Two officials of the Chinese Ministry of Education have urged the Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI) to play its part in bringing together China and the Portuguese-speaking world, MPI said on Thursday.

The institute issued a written statement quoting Ministry of Education Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs Office Executive Deputy Director Xu Yongji as calling for MPI to improve its teaching and the quality of the graduates it turns out.

The MPI statement quotes Ministry of Education Department of College and University Students Deputy Director-General Li Qiang as calling for the institute to do more scientific research with practical applications.

The officials were speaking during a visit to the MPI Engineering Research Centre of Applied Technology on Machine Translation and Artificial Intelligence, a joint endeavour by MPI and the Ministry of Education inaugurated in 2019, the institute says.