In recent years, Chinese universities and foreign universities have been communicating more frequently and Chinese key universities have been internationalized at a higher level. It’s obvious that the premise of creating a first-class university is to improve the level of internationalization of the university. So how can we go faster and better in the process of internationalization? Xiaohong Li, the president of Wuhan University, who is paying an academic visit in Canada, emphasizes three points: the complimentary cooperation, the attention to cultural differences and the government support.
Late on October 31st, just before the end of his journey, Xiaohong Li who had just finished his academic tour at the Duke University in the US, the Ottawa University and the University of British Columbia in Canada, accepted an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency reporters in Vancouver. He said that this visit moved him deeply and he had learnt a great deal from his visit.
“It is the attention we pay to the communication methods that contributes to the substantive achievements we accomplished during the visit. This time I went abroad with college deans, who have experience in studying or working abroad and therefore they can communicate without barriers and don’t need a translator, which enables an immediate connection and makes it easy for us to bond closely. In addition, they understand the background of the western culture so we can reach with ease a cooperation agreement in academic communication, joint education and some other aspects.” said Li.
Furthermore,Li thinks it’s important to lay emphasis on the cultural differences and respect the concept of administration of each other. In the past, there were some obstacles in the cooperation between the Chinese and foreign universities, which happened mostly due to a less thorough communication. Besides, some Chinese Universities are eager to see achievements in the process of international cooperation, while western universities attach more attention to establishing long-term cooperation and hope to make use of these outstanding achievements to set up a brand based on this cooperation. Therefore, Li paid special attention to the cultural differences of the two sides in establishing cooperation paths with the foreign universities, in their efforts to understand and adapt to each other's education systems and educational philosophies, while striving to establish a long-term and in-depth cooperation.
55-year old Xiaogong Li had been in America and Australia as a visiting professor. He is an expert in water jet breaking coal technology and its application in mine safety and environment engineering. He has a wealth of international experience and international vision. Li said now that the Chinese national strength has been enhanced, academic achievements are on a rising trend, the desire for academic exchanges and cooperation between famous foreign universities and China is also growing stronger. "So, we not only want to cherish this rare opportunity, but we need to seize the opportunity and equally speed up the pace of internationalization of Wuhan University."
He added that Chinese government had spared no efforts to support the internationalization of the national universities and this support is already reflected by great achievements. However, in the aspect of inviting the talents abroad to come and work in China and encouraging academic talents to go abroad, there are still much to be done.
When talking about the measures for the internationalization of Wuhan University, Li said that Wuhan University held the foreign academic week annually, organized exchanges between experts and professors from overseas and their Chinese counterparts and thus expanded its influence. In addition, the University encourages teachers to conduct international exchanges. 2/3 of the deans of the 36 colleges have international experience or overseas academic background. They have foreign management experience and rich resources of international cooperation, not only the skills and the experience acquired abroad, which plays an important role in promoting the internationalization of Wuhan University.
So far, WHU has ranked top 400 among world-famous universities. Our goal is to rank top 200 in 2020 and make WHU worthy of the name ‘world first-class university’.” Xiaohong Li said confidently.
(Source: Xinhua Net, Translated by Aoqi Li, edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
