On 11 January, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou, and President of the All-China Youth Federation, Wang Xiao, opened the EU-China Year of Youth in the presence of 200 young people from the EU and China. This year aims to strengthen and expand people-to-people contacts, intercultural dialogue, mutual understanding and cooperation, offering opportunities for young Europeans and Chinese to meet, exchange and learn from each other during 2011 and beyond.

The EU-China Year of Youth 2011 was designated at the 12th  EU-China summit held in Nanjing in November 2009. Further to it, in October 2010, Commissioner Vassiliou and the Vice President of the All-China Youth Federation signed a joint action plan for the EU-China Year of Youth, which defined a general framework for the year, including several flagship events in the EU and China.

The EU-China joint action plan also lays the basis for a policy dialogue with regular exchanges on youth-related issues including voluntary activities, in particular linked to the 2011 European Year of Volunteering, youth employment and entrepreneurship, youth involvement in society, and youth work development. Seminars, workshops and expert meetings will be jointly organized in the future. The joint declaration complements previous accords in education and vocational training (2007), culture (2007) and multilingualism (2009).

In this context, the main objectives of the EU-China Youth Year 2011 are to:

• promote intercultural dialogue and strengthen mutual understanding and friendship between European and Chinese youth
• encourage young people to care about and support the development of EU-China relations
• achieve extensive and positive impact and help ensure that cooperation between policy makers as well as between youth organizations is sustainable beyond 2011

Support from the EU Youth in Action Programme

The EU Youth in Action programme, which has an annual budget of around 140 million euro, offers funding for non-formal learning, volunteering abroad and the development of the youth sector beyond the EU borders. Every year more than 140,000 young people benefit from it. Since 2007, around a dozen projects involving young people from the EU and China received support.

Projects funded under this scheme promote dialogue, tolerance, intercultural awareness and solidarity, aimed at breaking down prejudices and stereotypes. A 3 million euro call for proposals for international youth projects, which will include a special focus on China, will be published in February 2011.