The British have learned the value of strict discipline in schools from China, while the Chinese have learned from the British that children should have more time to play, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has said.

On the fourth day of his state visit to the UK, Xi gave an address at the opening of a conference of UK Confucius institutes organised by University College London’s Institute of Education (IOE).

The event included the recitation of a poem that Xi wrote in 1990 in which he praised a provincial Communist party leader, an item that was included on the agenda in the last few days at the insistence of the Chinese embassy.

In a speech later, the president said that after watching a BBC programme on Chinese education he had realised that “the British have learned the virtues of strict discipline”, while the Chinese were learning the advantages of recreation. “Chinese children do not play enough. They should play more,” Xi said.

About 50 Chinese government supporters stood opposite the Knightsbridge hotel hosting the event, equipped with large red and gold flags and banners provided by the embassy. In a recurring theme of the state visit, the pro-Xi crowd far outnumbered small groups of protesters backing the Falun Gong movement and Tibetan independence.

The opening was also attended by Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, who said: “I’m very proud of the fact that I’m sometimes considered one of the long-term friends of China.” He said he regretted having learned only French at school because “when you learn another language you become worth two people”.

Xi and the prince formally opened the UK’s thousandth Confucius classroom in which Mandarin is taught. There are now 10,000 students learning the language in British primary and secondary schools, which Xi said made the UK a leader in Europe. The Confucius Institutes promote Mandarin language teaching.

Children from the Robin Hood primary school in Birmingham sang in Mandarin at the event, and a student from Lancaster University Confucius Institute, Cameron Patterson, recited Xi’s paean to Jiao Yulu, a celebrated party leader in Henan province who died in 1964.



The embassy-provided programme notes described Jiao as “a role model for civil servants with his hardworking, upright, incorruptible personality”. Xi said the poem was inspired when “literary thoughts surrounding the deceased upright man welled up in my heart”.

In his poem, Xi draws parallels between Jiao’s career and his own: “As I yearn for you one night after another/ Your heart and mine are cleansed together/ The road ahead remains hazy and narrow/ So let’s stay upright wherever we come and go/ In our respective local stints in office/ Determined are we to benefit the populace.”

In his speech, Xi praised the schoolchildren’s mastery of Mandarin, and Patterson for reciting the poem “better than I ever could”. He said the rapid expansion of Mandarin teaching in the UK would boost mutual understanding.

He quoted Confucius as saying: “To learn knowledge is better than to acquire knowledge but to love knowledge is better than both.”

The event also marked the launch of a scholarship scheme organised by the IOE and Peking University that will give British students of Mandarin the chance to spend their gap year in Beijing.

Prince Andrew’s close involvement in the Xi visit represents one of his highest-profile outings since a Florida judge ordered sex allegations against him to be struck from the record in a federal court case in April.

Buckingham Palace vehemently denied the allegations that a 17-year-old girl was forced to have sex with him. His long association with an American financier, Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, forced him to step down four years ago from his role as a jet-setting trade envoy.