China commits $9.6m to Costa Rica for academic, and technical cooperation agreements

On 6 December, 2012, the governments of Costa Rica and China signed four agreements covering cooperation in the areas of economic, academic, and technical issues.

Two of the agreements each total $4.8 million in cooperation (one being a grant, and the other being a loan with unspecified terms), and a third agreement calls for the training of employees responsible for operating the national stadium.

The fourth deal involves teaching Mandarin to Costa Ricans—specifically, China announced that it would send six teachers to teach at Costa Rica's Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje (INA) and cover all costs of expanding the Institute's Mandarin program (which has existed since 2008).

In the agreements, it is unclear how much money is coming from which Chinese agencies and where all of the money is going; only two of four cooperation agreements are detailed.

However, in November 2015, the INA and Costa Rica's Chinese Embassy co-hosted an event called "Acercándonos al Idioma Mandarín y a la Cultura China de la Mano con el INA" (ENG: "Growing Closer to the Mandarin Language and to the Chinese Culture Hand in Hand with the INA") to celebrate the launch of this program, showcase Costa Rican students' progress in learning Mandarin, and demonstrate the two countries' growing closeness.

Sources indicate that, as pledged in 2012, this was done using Chinese government funding and organized by volunteers sent by the Chinese government.