President Zhang Rong attended the 12th China-ROK University Presidents Forum hosted by Jilin University with “Future-Oriented Integrated Innovation Cooperation” as its theme on 8 September 2021 and delivered a keynote speech introducing Xiamen University’s vision and practice in nurturing innovative talents, promoting the integration of production, teaching, research and application.
President Zhang noted that science, technology, and innovation are playing an increasingly important role in meeting common challenges facing all by mankind as a community with a shared future, and high-level research universities are primary productive force for science and technology, source of talents as well as driving force for innovation. That’s why universities and research institutions should work together to promote innovation and strive to become the backbone for humans to meet challenges in the future.
Zhang said, universities should act as a source of integrated innovation in science and technology, always focusing on the world’s frontiers of science and technology, economy, major national needs and people’s health; universities should further reforms of research systems and transform the driving pattern, organizing mode as well as managing approach to establish a set of systems and mechanisms that favor the integration of different disciplines and departments, thus continuously enhancing the capacity for undertaking major research projects; universities should create new talent training modes which emphasize cultivating students' creative thinking and innovative consciousness, the capability for self-study, accomplishments in innovative research and entrepreneurship; what’s more important, universities should become a “creator” for the global innovative ecology.
The first China-ROK University Presidents Forum was held in 2007. Since then, it has become an important platform for China-ROK higher education exchanges, providing valuable experience for educational cooperation in northeast Asia as well as between China and Korea. This year, representatives from 29 Chinese universities and 24 Korean counterparts participated in the Forum in person or via video link.
