The Confucius Institute is a partnership with Nankai University supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education Office for Chinese Language (Hanban). It builds on long-standing research collaborations between the two universities and is strongly founded on research on China across the University of Glasgow in the social sciences, arts, and business, in particular through the activities of the Scottish Centre for Chinese Social Science Research. The Centre was formally opened on 4 October 2011 by Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond MSP.