The head of the Center for Excellence "Heritage BG," Academician Ivan Ilchev, was in China from May 18 to 30, 2025, at the invitation of Capital Normal University in Beijing and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
At the first university, he gave a series of five lectures on the history of the Balkan peoples to students and doctoral candidates and discussed opportunities for deepening cooperation with the Center for Study of Civilizations at Capital Normal University. It was agreed that a summer school for doctoral and post-doctoral students, Homo Balkanicus, would be held in the fall of 2025 at the Sofia University base in the village of Slaveyno. By the end of June, the status of a joint institute between the Center for the Study of Civilizations and Capital Normal University for the management of cultural heritage should be discussed and approved.
Academician Ivan Ilchev was invited to write a chapter in China's first textbook on the history of the Balkans.
On the initiative of the Chinese side, the Bulgarian Culture Day on May 24 was marked with a scientific session to discuss the history of Bulgaria, "The Rose of the Balkans," published a few months ago in Chinese. The session was attended by directors and deputy directors of institutes affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and various universities, doctoral students and students, and the management of World Affair Press, which published 6,000 copies of the book. The participants in the discussion, including Professor Ma Sipu, the doyen of Balkan studies in China, made a number of recommendations, emphasizing that this is the first history of China by a Bulgarian author to appear in the last six decades, and recommended that a second edition be published.
