Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) representatives recently attended the 2025 China Annual Conference & Expo for International Education (CACIE) in Beijing, where New Zealand was the ‘Country of Honour’ for this year’s event.
Michelle Zhao, SIT International Marketing Manager, and Mandy Su, International Support Officer, attended the four-day event (29 October -1 November), which is one of the largest international education events in the Asia-Pacific region, attracting over 4,500 policymakers, key influencers, professionals and practitioners from more than 60 countries and regions around the world. They attended another one-day agent seminar on November 3rd with Education New Zealand (ENZ) as well.
Ms Zhao said New Zealand had last been Country of Honour in 2015 - each year, a country is chosen to be the ‘honouring country’ to showcase their education offerings, culture and more - so it was an important year to attend, “as SIT will proudly return as an independent tertiary provider led by the South, for the South”.
During the four days at CACIE, the SIT duo had a full schedule with numerous events: the B2B networking session - for New Zealand institutions to meet with Chinese universities or partners to seek further collaborations; opening reception; Country of Honour night and opening of the New Zealand pavilion. “At the B2B session we met a few universities who are interested in working with SIT, and we also reconnected with staff from SIT partner university, HUE.”
Ms Zhao remarked Dr Shane Reti, Minister for Universities, Minister for Pacific Peoples, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, and Minister of Statistics, visited the SIT booth and spoke with them, “showing the strong support from the Government to our sector and this event”.
“There is definitely great potential for future collaborations, and you can see both countries are very keen to work with each other; the governments are supporting this too,” Ms Zhao stated.
Ms Zhao appreciated SIT management’s support for the event; having two representatives there made a big difference. “It was so busy sometimes we almost needed three staff members. Overall, it was a productive event.”