Tsinghua University alumni gather in London for conference

China's Tsinghua University hosted its first European alumni conference in London on Saturday, in an effort to boost its brand overseas and attract more international students.

The conference, which was attended by around 400 Tsinghua alumni from across Europe, featured talks and discussions led by the university's leading alumni on topics including education, business, and technology.

Among alumni making keynote speeches were Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of the Chinese search engine Sogou, and Gu Xianfeng, a well-known computer science professor at the State University of New York. They shared with the audience the latest ideas and breakthroughs in their fields.

The conference was accompanied by a photo exhibition, which was intended to give perspective international students a glimpse into Tsinghua's diverse and interesting campus life. Academic learning, scientific research, and cultural activities were all featured in the exhibition.

The conference was hosted at a time when Tsinghua is growing its international influence, backed by solid research output, strong teaching quality, and a growing level of international engagement created through many partnerships with universities overseas.

Overall, Tsinghua University has joint teaching and student exchange partnerships with 280 universities from 50 countries. Notable partner universities include the University of Washington, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Politecnico di Milano.

Tsinghua's improving teaching and research quality, and its rising international engagement level have helped the university climb global league tables. The latest Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings placed Tsinghua 14th globally, while QS World University Rankings placed it 25th. Tsinghua was the highest-ranked Chinese university in both rankings.

Tsinghua was established in 1911 as a preparatory school for students that the Chinese government planned to send to study in the United States.

"As Tsinghua's global influence continuously strengthens, our alumni should feel encouraged to achieve more in our own respective fields," said Guo Yike, chairman of Tsinghua University's United Kingdom alumni association and a director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London. "This is particularly the case because more opportunities for our talented alumni are created by the increasingly close collaboration partnership between China and Europe."

Wang Yongli, minister counselor of the educational section at China's embassy in the UK, said Tsinghua's international expansion comes at a time when students around the world are keen to learn Mandarin and study in China.

This year, Mandarin displaced German for the first time to become the third most-popular A-level language exam among British high school students, following only French and Spanish.

Across the UK, about 160,000 students are currently learning Mandarin, and that number is set to grow, given that the British government has a goal of encouraging 400,000 students to learn Mandarin by 2020.