Chinese and British university heads urge further collaboration

Chinese and British universities can realize win-win benefits through further collaboration in joint research, student exchanges, and regular expertise-sharing dialogue, university heads said as they gathered in Oxford for an education conference on Saturday.

They said such collaboration would be timely, given that Chinese universities are internationalizing quickly, at a time when British universities are strengthening global links amid uncertainty surrounding Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union.

“The complementary characteristics of British and Chinese universities make us ideal partners for collaboration, to cultivate the next generation of globally minded talents,” said Zhou Zuoyu, vice-president of Beijing Normal University. “British universities, being some of the oldest in the world, enjoy the benefit of tradition, reputation, and excellence. On the other hand, Chinese universities are fast-developing and our research activities tend to respond faster to industry demand. Both sets of characteristics are important in determining universities’ impact in society.”

The conference was the second UK-China University Presidents’ Roundtable and attracted dozens of leaders from top universities. Participants talked about subjects including universities’ social responsibility, universities’ international development trends, and joint research collaboration.

The roundtable was initiated and hosted by the University of Oxford’s Regent’s Park College and drew delegates from institutions including the University of Oxford, University of York, University of Edinburgh, Nanjing University, Xiamen University, and Beijing Normal University.

In recent years, bilateral education links have grown significantly. Bilateral academic research has soared since 2014, when the two governments jointly committed more than 200 million pounds ($267 million) to support research partnerships.

Mark Goodwin, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter, said international collaboration can be a significant factor in addressing many of today’s pressing global issues.

In recent years, Chinese universities have become increasingly competitive in terms of the quality of their teaching and research, which has been reflected in their rise up international rankings tables.

In the latest Times Higher Education university ranking table, Tsinghua University and Peking University were ranked 14th and 17th respectively, a significant improvement compared to two years ago, when Tsinghua was 18th. It was the first time that a Chinese university had made it into the top 20.

Goodwin said the improvement in the strength of Chinese universities is clear to see.

“I think Chinese universities’ teaching quality is improving very quickly, the quality of research is becoming noticeably stronger,” he said. “The quality of students we are receiving is also getting stronger.”

Chinese students are, by far, the largest population of international students in the United Kingdom, comprising almost one-third of non-EU students in the 2016-17 academic year.

Meanwhile, more than 397,000 international students studied in China in 2015, which was double the number from 10 years earlier.

Goodwin said he would like to see more British students studying in China.

“We would like to encourage them to be more entrepreneurial and more globally minded,” he said. “China will be a strong power and a strong economy in the future, it is important that UK students understand that.”