On the afternoon of May 15, the publication of The Belt and Road (B&R) Chinese Characters of 2021 co-hosted by the China Public Relations Association, Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies and the Propaganda Department of the CPC Jining Municipal Committee was held in Qufu Nishan, the birthplace of Confucius.

During the event, Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies and the Confucius Foundation of China unveiled the latest achievements of the Translation Project of the Analects of Confucius in Arabic, Mongolian, Spanish, Czech and Portuguese.

Guo Chengyan, Party Secretary and Deputy Director of Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies (Secretariat of the China Confucius Foundation) stated in an interview, China has initiated the construction of B&R not only to promote economic cooperation and trade, but also to deepen and expand exchanges between Chinese and foreign civilizations. Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies will give full play to the advantages of excellent traditional culture resources in Shandong. By building a research and training base for young Sinologists from all over the world, especially from countries along B&R, we will foster a new force for international cultural and people-to-people exchanges and build a multilingual, cross-cultural and high-level platform for exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. This will enable people around the world to better understand China and make a greater contribution to promoting the excellent traditional Chinese culture to go global.

The publication of "The Belt and Road" Chinese Characters of 2021 is aimed at promoting the inheritance and development project of excellent traditional Chinese culture. It is also designed to innovate and carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture, tell true Chinese stories, and enhance cultural exchanges and mutual learning among the countries along B&R. Among the nine candidate Chinese characters “He（合）、Chi（驰）、Ji（济）、An（安）、Chang（长）、Tong（通）、Ren（韧）、Hu（互）、Tong（同）” collected from the perspective of "Chinese Character Culture" and "The Belt and Road Initiative", after voting and expert evaluation, the word “Hu（互）” was crowned as the "The Belt and Road" Chinese Character of 2021.