The British Inter-University China Centre (BICC) was the hub of a joint enterprise of three partner institutions, the universities of Bristol, Manchester and Oxford, and a premier teaching and research facility on China in the UK. The last of three phases of the project (phase 3), was hosted from February 2014- August 2016 at Manchester University in the Faculty of Arts and Cultures, under the Manchester directorship of Professor Yangwen Zheng. The Centre, as such, is no longer an active enterprise. These pages will no longer be updated, and will remain here as a document of the diverse range of activities of its researchers and students. Please note, that if you have any queries about these activities then we suggest that you direct them by email to the researchers named.

In its initial phase, BICC was funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, the Scottish Funding Council, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, as well as the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In 2006-2012 the centre oversaw the training of a cadre of new postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, as part of a programme of national capacity enhancement in the field of Chinese studies. Chinese language capability lay at the heart of the training programme, and the centre ran teaching programmes and provided opportunities for retooling in Chinese for students without the language. The aim was also to produce a body of original research, developed by all members of the BICC, which would then be disseminated both within the academic and wider communities through events, network building, and knowledge exchange initiatives. Our former students now hold posts at institutions across the world, and in a range of NGOs and businesses, contributing in their diverse ways to the essential dialogues that have only got more important in the years since the BICC was first established in 2006.

Yangwen Zheng, Robert Bickers, and Barend Ter Haar, directors BICC, 2014-16.