On the morning of 20 December 2021, the Awarding Ceremony of the 2021 ASEAN-China “Learning about the Ocean” Student Film Competition was successfully held. The event was hosted by Tianjin University (TJU) and supported by the ASEAN-China Centre (ACC). Prof. Pan Delu, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Director of the Academic Committee of the ASEAN-China Smart Ocean Center (ACSOC), Prof. Tan Xin, Vice President of TJU, and Mr. Yaya Sutarya, Education and Culture Attaché of the Embassy of Indonesia in China, attended and addressed the awarding ceremony online or offline. ACC representatives attended the event online.

Prof. Pan Delu stated that, established in 2017, ACSOC has become a community of smart ocean education for educational, scientific and technological cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges. It has provided a high-level platform for international and coordinated development of scientific research cooperation and talent exchange of ASEAN-China marine-related technologies. He hoped that this film competition can become a bridge for youth exchanges and encourage more people to care about and understand the ocean.

Mr. Yaya Sutarya hoped that the youth can take this competition as an opportunity to jointly promote the sound development of marine science and marine environmental protection, and make further contributions to a closer ASEAN-China community with a shared future.

With the theme of “Marine Environmental Protection”, the competition covers hot topics such as carbon neutrality, marine management, ecological restoration and marine culture. It attracted students from 41 universities in 6 countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China.