From 21 to 22 December 2021, the Chinese Language Training and Capacity Building Workshop of ASEAN (Malaysia) was co-organised by Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB) and the ASEAN-China Centre (ACC). Local Chinese-speaking tour guides and other tourism practitioners from all over Malaysia attended the 2-day online training programme. Mr. Chen Dehai, Secretary-General of ACC, Dato' Hj Zainuddin, Director-General of MTPB addressed the opening session. Ms. Li Yaying, Deputy Director of Education, Culture and Tourism Division of ACC presided over the opening session.  

Secretary-General Chen Dehai noted that 2021 was a special and significant year for ASEAN-China relations. The leaders of both sides recently announced the establishment of of ASEAN-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which set a higher goal for the long-term development of the relations. Malaysia is one of the earliest approved destinations for Chinese self-paid tourist groups, and both countries have made new achievements in the fields of people-to-people exchanges and tourism cooperation. Human resources development remains one of the top priority areas for practical cooperation between ASEAN and China, especially between Malaysia and China. Such activities as the workshop serving the market demands will play an important role in enhancing local tourism capacity and revitalising tourism industry of the country concerned. 

Director-General Zainuddin mentioned that both Malaysia and China abound with cultural and natural resources, and enjoy time-honored bilateral exchanges and friendship. In recent years, the number of tourist visits between the two countries increased rapidly, which helped strengthen the friendly relations between the two countries. In 2019, more than 3.11 million Chinese tourists visited Malaysia, increasing 5.8% over 2018. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge losses to Malaysian and global tourism sector. Facing the new challenge, Malaysia tourism maintains its promotional campaigns in its major tourist source markets including China. By social media, such as Microblog (Weibo), Tik Tok or Wechat, the Chinese tourists can continue to experience Truly Asia. He hopes MTPB and ACC will have closer cooperation in the field of tourism promotion in the future. 

 Chinese Language Training for Chinese-Speaking Tour Guides of ASEAN is one of the major flagship projects of ACC. Since 2018, the training programme has been co-organised for quite a few sessions by ACC and its partners of tourism authorities of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. The courses of Chinese Language Training and Capacity Building Workshop of ASEAN (Malaysia) 2021 comprised Chinese cultural heritages, Chinese tourism market and digitising, tour guide service standards and communication techniques, which were widely welcomed by the Malaysian participants.