Hubei University, located in Wuhan, the capital city of Central China’s Hubei Province, is a key comprehensive university jointly administered by Hubei Provincial Government and China’s Ministry of Education, covering arts, history, philosophy, science, engineering, economics, law, management, education, agriculture, and medicine, with the disciplines of Material Science and Chemistry ranking top 1% in the world ESI. With a history of eighty-seven years, it attracts more than 2000 devoted staff members, 1100 of whom are faculty members for teaching and research, including 2 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Science, 670 professors, and associate professors. Its full-time student enrollment amounts to 25,000, including 5,400 graduate students and doctoral candidates.

Hubei University has set up an academic exchange and cooperation programs with about 150 universities and research institutes in 35 countries and regions. It has co-established three Confucius Institutes with the University of Memphis in the USA, Sao Paulo State University in Brazil, University of Sao Tome and Principe respectively, and one Confucius Classroom with Jagiellonian College in Poland. Inaugurated in 2008, the Confucius Institute at Sao Paulo State University (Unesp CI) is the first Confucius Institute in Brazil. It has won the ‘Confucius Institute of the Year’ Award three times (2010, 2012, 2016) and became one of the 13‘Pilot Cultural Confucius Institutes’ in 2016. It is now the largest Confucius Institute in Brazil. Based on this platform, Hubei University and Sao Paulo State University have developed diverse collaboration such as staff and student exchange as well as research cooperation.