The opening ceremony of the 2022 National Lifelong Learning Week was held on 30 Nov. 2022. It was the 18th Lifelong Learning Week organised by the Ministry of Education since 2005, with the theme of "Studying and Implementing the Spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress and Pursuing Lifelong Learning to Usher in the Future".

The week was hosted by the Department of Vocational and Adult Education, the MOE, the Secretariat of the National Commission of the People's Republic of China for UNESCO, and the China Adult Education Association (CAEA), and organised by the Hunan Education Bureau, the Changsha Municipal People's Government, the Open University of China (OUC), the Changsha Education Bureau, and Changsha Radio and TV University.

The opening ceremony of this year's week was held via both recorded and live video. Chen Ziji, director general of the Department of Vocational and Adult Education of the Ministry of Education, and Gao Wenbing, chairman of the CAEA, delivered speeches via video link. The OUC, as a co-organiser, set up a sub-venue, and its vice president, and director of the Community Education Research and Training Centre of the Ministry of Education, Ju Chuanjin, as well as OUC deputy Party Secretary Liu Chen and vice president Fan Xianrui, attended the opening ceremony. Nearly 600 teaching staff at the OUC headquarters watched online.

In the opening ceremony, the OUC showed a video of its latest achievements promoting lifelong learning for all via information technology: 485 innovation projects, 913 featured courses, 383 community education “Competent Teacher” featured courses, 123 high-quality work cases, 199 high-quality education and training projects, and 399 high-quality course resources in the "Helping Older Adults Live a ‘Smart Life’" campaign. The OUC lifelong-education platform delivers diverse high-quality learning resources open to the public, and a special section of the "10,000 Open Courses in Community Education and Education of Older Adults" was recently launched.

All of these will be shared via platforms such as official accounts and media. The OUC has been implementing and promoting the concept of lifelong learning on the basis of information technology.

Written by Du Ruo, Cui Keli, and Xie Laiyi; photos by Zhang Tonghe, OUC