2nd China-France Education Development Forum yields fruitful outcomes

Over 50 cooperation agreements were signed on Friday at the Second China-France Education Development Forum, which was held in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, southwest China.

Held at Sichuan University, the forum brought together representatives from 70 Chinese and approximately 30 French universities. The two sides signed 54 cooperative agreements across five major areas: dual-degree joint training programs, joint scientific research laboratories, cooperative education, student exchange, and overseas campus construction, paving a broad path for future bilateral collaboration.

"Our partnership with French universities spans 20 years. At present, Beihang University operates three China-French cooperative education institutions in Beijing and Hangzhou, enrolling around 500 undergraduates annually. Students in these programs receive several years of joint training and, upon completion, earn academic qualifications and diplomas from both universities," said Dong Zhuoning, Assistant President and Dean of the Hangzhou International Innovation Institute at Beihang University.

Gilles Fleury, General Delegate of Centrale Schools Group, expressed his willingness to engage with Chinese universities in developing new exchange programs for future talent cultivation. He also proposed fostering innovative cooperation in humanities and social sciences through interdisciplinary research, with the aim of promoting a more balanced two-way flow of students.

"We decided to promote this interdisciplinary program for the young students, not only the Chinese students, we begin to recruit French students. It is a double degree program, indeed it's an interdisciplinary program. So it's the whole branch of engineering. So it comes from computer science to mechanic to turbulence to free mechanics, so it's a very broad program," said Fleury.

Chen Dali, Deputy Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges of the Ministry of Education of China, said that growing educational cooperation between China and France in recent years has drawn increasing numbers of students from across Europe to pursue studies in China.

"Over the past year, universities from both countries have engaged in extensive cooperation across various fields. This collaboration has resulted in 72 new joint educational institutions and programs, placing France's number of such cooperative points first in Europe. Additionally, the two sides have established 11 joint engineering institutes covering key fields such as aviation, energy, machinery, and electronics. To date, more than 8,300 French students have participated in exchange programs in China. This wave of exchange has, in turn, attracted over 32,000 students from across Europe to study in China, marking a new high," said Chen.

2nd China-France Education Development Forum yields fruitful outcomes

Smart technologies have reshaped China's ecological and environmental monitoring system, Huang Runqiu, minister of Ecology and Environment, said Thursday in Beijing on the sidelines of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress(NPC).

"Regarding ecological and environmental monitoring, we have been promoting the digitalization, informatization, and intelligentization of the entire monitoring process in recent years, reshaping the ecological and environmental monitoring system. For instance, in water environment monitoring and sampling, we have used intelligent drones which can quickly locate sampling points, collect samples accurately, return rapidly, and they are safe and reliable, improving work efficiency by over 70 percent. They are particularly advantageous for sampling during flood seasons and in remote areas," Huang told the press.

"In terms of environmental sample analysis, we have developed 'lights-out laboratories' in recent years. As the name suggests, these labs operate without lights and are unattended. Through robotic arms, robots, and intelligent management systems, they achieve full-process automation and intelligence from sample handover, testing, and analysis to report generation. This has significantly enhanced work efficiency, increasing it by more than eightfold compared to traditional labs. More importantly, it reduces human interference, human error, and even data falsification," he said.

Thanks to the improved ecological and environmental supervision capabilities, the number of environmental violation cases nationwide has decreased from 130,000 five years ago to 43,000 last year, representing a decline of 68 percent, Huang said.

The minister said China has already applied environmental DNA technology in the biodiversity monitoring work.

"In the field of biodiversity monitoring, monitoring aquatic organisms remains a weak point. However, significant progress has been made in recent years as we have developed environmental DNA technology. Although this chip is very small in size, it contains DNA detection information for aquatic organisms, including the finless porpoise and the Chinese sucker, from 19 state-controlled sections in the Jiangsu segment of the Yangtze River. The results showed that over the past five years, more than 20 species of aquatic organisms have increased in this river section, fully demonstrating the tangible effectiveness of the ten-year fishing ban in the Yangtze River," Huang said while showing a chip to reporters.

The 14th NPC, China's national legislature, concluded its fourth session on Thursday.

Smart technologies reshape China's ecological, environmental monitoring system: minister