At 2:30 pm on August 15 Beijing time (UTC+8), the China(WTU)-CEEC Joint Education Project and WTU 2020 Summer Online International Courses officially started, with sixty-nine teachers and students attending via video links to witness its opening and have the first class.

With the theme of “Approaching Wuhan—Traditional Culture and Modern Fashion”, the courses are designed and organized by the "Belt and Road" Textile Higher Education Alliance and the Research Institute of International People-to-People Exchange for Textile Industry. The program relies on the Convergence Media Communication Center of the School of Media, uses interactive live broadcast on the Internet, leverages modern online teaching techniques, and invites teachers from the School of Foreign Languages to give lectures, in a bid to provide international students with an exclusive platform for understanding WTU and Wuhan as a whole.

The 12-day online summer courses not only shows the long-standing history and profound cultural heritage of Wuhan, but also incorporates WTU’s fruitful achievements in academic research. In so doing, the courses promise enabling the international students to learn and understand China's history, culture, and urban development, and helping them with their cognitive and analytical skills as well as judgment and decision-making so that they can get a complete and objective picture of Wuhan and China amid the current complex international situation.

Jointly established by China and 17 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, this program is annually reviewed and authorized by the International Exchange Association of the Ministry of Education of P.R.C.. This year marks the first time for WTU to replace in-person offline teaching with online lectures and exchanges, with a view to telling Chinese stories, spreading the voice of China, and cultivating future international talents who truly understand China.