Hunan to Strengthen Cooperation with Top Universities

　　Hunan Province entered into province-university strategic cooperation agreements with Tsinghua University (THU) and Peking University respectively on March 11, 2017.

　　Secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and Director of the Standing Committee of the Hunan Provincial People’s Congress Du Jiahao, and Deputy Secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and Governor of Hunan Province Xu Dazhe, on behalf of the Hunan Provincial People’s Government, signed the agreements. THU President and also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) Qiu Yong, Secretary of the CPC THU Committee Chen Xu, Secretary of the CPC Peking University Committee Hao Ping, and Peking University President Lin Jianhua, attended the signing ceremony.

　　Secretary Du, on behalf of Hunan Government, appreciated the two top universities’ supports to Hunan’s development in terms of education, scientific and technological innovation, and personnel training. He added that Hunan, a major province in both population, and research and education, put forward the strategies of innovation-oriented development and the rise of Hunan via opening up last year. Priorities have been given to inspiring technical and cultural innovation, including establishing innovation bases, and setting regional innovation pilots, so as to make Hunan a powerful province in research and education. State-of-the-art innovation resources and elements of such top universities as THU and Peking University are desiderated, to attract talents and create a new development pattern in Hunan.

　　Du noted that the two universities, both leaders of Chinese higher education, were expected to jointly push province-university cooperation, based on complementary advantages, to reach win-win results. Hunan has been establishing an open and high-level university zone around Yuelu Mountain. Both faculties and students of THU and Peking University, as well as enterprises, are welcome to start business here.

　　According the agreements, Hunan and the two universities will push forward joint research and development, and commercialization of research findings, and expedite the construction of sci-tech innovation platform, so as to theoretically and technically support the strategy and decision making concerning Hunan’s economic and social development, and promote talent exchange and collaborative cultivation.

　　Before the signing ceremony, Secretary Du and Governor Xu made a visit to the History Museum of THU, and the Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center of Peking University.