On November 17, 2022, the CCTV News program “World View·The Loveliest Eastern Friend,” reported on the international education program of Belt and Road School (BRS), Beijing Normal University (BNU), featuring on the special topic – “We Are ‘Belt and Road’ Classmates”.

CCTV journalists walked into BRS classrooms to conduct random interviews (online & offline) with students on building a community with a shared future for mankind and other topics. The students from countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) believed that as people are living on the same planet and facing the same global challenges, they should unite in responding to crises and achieve win-win cooperation. The students also said that China has made great efforts and played a leading role in advocating and promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. One of the most convincing facts of this is that the Belt and Road construction has provided a great practice platform for building a community with a shared future for mankind, and the Belt and Road cooperation in the past 9 years has yielded remarkable fruits.

After President Xi Jinping put forward BRI, BNU attached great importance to it and made quick and positive responses. With the guidance and support of the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education, BNU took Belt and Road characteristic education as the entry point to contribute to the high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and leveraged its strength in vigorously developing the Belt and Road international education. Since the initiative was proposed more than 9 years ago, BNU has carried out Belt and Road international education programs at the university level for 8 of those years. The University Party Committee especially pushed the university’s international education to a new high by establishing BRS in September 2018 in implementing the spirit of President Xi Jinping’s Important Speech on the BRI’s 5th anniversary. The number of students enrolled by BRS has quickly increased from less than 30 at the beginning to 119 this year. 9 years on, BRS has cultivated 491 students from 89 countries (mostly countries joining BRI). Among them, more than half once worked in central government departments in their home countries, and the rest were from private sectors.

The courses carefully designed by BRS include Theory and Practice of China's Development, the Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implementation, Belt and Road Trade and Investment, Economy and Development of Emerging Markets and Developing Countries, Belt and Road Leadership, China's Socio-economic Survey, Principles of Management, Special Topics on Public Policy, and Belt and Road Finance. Students from various countries learn the latest theoretical knowledge needed in the 21st century as well as fundamental personal experience of China's rapid development and long-term stability. BRS faculty is composed of experts with profound academic research backgrounds and rich experiences in different fields, such as well-known scholars from different countries, former politicians from countries joining the Belt and Road, and global financial leaders. The teaching has achieved great results.