The universities of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Chinese central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBC), established a partnership in 2002. In October 2020, the two universities decided that this partnership should continue until 2023. The new cooperation agreement was signed by Tian Xuan, Associate Dean at the PBC School of Finance, a faculty at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Rector of the Bundesbank’s University of Applied Sciences in Hachenburg, Erich Keller.

Cooperation activities include the annual student exchange between the two universities: As part of an “International Week”, 20 Master’s students from the PBC School of Finance join lectures in Hachenburg, which are attended by a total of around 50 students. Two months later, 10 Hachenburg students spend two weeks at a Summer School at Tsinghua University in Beijing, involving around 100 participants.

Joint lecture series

For a number of years now, lecturers at the Bundesbank’s University of Applied Sciences have also been holding a three-week “Central bank administration course” for Chinese students, which provides a detailed insight into the structure of the European System of Central Banks. This year, Lilli Zimmermann’s lectures focused on the monetary policy of the European Central Bank, while Oliver Kruse looked at issues relating to banking supervision, and Erich Keller concentrated on the measures taken in the wake of the financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Owing to the pandemic, the October 2020 course was not held in person in Beijing but streamed online.

On the goodbye photo at the end of the lecture series, the Chinese students made the “finger hearts” popular in Chinese culture, feedback which fittingly captured the essence of the entire cooperation activities between the two universities since they began 2002: both sides see great benefit in the exchange programmes, in particular. Erich Keller commented that, for both universities, the cooperation in these programmes quite literally comes from the heart.