Liu Yandong,
State Councilor, the People’s Republic of China
May 2, 2010, Nanjing

Dear Presidents and Entrepreneurs,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
Distinguished Guests,

In this beautiful season, with trees coming back to life and spring flowers blossoming, we are delighted to gather in Nanjing, the capital of six dynasties in my nation’s imperial past. The night before last, Expo 2010 was unveiled in pomp and pageantry in Shanghai. Today, the Fourth Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum opens in Nanjing, where presidents of world-renowned universities are joined by entrepreneurs and diplomats from across the world. Your precious presence, indeed, makes this assembly hall shine in splendor! Please allow me, on behalf of the Chinese government, extend our warm congratulations on the convocation of this forum, and convey our warmest welcome and sincerest wishes to all of you, our distinguished guests from afar.

The Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum is a venue for high-echelon dialogues on university spirit and innovative ideas; it is also an interactive platform where wisdom is shared and consensuses earnestly sought. This forum, having taken place previously on three occasions since 2002, provides a good opportunity for China to draw on the world’s advanced experience in higher education, and opens a window through which our fellow international educators can observe and understand China and its higher education at close quarters.

The theme of the currant forum, “Enhancing quality of university education”, is meant to promote global prosperity and development in the aftermath of the recent international monetary crisis. In the next few days, we shall put our heads together for a dialogue on the cultivation of innovative talents, on the building of eco-friendly university campuses, on cooperation between universities and businesses, and on other major topics concerning the reform and development of higher education in the contemporary world. Such a dialogue will mean a great deal for rallying universities and businesses in coping with challenges, improving people’s wellbeing, ushering in a promising future, and better fulfilling our historical mission and honoring our social obligations to human progress.

Ladies and Gentlemen!
The world today is in the thick of major development, transformation and readjustments. The deep-going pace of economic globalization has fused the destinies of the people of all countries in a kith and kin relationship. Humanity has achieved unprecedented prosperity and civilization, but at the same time, we are confronted with unforeseen risks and challenges, which find expression in a series of global problems in climatic changes, environmental protection, grain safety, the prevention and treatment of diseases, major disasters, public security and crucial economic and monetary issues.

eflecting on the past, every nation today is endeavoring to grasp the future and create opportunities while rising to the challenges. As the new millennium enters its second decade, monumental changes are brewing in the mode of production and lifestyles of the human society. We are in urgent need of new ideas, wisdoms, methods, science and technology, but more than anything else, we need to close our ranks and concert our efforts so that we can create a promising future for the human society.

China is a fast growing rising economy that embraces one fifth of the global population, and its all-round effort to build up an affluent society is now in a critical stage. Over the last 60 or so years, New China has increased its economic aggregates by 77-fold, its urban residents’ income by 150-fold, its rural residents’ earnings by 100-folds, and its per-capita life expectancy from 35 to 73 years. Despite all these solid facts, China today remains a developing country whose 1.3 billion people are pursuing industrialization and urbanization on a scale unmatched in world history. Our road of development has been fraught with stern challenges, including resource and environmental constraints, low-quality economic growth, and complex social conflicts that are typical of a society in transition. New driving forces and new sources of growth are badly needed in this country in order to achieve all-round, coordinated and sustainable socioeconomic development. That is why the Chinese government has initiated the concept of placing human beings before anything else, adopted a concept of scientific development, and set transforming the mode of development as its overriding strategy. We advocate innovative development, rely on progress in science and technology to cultivate new and strategic industries and revamp traditional industries, and follow the road of renovating the incentives and promoting growth from within the economy. We advocate eco-friendly development, save energy, reduce waste discharge, advance low-carbon development, and strive to build a society that is resource-economical and conservation-conscious. We advocate harmonious development, improve people’s livelihood in a down-to-earth way, promote democracy and the rule of law, safeguard social equity and justice, and furnish a better environment for the all-round development of every citizen. We champion peaceful development, seek to contribute more to the world and bring more opportunities to it through our own development. We collaborate with other nations on an equal and mutually beneficial footing and for an all-win situation, and join them in building a congenial world of lasting peace and common prosperity. Ours is a road of scientific development with a high sense of responsibility for China itself and for the future of the world as well.

Ladies and Gentlemen!
Education is the most fundamental of all undertakings for a nation’s rejuvenation and development. Just as a Chinese wise man of yore put it, “Respecting education and persuading people to learn are fundamental to the building of a nation; promoting virtue and nurturing talent are foremost tasks of government.” China’s fast growth over the last 30 or so years would not have happened without the support of education. China’s future hinges on talents, and the basis of its development rests with education. That is why we have adopted a strategy to rejuvenate the nation through science and education, and always put a premium on education development. We are in the possession of the world’s largest education system with 260 million students; free nine-year compulsory education has become the norm across the land; the gross attendance rate of higher education has risen from 1% three decades ago to 24% today; fiscal funding for education has registered an average annual growth rate of 19% over the last decade. It is worth noting that last year, despite a slowdown in the fiscal revenue’s growth rate in the aftermath of the international monetary crisis, our government increased its education funding by 25%, including 80 billion yuan that was spent to raise the salaries of 10 million primary and middle school teachers.

In the meantime, the nation has worked out the State Outline ----Program for Medium Long-Term Education Reform and Development. Among other things, this blueprint for education development in the 2010-2020 period calls for universalizing education from preschool to senior middle school, delivering education equally to every one, offering quality education in richer and more varied ways, furnishing an integral framework for lifelong education, better adapt education to the requirements of socioeconomic development and of comprehensive human development, and letting our people live in more bliss and with dignity.

The supreme hall of education, the university is a platform for grooming innovative talents, a cradle for new knowledge, new ideas and new science and technology, and a spiritual home for the survival and development of humanity. In the face of the new tendency in global socioeconomic development, of the new tasks for the Chinese modernization drive, and of the new trend in which diverse civilizations seek to live in harmony, our universities haven taken it upon themselves an unprecedented mission that is at once noble and historical. In the next ten years we shall strive to develop world-caliber modern higher education in a distinctly Chinese way; we shall promote innovation in our school-running concept, mode of education and institutional mechanisms; optimize the structure and increase investment to build vast contingents of top-notch teachers; and we shall enable our universities’ three major functions -- talent cultivation, scientific research and service -- to promote and supplement each other, and boost education quality in an all-round way.

Firstly, we shall give further precedence to universities’ education function, and pool competent talents to cultivate new national strengths by way of opening up and cooperation.

As the most critical challenge confronting universities in the contemporary world, raising education quality is not only the mainstream in higher education development across the world in the 21st-century, but also the central task for China’s higher education development.

We shall spare no effort to overhaul the traditional mode and system of evaluation by attaching more importance, firstly, to innovation, which means to enhance our students’ innovative spirit, practical ability and social sense of responsibility; secondly, to comprehensiveness, which means to promote all-round student development and enable them to better adapt themselves to future social changes; thirdly, to magnanimity, which means to foster, in our students, a global vision and high-minded respect for diverse cultures; fourthly, to selectivity, which means to provide our students with more flexible and diverse learning opportunities.

We shall accumulate quality education resources through opening up and cooperation to vastly improve the quality in university education. We shall put forward a completely new curriculum that combines special and general learning and encompasses subjects in both liberal arts and sciences, so as to make a more comprehensive knowledge structure available to our students.

We shall create new mechanisms by which universities can teach in collaboration with research institutes, industries and enterprises, and by which students can improve their fieldwork capabilities by taking part in research and construction projects.

We shall also explore new patterns of cooperation between Chinese and foreign universities in grooming talents, recruit outstanding teachers from abroad, expand exchanges of students with other nations, and encourage our universities and their foreign counterparts to supplement and benefit each other in teaching and learning.

Secondly, we shall further intensify universities’ function in scientific research and open up new fields of scientific progress by way of cooperation and mutual sharing of resources.

The world today is on the eve of a new revolution in science and technology, and ushering in an epoch of intensive innovation and industrial revitalization. Interdisciplinary integration and cooperation across fields and national boundaries are fast catching on in scientific research. China has shifted its economic restructuring strategy to development of new energy sources, information networking, biopharmacology, advanced manufacturing, and other rising industries of strategic importance, and our universities have a major role to play in renovating crucial basic theories and lifting technological bottlenecks on the chain of economic development.

In rising up to major global challenges, China encourages its universities to step up researches in economics and finance, history, culture, democracy, the rule of law, social development and other fields of humanities and social sciences. The nation provides intellectual support on the causes to respect diverse civilizations, promote trans-cultural exchanges, study different modes of development, and foster a sensible framework of international politics and a new economic order.
We encourage our universities to follow the inherent laws governing scientific research and to let go of themselves in exploring into unvisited territories.

We step up a pattern in which universities, research institutes and enterprises can reach out to each other, promote the sharing of scientific and technological resources, and raise the efficiency and level in scientific researches.
We cultivate teams for interdisciplinary teaching and researches, encourage interaction between disciplines, and speed up the incubation of new sources of disciplinary growth.

We encourage nations and universities to collaborate in various forms, including building joint laboratories, research and development centers and other innovative platforms that help tap innovative potentials and allow research results to multiple.

Thirdly, we shall further extend our universities’ function in social service and encourage them to play a leadership role in opening up new vistas for progress in civilization.

A university can let its value shine through, truly put itself at society’s service, and become a leader only when it can interact intimately with society. Only by feeding its research and innovation results back to society can a university’s functions and achievements be embodied.

We maintain that universities must be extensively involved in popularizing science, disseminating advanced culture, and raising public attainments in science and humanities, and that they must also work to become trend-setters for civilization and social mores.

We encourage every university to foster a distinctively innovative culture and turn it into a rich soil for the growth of outstanding talents and inventions.

We encourage university students to take the initiative into their own hands in regional socioeconomic development, and we set great store by the roles of brain banks and think tanks.

Today, we are happy to see many far-sighted entrepreneurs participate in this forum to show their ardent desire for university-enterprise collaboration. We believe that production, scholarship, research and application should be closely combined; we go all out to speed up the conversion of university research results into real productivity; and we encourage universities to help enterprises upgrade their technology and management and urge enterprises to support universities in raising their school-running level. These are important ways for universities to serve society and for enterprises to honor their social responsibilities.

As major carriers of our nation’s cultural heritage, universities should also consciously perform their function in promoting exchanges in humanities. Such exchanges pave the way for people-to-people, heart-to-heart communication, and are therefore fundamental, pioneering, extensive and sustainable. Universities should pioneer in such exchanges and make still greater contributions to the diversity, harmony and coexistence of civilizations. Only when more and more people come to respect and enjoy each other’s cultures can they overcome differences in social system, ideology and mode of development and see their wish for a harmonious world come true.

Ladies and Gentlemen!
We are right in the Age of the Internet, but virtual space cannot replace candid face-to-face exchanges, and high-definition television cannot replace a real-life winsome smile. The fact that university presidents and entrepreneurs of different nations, faiths and cultural backgrounds can come together to inspire each other, seek consensuses, and promote innovation will have an extensive and sustained impact on education development -- an impact that will also extend to society as well.

All those present today are outstanding leaders in higher education and the business world. As the old saying goes, “There are always other hills whose stones are good for working jade” – meaning that the advice from someone else may help overcome one’s own weaknesses. It is therefore my sincere hope that we shall work hand in hand to elevate and enrich this forum and turn it into an interactive platform for exchanging ideas and sharing wisdom, an open platform for pragmatic cooperation and common development, a friendship platform for enhancing communication and mutual trust, and a high-end platform that towers over the frontiers and puts its name on the world map. It is my belief that with our concerted efforts, we shall be able to lead higher education to a new height of development and contribute our wisdom and strength to world peace and the progressive cause of humanity.

Finally, let me wish the Fourth Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum a resounding success.