Graciously hosted by our member UCD, Asia Matters held a China Higher Education Partnership Briefing on 4 December for HEI members and stakeholders with a focus on:

Update on the recent visit to Ireland of Dr. Huai Jinpeng, Minister of Education of China China's Higher Education Landscape and Key Priorities Higher Education Partnership Opportunities between the China and Ireland.

Ms. Zhu Xikun, Director of Education at the Chinese Embassy gave an insightful presentation updating on the recent visits of Tánaiste Micheál Martin to Beijing and Dr. Huai Jinpeng, China’s Education Minister to Dublin. Minister Huai’s itinerary included visits to UCD, TCD and TU Dublin. Ms. Zhu thanked participants for their great work in developing higher education partnerships and commended SETU for the opening of two joint colleges in Zhengzhou and Nanjing along with TUS who signed an MOU with Capital University of Economics and Business. Currently there are 63 joint institutional programmes covering 19 disciplines including Medical sciences, Bio Pharma and Software Engineering.

China has now built the world’s largest higher education system. In 2022, gross enrolment rate reached 59.6 % with 46.55 million students in higher education, including 3.655 million postgraduate students. Looking to the future, Ms. Zhu shared two items of good news to deepen higher education partnership between China and Ireland. Firstly, the 42nd General Conference of UNESCO has passed a resolution to establish the UNESCO International Institute for STEM Education in Shanghai. Given this platform to deepen STEM cooperation, the Chinese government would like to launch the ‘China Ireland STEM Teacher Summer Exchange Programme with Ireland to jointly develop STEM talent and teacher training. Secondly, the 2022 UNESCO Prize for Use of ICT in Education was awarded to China for "Smart Education Platform" and Ireland for "The National Resource Hub". China will shortly launch an international version of its Smart Education Platform to share digital education resources creating an opportunity for Ireland to partner in online course sharing, mutual recognition of online credits and establishment of digital libraries. The Chinese Ministry of Education is currently preparing for the 2nd World Digital Education Conference and welcomes Irish universities to join its World Digital Education Alliance. Following the presentation, Martin Murray, Executive Director, Asia Matters chaired an interactive stakeholder discussion sharing insight from Irish HEIs on recent visits to China and updating on current partnerships and future plans. Professor Dolores O'Riordan, Vice-President for Global Engagement UCD, along with Professor Paul Fanning UCD International Dean for China and Provost of UCD's three joint international colleges in China, gave feedback from their recent China visit. Significantly they noted that all Chinese partners were fully aware of and placed great value on the recent visit of Minister Huai Jinpeng to Ireland. There then followed a very engaged sharing from HEIs across Ireland joined by THEA,IUA and Education in Ireland on their partnership activities and future plans for joint programmes, staff exchanges, joint research and co-authorship. In his recent visit to Ireland, Dr. Huai Jinpeng, Minister of Education of China had stressed the importance of international experience and intercultural understanding for Chinese students. Clearly good people to people relations are vital to learn from each other and grow together. There was a very positive sense from the Asia Matters discussion that from healthcare to technology that Chinese and Irish university partners are mutually committed to work together to build the knowledge and talent to tackle society’s greatest challenges for the betterment of mankind.