Meeting yesterday, the State Council of China, as they call its cabinet, and the Communist Party of China Central Committee issued guidelines calling on education authorities and universities to “deepen the comprehensive reform of doctoral education.” The report, not yet published in full, urges for the creation of a “world-class doctoral education system with Chinese characteristics” and for China to become “an important hub of doctoral education in the world.” The guidelines urge Chinese universities to restructure their programs to improve education curricula in basic disciplines, including science, engineering, agriculture and medicine, and to increase the proportion of doctoral programs among all degree programs.
This follows a visit last week by President Xi Jinping to the science city of Hefei. There President Xi said: “To advance modernization in the Chinese style, science and technology must take the lead, with technological innovation being the necessary path to follow…. High-tech development cannot be begged for; we must accelerate the realization of high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement.” Hefei, once an impoverished eastern backwater, has emerged as a role model of the new sci-tech push, transformed by local authorities into a powerhouse for innovation, now home to the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion energy reactor and the Institute of Plasma Physics.
This is not being done in isolation, however. Last month, the Ministry of Education announced that top overseas universities, especially those focused on science and engineering, are encouraged to operate joint education programs with their counterparts in China.
