By Li Wei, DRC

2017-11-29

Education is a fundamental task with lasting importance. Since ancient times, China has attached great importance to education, and the Chinese society and ordinary families have, as always, honored the teacher and revered his teachings. By now, China boasts 512, 000 schools, 15. 78 million teachers and 265 million students with one of the best education level in the world. Facts show that China has successfully achieved the historical transformation from a country with a big population to a power with rich human resources, which has laid an important foundation for its sustainable and fast economic development. Education is not only one of the most important goals of modernization, but also the crucial foundation for its construction. Personnel are the primary resource for human progress while education is an undertaking for personnel cultivation. We need to focus on the all-round development of personnel and unfold strategic and forward-oriented plans. In the future, China will make great efforts to develop quality education and push ahead with a fair access to education; flesh out vocational education and its training system; accelerate the construction of a learning-oriented society and vigorously improve national quality; promote innovation education and enhance the innovative ideas and creative capacity of the whole society.

Education plays a decisive role for people’s present and future development. Today, education in the world is facing many problems to be solved, which have posed great challenges to cultural inheritance and people’s progress. Under such a landscape, all the countries should seize the opportunities brought about by the fast development of information and technology, deepen education reform, improve education quality, boost educational innovation, strengthen policy exchanges and knowledge sharing, promote the balanced development of education and equal access to education and implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN.

First, we should seize the opportunities brought about by information and technological development and promote the quality and level of education. Recent years have witnessed the fast development of information and technological development featured by the Internet, cloud computing, big data, Internet of things and artificial intelligence, which have exerted a profound impact on human society. In face of the deep integration of technological achievements including big data, the Internet and artificial intelligence with people’s life, we should deepen future-oriented education reform. We need to make use of the opportunities of information and technological development and actively establish an education system based on individualized networking, digitalization and smart technologies and in line with different national conditions and provide life-long education opportunities, so as to realize the individualized teaching in step with the long-desired appeals made by teaching workers, promote the sharing and collaboration of qualified education resources and greatly reduce the costs and lower the threshold of education, push forward the equal allocation of education resources, promote equal education opportunities for the people and propel education modernization driven by the development of information. Second, we should implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN so to realize an inclusive, equal and qualified education. To realize such a goal in the whole world, various countries should make joint effort and cooperate with each other. Developed countries and some of the newly-emerged economies should provide educational assistance to the developing countries, especially those least-developed countries in terms of personnel, fund, training, information and telecommunication technologies. With these, it will be possible that by the year of 2030, the goals of sustainable development will be realized, which include: each child will have an access to qualified education and pre-school education, free equal and qualified primary and secondary schooling, and equally share the affordable qualified education, vocational and higher education. Third, we should strengthen international exchanges and jointly push forward education development of the world people. Education is related with people’s future development and the common progress of mankind, which calls for the joint participation and extensive communication of governments of all countries, international organizations, social entities, enterprises, universities and colleges as well as think tanks. Efforts need to be made to build platforms for international exchanges and to utilize these platforms to share knowledge and summarize experience so as to promote the common development of mankind. We are ready to strengthen knowledge sharing with all countries in terms of education-related issues and contribute China’s wisdom and concepts through relevant platforms including China Center for International Knowledge on Development and China Development Research Foundation and make active contributions to the development of education undertakings of mankind and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN.