technology fields of radio broadcasting, films and television among the state radio, film and television organizations of both the countries. China and Pakistan are maintaining close communication and coordination and actively expanding exchanges and cooperation in this area. The film industry is booming in both China and Pakistan. China will adopt measures to further cooperate with Pakistan in this field, including introducing Pakistani films to Chinese film festivals, importing Pakistani films into Chinese cinema lines, and promoting the film companies of the two countries to jointly produce film and television programs.

The writer is Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China in Pakistan

SOURCE: https://dailytimes.com.pk/247261/colourful-cultural-exchanges-between-china-and-pakistan/ 

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CPEC to prove game changer for coming generations: Marriyum

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb Thursday said that China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was a game changer for the coming generations as it would strengthen the economies of entire region.

Speaking as chief guest at the third anniversary of China Cultural Center at Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) here she said that Pakistan and China were located at the center of the world and that was why the entire world was showing interest in the corridor.

She said that CPEC, a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative was proof of Pak-China friendly state-to-state relations and a symbol of trust and cooperation that both sides enjoyed with each other hence the name ‘game changer’. The cultural diplomacy between Pakistan and China had further cemented the deep-rooted bilateral relations, she added.

Marriyum observed that the Pakistan National Council of the Arts under the stewardship of its Director General Jamal Shah was not only making strenuous efforts for promoting culture within the country, but was also playing significant role in strengthening cultural diplomacy between the two countries.

The minister observed that the Pak-China friendship had been given different names at different times and CPEC had unleashed a new era of bonhomie between the two countries.

Marriyum said that Pakistan was committed to the cause of economic integration, development, strengthening the bilateral

relations, promoting cultural bonds and promoting people-to-people contacts.

She said that Pakistan and China were iron brothers and the present government wished to see the relationship gaining strength with each passing day.

She said she was glad to say that China Cultural Centre, Islamabad was instrumental to strengthening the bonds of friendship and fraternity between the two countries.

She said that at the cultural center besides cultural activities, the students were being taught the Chinese language. She appreciated the efforts of the Chinese ambassador in making the center a success.

Economic Game Changer

The minister said it was her belief that sustainability of economic prosperity and cooperation required mutual understanding of each other’s culture, heritage and language.

The minister said that Pakistan’s first-ever Film and Culture Policy has been included in the finance bill for the next budget as Pakistan was unable to use screen tourism to boost its image. She said that film, national heritage, culture and languages played key role in projecting the real soft image of Pakistan.

She said when Chinese President visited Pakistan in 2014 he and the former Pakistani prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif signed the historic agreements and inaugurated the CPEC.

She congratulated the Chinese government, the Chinese embassy and those associated with the centre on successful completion of three years.

Chinese ambassador Yao Jing, senior officials of Chinese embassy, DG PNCA Jamal Shah were also present on the occasion.

SOURCE: https://dailytimes.com.pk/230241/cpec-to-prove-game-changer-for-coming-generations-marriyum/

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CPEC to add 17,000MW power to national grid, cabinet told

ISLAMABAD: Various energy sector projects being set up under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will contribute over 17,000 megawatts of energy to the national grid on completion, a top-level huddle was told on Tuesday.

“CPEC would significantly help towards ensuring inclusive development especially the socio-economic development of the less-developed areas of the country,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister Office after a weekly federal cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

The cabinet was given a detailed presentation on the CPEC including various projects being undertaken in energy sector, infrastructure, industrial cooperation and development of Gwadar. The statement, however, did not give details of these projects and the timeframe for their completion.

CPEC to boost demand of expert interpreters: Chinese language whiz

“It was informed that the energy sector and infrastructuredevelopment constituted the major areas under the first phase of CPEC—CPEC project would help increasing GDP [gross domestic product] growth and would strengthen various sectors of the economy.”

Official sources who attended the meeting said PM Abbasi, who is expected to visit China soon, will sign a related memorandum of understanding with the Chinese authorities for initiating energy projects under the CPEC on the sidelines of a key regional moot.

Presently, the federal government claims to have ended load shedding in Pakistan with the production of ‘surplus’ electricity but prolonged power outages after the advent of summer season have put to a question mark over these claims.

In a related development, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing also called on PM Abbasi before the cabinet’s Tuesday huddle. The PM’s upcoming visit to China for participation in the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) and issues of mutual interest were discussed in the meeting, a PM Office statement said.

The forum will be held in China’s southern island province of Hainan from April 8 to 11.

Other decisions

The cabinet approved Prevention of Smuggling of Migrant Ordinance, 2018. The ordinance aims at curbing the smuggling of Pakistani nationals to foreign countries and that of foreigners to Pakistan.

In the light of existing constitutional provisions, an ordinance, which is promulgated by the president of Pakistan, remains in effect for 120 days and can be extended for one time for as many days (120 days) before it lapses permanently and requires parliamentary legislation in order to be become a law.

Annual Report and Audited Financial Statement of Audit Oversight Board for the Year, 2017 was presented before the cabinet.

The cabinet approved signing of seven memorandums of understanding with various countries aimed at enhancement of economic and strategic cooperation and carrying out a feasibility study of a project. It also assented to ceilings for allocation of grants-in-aid to bar councils and bar associations for 2017-18.

Five more CPEC power projects to get special treatment

The cabinet approved appointment of the Utility Stores Corporation managing director. A proposal to grant additional charge of the post of the Port Qasim Authority Karachi chairman to the Ports and Shipping director general was also approved.

It also approved a summary regarding rationalisation of the prices of computerised national identity cards (CNIC) and national identity cards for overseas Pakistanis (NICOP).

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Microsoft’s AI-Based Chinese-to-English Translations Are Now as Good as Humans

A team of Microsoft researches has made a major breakthrough in machine translation tech. The team has successfully developed an Artificial Intelligence system through extensive training that is as accurate as humans in translating Chinese to English.

The Accurate Translator

The folks at Microsoft told that methods like deep neural networks, deliberation networks, dual learning and joint training were used to train the AI. The purpose of this training was to reach a level of accuracy in translation similar to humans.

The system was tested on a sample of 2,000 news sentences from several newspapers that were available online. The samples were released at WMT17 research conference on which Microsoft conducted the test. Microsoft hired a team of professional Chinese to English translators to verify the results.

Even the research team was surprised by the results and how quickly they achieved them. One of the reps said,”Hitting human parity in a machine translation task is a dream that all of us have had. We just didn’t realize we’d be able to hit it so soon.”

Talking about the difficulties and differences of simple pattern recognition and machine translation, Ming Zhou of Microsoft comments,”Machine translation is much more complex than a pure pattern recognition task. People can use different words to express the exact same thing, but you cannot necessarily say which one is better.”

Source: https://propakistani.pk/2018/03/16/microsofts-ai-based-chinese-to-english-translations-are-now-as-good-as-humans/?utm_source=all_users&utm_medium=notif

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English-speaking countries have greater understanding of Chinese vocabulary, concepts, reveals report

BEIJING: 

There is increased understanding of Chinese vocabulary and concepts outside China, and more Chinese words are being used in the English language, according to a recent report.

“Shaolin,” a form of Chinese kung fu, was listed as the most recognized Chinese word, according a report issued by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration (CFLPA) on Saturday.

Top ten list words and concepts also included: “yin yang,” “yuan,” “gugong,” “nihao,” “wushu,” “qi,” “qigong,” “renminbi,” and “majiang or mahjong.”

Chinese concepts listed among the top 100 include those featuring Chinese traditional festivals, soft power, economic, scientific and technological development, such as “a community with a shared future,” “Belt and Road,” “Alipay,” and “Chang’e lunar probes.”

K-P offering Chinese language courses at technical colleges

Citing the report, China Central Television (CCTV) said that many Chinese words which were previously translated into English have now been replaced by the pinyin, such as “jiaozi” replacing “dumpling,” and “mantou” replacing “steamed bun.”

Words related to the Spring Festival have also been searched frequently on English-language websites in recent years, including “chunlian,” the Spring Festival couplets, “chunyun,” the Spring Festival travel rush, “chunwan,” the CCTV New Year’s Gala, and “hongbao,” red envelopes containing money.

TEVTA receives 11,000 applications for Chinese language courses

The festival is now being celebrated in more countries around the world, CCTV said, adding that Chinese elements have also been used by leading fashion designers, including dragon, phoenix and peony designs, as well as the Chinese zodiac animals.

The report came from surveys in eight major English-speaking countries, and also calculated data of more than 300 Chinese vocabulary entries which appeared on the mainstream media websites in English-speaking countries.

Source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1638086/3-english-speaking-countries-greater-understanding-chinese-vocabulary-concepts-reveals-report/

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China in talks with Baloch separatists: report

China has reportedly been engaging in low-key dialogue with Baloch tribal separatists for over five years. Talks have been held to appease the separatists in order to securitise the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which has projected investments worth of $60 billion.

According to the Financial Times, three people have shared details of Beijing being in direct contact with militants in Balochistan.

Pakistan looks to China, Saudi Arabia for succour

Beijing has so far maintained a policy of non-intervention in the domestic politics of other countries. However, the sheer magnitude and scale of its multifaceted investments in all windows of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project have sharpened security sensibilities. The vision to create a “new Silk Road” of trade routes in Europe, Asia and Africa has led China to venture into conflict management.

It seems like Beijing is replenishing the void left by Washington, which went from being Pakistan’s war time ally to becoming one of its harshest critics on extremism.

The venturesome and risk intensive move by China has perturbed India, which fears China’s growing influence in the Global South.

The Asian Dream: Rabbani lauds launch of Mandarin classes

“The Chinese have quietly made a lot of progress,” said one Pakistani official. “Even though separatists occasionally try to carry out the odd attack, they are not making a forceful push.”

China treads into some of the world’s most complex conflict zones as it plans to connect a new silk road. South Sudan, Mali and Iraq are some of the places where China has heavy stakes in place.

Source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1639841/1-china-talks-pakistani-separatists/

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