China is the future of the world, therefore Chinese students and the study of China is indispensable to any international school, commented a US university president in Beijing Saturday.

Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University of the United States, told Xinhua that "as young people from the United States and other countries have shown a stronger interest in China, Columbia University also hoped to expand cooperation with the Chinese counterparts."

To celebrate the 250th founding anniversary of the university, he said, he specially chose China as an important stop of his East Asia tour.

He said this year, Columbia University will join hands with Beijing Foreign Language Study University to launch a Business Chinese Program in Shanghai, which is aimed to help US students to have a business internship in Chinese companies.

Columbia University started the study of East Asia and Asia one century ago, becoming the first US university setting up courses of Asian study. Bollinger said his university has the largest library for East Asian study outside Asia, which keeps 750,000 volumes of books and 5,500 journals on Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages, etc.

Incomplete statistics show that currently about 40 percent of the international students and visiting scholars in Columbia University are from East Asia and Southeast Asia, among whom 600 to 1,000 are from China.

Bollinger said Columbia University attracts the most excellent brain in Asia, and also benefited from its close contact with its alumni all over Asia.

Bollinger said he has been amazed at the profound changes of China and the energy of the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. And this time, he once again found out that Chinese universities, holding an urgent need of building themselves into first-class universities, are actively seeking cooperation with foreign counterparts.

According to him, with the help of the governmental funds, US universities are good at turning scientific research results into practical use. Columbia University, now ranking the first for its scientific research programs among the US higher educational institutes, got 400 million US dollars of governmental funds annually.

"As far as I know, the Chinese government also encouraged universities to carry out scientific and technological innovation. Columbia is looking forward to new cooperation with Chinese universities in this field," said Bollinger.

(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2004)