The New Zealand finals of the 14^th “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competence for Foreign Secondary School Students was held on August 8^th in Christchurch. 15 students from middle schools and 19 students from high schools of New Zealand competed through online video conference due to the pandemic.

    The competition was jointly hosted by Center for Language Education and Cooperation, Confucius Institute of the University of Canterbury and the Science, Education and Culture Center of China’s Embassy in New Zealand. The topic of the speech given by students was “fly high with Chinese”. Competitors expressed their love for Chinese and talked about the importance of learning it as well as their positive exchanges.

    Dong Zhixue, education counsellor of China’s Embassy to New Zealand, said that this year’s Chinese Bridge preliminary rounds and finals would be held through online video conference. Because New Zealand’s border was shut down, Chinese volunteer teachers from China couldn’t go to the country, so this year’s Chinese teaching had many difficulties. It’s originally expected that the number and the proficiency of competitor would decrease, but the fact was that they two numbers increased instead.

    Dong Zhixue said that in the next year, China and New Zealand would celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relationship. He hoped that Chinese learners would be connectors between the two countries and contribute to the education and people-to-people exchanges as well as the friendship between the two countries.

    Wang Zhijian, Chinese consul-general in Christchurch of New Zealand, said that in recent years, the capacity of competing students had been improving year by year. Those who learned Chinese could have a clearer understanding of Chinese history and culture and be friends with 1.4 billion Chinese people. In addition, China was the largest trading partner with more than 120 countries, including New Zealand, so learning Chinese well could support ones’ future career.

    Vice mayor of Christchurch said that despite the pandemic, China-New Zealand tie continued to develop in education, culture, and people-to-people communication. In the future, those who could speak Chinese would be bridges of the two countries’ relationship.

    The host said that the result of the finals would be publish in days.