Beijing/Prague, Nov 25 (CTK) – The Czech Republic is short of people who command the Chinese language and this is why it should support the teaching of Chinese as well as student exchange with China, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has said during his ongoing one-week visit to China.
“It has turned out that we have only few interpreters from Chinese,” he said.
Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) is also of the view that more Chinese students should study in the Czech Republic.
“At the moment when business contacts have been extended and particular Czech regions and towns are establishing partnership with China, there is a high demand for people who can speak both Czech and Chinese,” Sobotka told reporters in the Chinese city of Suzhou on Tuesday.
Consequently, a bilateral student exchange should intensify along with support for the teaching of Chinese in the Czech Republic and of Czech in China, he added.
Sobotka also promoted a more intensive cooperation between Czech and Chinese universities as well as in science and research.
The work on the agreement on mutual recognition of university degrees must be sped up, he said.
Czech businesspeople have started feeling the lack of qualified Chinese-speaking experts and they are trying to compete for the good ones, daily Pravo writes yesterday.
Sobotka will leave Suzhou for Beijing yesterday to take part in a seminar on cooperation in health care. He will also give a lecture at the Beijing University in which he wants to present the Czech Republic as a dynamically developing country with a stable economy and real opportunities for cooperation.
Sobotka, who arrived in China on Saturday, will meet his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping in Beijing in the following days.
