Xu Lin (Hanban)

rdf:langString Xu Lin (Hanban)

rdf:langString Xu Lin

rdf:langString Xǔ Lín

rdf:langString 许琳

rdf:langString 許琳

rdf:langString Hsü³ Lin²

rdf:langString Xu Lin (born September 1954) is a Chinese vice-minister-level official serving on the State Council. She has held the post of Chief Executive and Director of the Confucius Institutes worldwide since 2004. She is Director General of the Hanban, or Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. Xu Lin was born in Shanxi province. She is a graduate of Fudan University in Shanghai with a degree in Chemistry and has a master's degree in Economics from Beijing Normal University. As a young woman during the Cultural Revolution, she was a worker at the Changzhi Bicycle Factory (长治自行车厂) in Shanxi. According to her resume, she then worked as a lecturer in the Chemistry Department at Shanxi University, staff at the Higher Education Bureau of Shanxi, and choreographer at the Central Educational Film Studio. Subsequently, she worked in the Finance Department of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. During this time she also held the post of Assistant Mayor of Xuchang, Henan province (October 1991-September 1993) and then Director of the Foreign Loans Office of the Ministry of Education. In 2000 Xu Lin became the Education Counsellor at the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver, Canada. She returned to China in 2004 and took her current post as head of Hanban, or the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. She has received honorary degrees from the University of Arizona, the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, the University of Edinburgh, Middle Tennessee State University, Western Kentucky University, J.F. Oberlin University in Japan, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Belarusian State University in Minsk, Belarus, and Veliko Tarnovo University in Bulgaria. Xu Lin serves as a member of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.