Recently, in the 2025 "Understanding China" Person of the Year Selection hosted by the China Scholarship Council, Luigi Luk I Fernandes, a Belgian international student at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, won the 2025 "Understanding China" Person of the Year — "Communication Envoy" title for his outstanding performance in cross-cultural communication and dissemination.
Luigi is an ordinary advanced student at the School of International Education. In 2023, he was awarded the Chinese Government Scholarship to come to China to study Chinese. Since enrollment, he has not only been diligent and progressive in his studies but also actively engaged in Chinese cultural experiences and social observations. During his time at the university, he has visited more than 20 Chinese cities in his spare time, recording real and vivid images of China with his camera and writing, and sharing his experiences and feelings through social media platforms such as Bilibili, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and YouTube. Currently, his follower count has exceeded 100,000. In 2024, Luigi participated in the "My Happy Life in Chengdu" short video contest for foreigners hosted by the Foreign Affairs Office of the Chengdu Municipal People's Government and won the second prize. He records the bits and pieces of his life in China from his unique perspective, sharing the beauty of China as seen by foreigners, and has become an outstanding youth representative who tells good Chinese stories and promotes people-to-people exchanges between China and foreign countries. The "Understanding China" series of activities has added the "Understanding China" Person of the Year Selection since 2024.
In this year's selection, a total of 20 international students from four categories across the country were named Persons of the Year, among whom 4 were awarded the "Communication Envoy" title. At the same time, the university was approved this year to have 1 "Understanding China" practice base and 2 "Understanding China" social practice and cultural experience activities, both of which were rated as Grade A. Taking this as an opportunity, the university will continue to support more international students to participate in various cultural experience and social practice activities, and cultivate more international students who know China well and are friendly to China with a global vision and Chinese feelings.
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)
Located in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, it is a national key university directly under the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, a university jointly built by the Ministry of Education and Sichuan Province, and a university of the national "Double First-Class" initiative, "211 Project", and "985 Project Advantageous Discipline Innovation Platform".
The history of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics can be traced back to Guanghua University, which was founded in Shanghai in 1925, and later established a branch in Chengdu in 1938. After the departmental adjustment from 1952 to 1953, the university absorbed the finance and economics departments of 17 colleges and universities in the southwest region, forming Sichuan Institute of Finance and Economics. After several changes, it restored its original name in 1978, was placed under the administration of the People's Bank of China in 1979, was finally renamed Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in 1985, and came under the management of the Ministry of Education after 2000. In 1997, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics became a key construction university of the national "211 Project"; in 2011, it became a construction university of the national "985 Project Advantageous Discipline Innovation Platform"; and in 2017, it became a national "Double First-Class" construction university. Southwestern University of Finance and Economics is one of the first batch of "Innovation Practice Bases for Cultivating High-level International Talents" and one of the first batch of "Quality Certification for International Students in China" pilot institutions in Sichuan. The "Africa Research Center" and "Bay of Bengal Countries Research Center" have been approved as national and regional research centers filed with the Ministry of Education.
