ccording to China's Ministry of Education, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) will start to enroll students in four new bachelor’s degree programs of less commonly taught languages in 2017 and 2018, including Uzbek, Czech, Polish and Kazakh.

In addition to the new language programs, the number of SISU’s bachelor’s degree programs has risen to 44 so far, resulting in a more balanced educational structure.

Currently, SISU offer courses in 32 modern languages including English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Persian, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Turkish, Hindi, Hungarian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Polish, Czech, Urdu, Malay, Swahili, Javanese, Pashto and Chinese.

Latin, Ancient Greek, Old English, Esperanto, and other classical and constructed languages are also taught at SISU.

In the University Development Plan (2016-2020), SISU’s distinctive strength in cultural and area studies will be further enhanced with the number of language-related degree programs increasing to serve for China’s national diplomatic strategies.

It is worth noting that all of the four newly-established programs focus on the languages used by the "Belt and Road" countries.

Uzbek (Oʻzbekcha) is the official language of the Republic of Uzbekistan and ranks among the world’s most time-honored language. It belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic languages of Altaic language family and has over 26 million native speakers.

Kazakh (Қазақша) is the official language of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kazakh, the language of Kazakhstan with about 17.4 million speakers all over the world, belongs to the Turkic languages of Altaic language family.

Polish (Polski) is the official language of the Republic of Poland. With a population of about 48 million, Polish is the largest branch of West Slavic languages, a subdivision of the Slavic languages of the Indo-European language family.

Czech (Čeština) is the official language of the Czech Republic and is the Czech–Slovak branch of West Slavic sub-family of the Slavic languages of the Indo-European language family which is spoken by about 11 million people.