The basic objective of the weekly lecture series, launched first in 2020, is to present the diversity of Chinese life and culture to university students in Debrecen. This semester, almost 100 students from the various faculties of our institution have signed up for the course.
The distinguished speaker at the event on September 29 was Levente Horváth, former Consul General in Shanghai and currently Managing Director of the Eurasian Center of John von Neumann University, who has been a researcher of Chinese topics since 2005. Levente Horváth graduated from Fudan University, Shanghai, with an honors degree received from the rector of the institution. In 2021, he was awarded the Shanghai Magnolia Silver Award, the highest distinction given to foreigners by the Shanghai municipal government, for his role in the improvement and development of Sino-Hungarian relations.
“It is a pleasure for us that he kindly accepted our invitation because, due to the 12 years that Levente Horváth had spent in Shanghai, he is now one of the Hungarian authorities on the subject. It is also noteworthy that he had acted as the editor of a collection of studies published for the 10th anniversary of cooperation between China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” said Cui Xianjun, the Chinese director of UD’s Confucius Institute, in his welcoming address.
The book titled A kínai geopolitikai gondolkodás – Egy övezet, egy út kínai szemszögből [Chinese Geopolitical Thought: One Belt, One Road from a Chinese Perspective], was published earlier this year by Pallas Athéné Books.
“The dual symbol of yin and yang has been put on the front cover of the volume, since it stands for the opposing yet complementary cosmic forces, i.e., everything that constitutes the foundation for Chinese culture and thought,” said Levente Horváth in his introduction.
The speaker then explained that China, with its five-thousand-year-old culture, continues to play a very important part in the world even in the 21st century.
“In order to recognize and clearly see the driving forces and their connections behind geopolitical changes, as well as to position Hungary properly, it is important to get to know the way of thinking of the leading political powers,” underlined Levente Horváth.
In his book review, the author highlighted that the volume presents one of the largest multilateral cooperation projects of the 21st century, the so-called “One Belt, One Road” initiative, specifically from China’s perspective, a topic on which no comprehensive book or study has been published yet in Hungarian.
An upcoming event in the lecture series offered by the Confucius Institute of FoH, UD, will take place on Tuesday, October 18, 2022, when a talk show will be hosted between Yu Zemin, a Chinese writer living and working in Hungary, and his Hungarian translator, Richárd Mohr, from 4 p.m. in the Main Building venue called Auditorium Maximum.
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