The conference on the establishment of the Center for Language and Economic Research, Shandong University and the Language and Economics symposium were held at the central campus of Shandong University onDecember 26, 2011. Vice Director of China National Language Committee & Director of Language and Information Management Department of the National Ministry of Education, Yuming Li, Former Secretary of Party Committee of Shandong University & standing member of Shandong Provincial Party Committee, Zhengchang Zhu, Former Assistant-Governor of Shandong Provincial Government & Director of Development and Reform Commission of Shandong Province, Yunliang Fei, and Liming Fan, Vice President of Shandong University all attended the conference and unveiling ceremony.

On the conference, Yuming Li and Liming Fan made speeches; Jianmin Wang, Director of the Personnel Department of Shandong University, read out the approval letter for establishing the Center for Language and Economic Research at Shandong University; and Dr. Weiguo Zhang was appointed as the director of the center. Jianlei Guo, deputy director of Shandong Provincial Education Department made a speech. After that, scholars had a fruitful discussion on topics of basic theories of Language and Economics and China language economy strategy, etc. Shaoan Huang, dean of the Center for Economic Research at Shandong University presided over the conference. Directors from the Department of Academic Research, The Publicity Department of University Party Committee, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, College of International Education attended the conference as well.

Language and Economics is a newly emerging and inter-disciplinary branch of Economics. The Center for Language and Economic Research, which will be working as a new disciplinary growing point and a research platform, was established based on the former the institute of Language and Economics (founded in 2004) affiliated to the Center for Economic Research. Shandong University started early in this field, and focused on the discipline construction and serving for the national language economy strategy. So far, the achievements on the theoretical and applied research as well as talents cultivation have drawn the attention from the academia and the relevant national administrative department. The Center for Economic Research at Shandong University has also initiated and organized the “China Language and Economics Forum”. The ongoing subject researches involve: the basic theory; economic analysis of international promotion of Chinese language; automatic processing of Chinese character; minority languages; bilingual teaching and its performance evaluation; contribution of language industry to economics and its estimation; national strategy for language economy.