This message was conveyed by a number of Chinese university presidents attending the Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum in Beijing, which is due to finish on Wednesday.

Tsinghua University, dubbed "China's Massachusetts Institute of Technology", has established dozens of joint labs and training centers with overseas institutes, signing contracts with prestigious foreign universities and companies valued at over 100 million yuan (about US$12.1 million) annually.

"We have too many academic exchange programs for me to name individually," said Wang Dazhong, president of Tsinghua University.

"To keep our disciplines at an international level and even to make breakthroughs, we must keep in close contact with our foreign counterparts to have access to new developments in various fields," he added.

Since China adopted its reform and opening-up policy, Chinese universities have written a new chapter in international academic exchanges and cooperation.

This is not just the privilege of top-class institutions like Peking and Tsinghua universities. According to the brochures of universities at the Forum, almost all boast of international exchanges.

Such exchanges at the Central Conservatory of Music account for 40 percent of all the Ministry of Culture international exchange activities, its president Wang Cizhao declared.

"Every day, our professors or students are studying or staging performances abroad. At the same time, we are lucky to have well-known foreign musicians giving lectures here," he said, noting that such activities have greatly "widened our horizons since music is universal."

From 1978 to the end of 2001, as many as 460,000 Chinese students studied abroad. Of those, 140,000 came back. At present China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of students learning abroad, with 25,000 students receiving education abroad annually.

In the meantime, a total of 300,000 overseas students have pursued their education in China, which employs 15,000 foreign experts in academic institutes each year.

Shanghai International Study University (SISU), the most influential foreign language university in southern China, employs more than 30 foreign teachers and sends nearly 100 teachers abroad each year. Several hundred overseas students are enrolled by the university each year.

"We are not merely content with personnel and academic exchanges with overseas universities. More than that, we have sought to cooperate with universities in Germany, France and some Commonwealth countries in running schools and jointly conferring diplomas," said SISU President Dai Weidong.

In fact, establishing joint teaching programs with overseas institutes is fashionable in China. Since China's World Trade Organization entry, many overseas institutions have keenly eyed the Chinese education market.

Another trend is to use imported teaching methods and textbook sand teach in English. Meanwhile, how to manage the universities inline with international rules was a topic heatedly discussed by university presidents.

"The forum itself is a good international exchange for Chinese universities. Through the exchange of ideas with the presidents of overseas prestigious universities, we have learned a great deal of new concepts and experiences from our foreign counterparts," Dai said.

International exchanges and cooperation had widened the horizons of Chinese universities and upgraded their international competitiveness and academic research level, many university presidents said.

Marvin W.Peterson, a professor from the University of Michigan, said it was better to upgrade personnel and academic exchanges to the level of "association to association" and even to that of "government to government".

(Xinhua News Agency July 31, 2002)