Over 100 Chinese teachers participated in the Third Oceania Chinese Teachers' Conference held in the University of Auckland on Saturday to discuss Chinese teaching and assessment across Oceania.

Topics at the biannual conference included Chinese character teaching, oral Chinese learning, Chinese cultural learning and language assessment. Teachers from Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific Island nations shared their views and experiences in teaching Chinese language and culture in their own class rooms and countries.

Vice Consul-General of China Xiao Yewen reiterated the importance of language teaching in his speech at the opening ceremony, saying language teaching facilitates people to people and cultural exchanges and promotes the building of a community of shared future for mankind.

"Recent years have witnessed a fast growing relations between China and Oceanian countries. There are excellent examples of cooperation in education, science and technology, cultural and language aspects. These fruitful results bare the hardworking of Chinese teachers."

Dong Zhixue, the education counselor from the Chinese Embassy to New Zealand congratulated the Chinese teachers in Oceania for their hard work in promoting Chinese language learning in the region, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of local students learning the language.

"Language is the key to exchanges between civilizations. A globalized world features diversity and inclusiveness in which more opportunities for development are given to those who have multi-language abilities," Dong zhixue said

New Zealand's National Party MP Dr. Jian Yang said in his remarks that Chinese language teaching is important not only because China is New Zealand's largest trade partner but also because a growing Chinese community in New Zealand requires more people to know the Chinese language.