ACC Secretary-General Met with Secretary of Department of Education of the Philippines

On 7 December 2015, H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Centre (ACC), met with H.E. Mr. Br. Armin A. Luistro FSC, Secretary of Department of Education of the Philippines in Manila, the Philippines. Minister of the Philippines Embassy to China Mr. Ivan Frank Olea, Director of Education, Culture and Tourism Division (ECTD) of ACC Mr. Tri Purnajaya also attended the meeting.

Secretary-General Yang said the Philippines and China had established a couple of exchanges and cooperation mechanisms since the establishment of diplomatic relations more than 40 years ago. She noted that the cooperation between the Philippines and China had achieved fruitful results with China being the largest trading partner of ASEAN and ASEAN being China's third largest trading partner, the increasing two-way investment, and two-way tourism visits between ASEAN and China reaching 18 million with over 1,000 weekly flights. The year 2016 had also been designated as China-ASEAN Educational Exchange Year. ACC was keen to enhance exchanges and cooperation with related education departments of the Philippines and jointly upgrade ASEAN-China education exchange into a new level.

Secretary-General Yang said ACC had undertaken tremendous work in promoting and expanding China-ASEAN education exchange and cooperation and achieved substantial results. The number of exchange students of both sides reached 180,000. China had established Confucius institutes and classrooms in a number of ASEAN Member States, providing platforms for youth to learn from each other’s experience. ACC wished to continue to enhance cooperation with ASEAN Member States and conduct various activities such as, study visits and vocational training by leveraging on the its partnership with the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and the China-ASEAN Education Exchange Week (CAECW) so as to improve the level of educational exchange and benefit both peoples.

Secretary Luistro stated that the Department of Education of the Philippines attached importance to youth development and had been exploring and enriching education connotation and innovating education model. Next year would be an China-ASEAN Education Exchange Year. The Philippines wished to take this opportunity to strengthen communication with ACC, enhance training on agriculture, food processing and tourism by leveraging on China-ASEAN vocational and technical education cooperation mechanisms so as to improve the students’ professionalism, knowledge, hence to better serve the country’s economic and social development.