Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research (CACLER) Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong is the territory's oldest university, and with a history that stretches back more than 100 years, it has grown with and helped shape the city from which it takes its name. Today, HKU, as it is fondly called, is a dynamic, comprehensive, university of world-class standing. With ten Faculties and numerous research centres, its reputation as a centre of intellectual excellence is recognised around the world.

The University of Hong Kong, as a leading international institution of higher learning in Asia, strives to attract and nurture outstanding scholars from around the world through excellence and innovation in teaching and learning, research and knowledge exchange, contributing to the advancement of society and the development of leaders through a global presence, regional significance and engagement with the rest of China.

Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research (CACLER) is formally established as a Faculty Centre (under Faculty of Education) in July 2004 in the University of Hong Kong to capitalize on collaborative networks on Chinese Language education and further advance the research on this area. Besides 30 books, we have also produced several teaching materials and learning tools. For details, please visit the following websites:

• Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research (CACLER)（http://www.cacler.hku.hk）
• Chinese Education Web（http://www.chineseedu.hku.hk）
• Web Teaching Resources for Chinese Language Across Curriculum - Support Centre for Teachers Using Chinese as the Medium of Instruction (CMI Centre)
  （http://www.cmi.hku.hk）
• Dragonwise Chinese Character Learning Web Resources（http://www.dragonwise.hku.hk）
• Chinese Characters Learning Software Package for South Asian Learners（http://www.dragonwise.hku.hk/sa/）
• Chinese Language Student Support Programme for Non-Chinese Speaking Students（http://www.dragonwise.hku.hk/ncs/）
• University-school support Programme: Supporting Secondary Schools in the Teaching and Learning of Chinese for non-native learners
  （http://usp.cacler.hku.hk/）

Ethnic Chinese Classic Texts and Characters Research Centre, Beijing Normal University, People's Republic of China

Ethnic Chinese Classic Texts and Characters Research Centre was approved to be established as a national key research centre by the Ministry of Education in PRC since September 2000. It was built upon the foundation of three traditional and outstanding disciplines in Beijing Normal University, namely Folklore, Classics Philology and Chinese Philology, that the Centre can take advantage of.

The Founding Centre Director was Prof. Wang Ning and the current Centre Director is Prof. Li Guoying. There are five sub-units under it, such as language study research, IT in Chinese etc.

In the past decade, the Centre has considerable development in all aspects and has made rich achievements in scientific researches in relation to Chinese character. The Centre has conducted over 30 national and provincial research projects, such as ‘Research and collation of the ancient inscriptions text’, ‘Chinese character database’ et al. The series of Chinese Characters Formation History which was written under the supervision of Prof. Wang Ning, the founder of the theory of Chinese character formation, have a significant impact on the field of Chinese character research. The launch of ‘Electronic collection of ancient inscriptions and handwritten literature with descriptive characteristics’ and ‘Electronic platform of historical Chinese characters’, that provides a more scientific way, has broadened the scope of research on Chinese characters. Moreover, the Centre has actively involved in the work on national standardization of Chinese characters. Prof. Wang Ning and Prof. Li Guoying are the Chair and Vice-Chair respectively of Sub-committee of Chinese Characters under the National Language Standardization Technical Committee.

Prof. Li is also the leader of Classical Chinese expert team under Ideograph Rapporteur Group (IRG), which advises the Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 on Han character additions to the repertoire of the Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646-1 character set standards, and on Han unification. The database of Standard Chinese Characters, which was the outcome of a research led by Prof. Wang, will be launched as national standard of word usage by PRC government. Moreover, the electronic database of International Uniform Code for glyph of Oracle, which was developed by Prof. Li and Prof. Zhou Xiaowen, was adopted by National Standardization Committee and was submitted to IRG. The Centre has been commissioned by the State Language Working Committee to conduct several research projects on Chinese language and characters and the research reports were provided as references for policy makers. This makes the Centre to become the most representative research institute in the discipline.

The Centre greatly emphasizes the research collaboration and knowledge exchange regionally and internationally. It has organized several international conferences. It has also invited scholars from different countries, such as France, England, Russia, USA, Norway, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan et at, for short-term research collaboration and deliver speeches. At the same time, the scholars of the Centre have been invited to join various international academic activities, including long-term research collaboration in Hong Kong and Macau. All of these contribute to research excellence of the Centre which plays a leading role in the discipline.

The Korea Society of Education in Chinese Characters and Classics

The Korea Society of Education in Chinese Characters and Classics (the ”Society”) was officially set up in 1993. It has 450 members including professors of Korean universities, researchers, primary and secondary teachers.

The aim of the Society is to promote research on education of Chinese characters and classics in Korea in terms of new educational theory, pedagogy, curriculum design and assessment. Conferences and seminars have been organized twice per year. The Society has its own journal and 24 issues amounted to 320 papers have been published up to 2010. The Korea Research Official Unit has recognized the research outcomes of the Society by accepting it as National Grade A Journal in 2010.

Society for Korean Classical Chinese Education

The Society of Korean Classical Chinese Education aims to promote the development of Chinese characters education in Korea through conducting research on issues and theory of Chinese character education; to promote the understanding and inherit traditional culture and classics of Korea. The Society which was established in 1981 has over 1700 registered members. It organizes conferences twice a year and publish journals. Their journal on Chinese character education and research was accepted for inclusion in the National Grade A Journal List by Korea Research Official Unit since 2004.