Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan, will move to China in September 2025 to begin a two-year graduate programme in Chinese philosophy. No details were announced as to how Hakobyan plans to cover her expenses in China.
Hakobyan will be pursuing a master’s degree at Beijing Normal University, where her programme’s language of instruction will be English, offering her a ‘comprehensive study of Chinese philosophical schools, ethics, and political theory’, according to the announcement made by the My Step Foundation which she runs.
The news that Hakobyan would continue her education came months after she launched her Learning is Trendy education programme in November 2024. According to her foundation, during the programme’s events, Hakobyan shared her impressions from a visit to China — observing ‘how people live in that powerful country’ — which led her to reflect that ‘the root of many of our problems lies in education’.
Hakobyan’s trip reportedly also inspired her to launch her education programme and to promote life-long learning.
The My Step Foundation, which is named after and linked with her husband’s political faction, praised Hakobyan’s decision to pursue a graduate degree, saying she ‘serves as an example’. It also said that her education in China would strengthen ‘the longstanding friendship between Armenia and China’ and could ‘serve as a platform for dialogue’ for fostering cultural exchange and cooperation.
In April, China appointed a new Ambassador to Armenia, Li Xinwei, who came after a nine-month vacancy, CivilNet reported.
On 12 May, during his meeting with Xinwei, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Armenia and China were undergoing ‘a significant phase in the development of relations, both in terms of high-level political dialogue and cooperation in the economic and other sectors’.
Supporting those who seek to ‘resume their education’
Alongside Hakobyan, the statement also featured another middle-aged woman, Marine Hakobyan — the mother of soldier Zhora Yesayan, who was killed during the Four-Day War in April 2016.
In a similar fashion to Hakobyan, she purportedly planned to resume her education in Armenia, pursuing a degree in elementary education and methodology.
My Step called her case an ‘inspiring outcome’ of its education programme, as Marine Hakobyan had reportedly come to the decision after attending the programme’s meetings, and was ‘inspired by Anna Hakobyan’s call for self-education and personal growth’. They also pledged to support her ‘throughout her entire journey — covering all educational expenses and assisting her with entrance exam preparation and the admission process’.
The Foundation also announced they plan to provide financial support and advice to support people to resume their incomplete studies.
However the Foundation did not provide any information on how Pashinyan’s wife’s education fees in Beijing would be covered, despite outrage recently erupting in Armenia due to the lack of transparency regarding its programmes and events.
The My Step Foundation’s project, Learning is Trendy, a series of talks in the vein of Ted Talks, came under fire in early June after it was revealed that the funding for lectures given by Pashinyan — who frequently appears as a guest speaker — was sourced from the state budget.
Critics of the government have suggested that Pashinyan and Hakobyan used the programme as part of a pre-election strategy ahead of the June 2026 parliamentary elections in Armenia.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
