On October 21, the China International Education Symposium was held in Beijing. Under the theme “Globalization of education and building a community of shared future for mankind”, participants explored the way forward for promoting international cooperation in the field of education. Minister of education Chen Baosheng shared China’s practices for prioritizing the development of education as well as experience in coping with the COVID-19 outbreak across the education system, and presented his plan for furthering international cooperation.

Chen noted that the notion of “a community of shared future for mankind”, as proposed by President Xi Jinping, was a common denominator guiding people around the world to pursue a prosperous life, and that it served to unite the world in the battle against the novel coronavirus pandemic. He said the Chinese government had always prioritized education, and introduced a range of drastic interventions to ensure that learning was not disrupted despite school closures at the height of the pandemic. He added that the Chinese government had newly introduced a policy to expand international cooperation in the field of education as a show of its firm commitment to opening up and as a means of enhancing mutual understanding with the rest of the world. The new policy was expected to bring in quality educational resources from across the world, encourage exchange of students, and contribute to better educational governance, he said.

The minister believed that education had a bigger role to play in contributing to “a community of shared future for mankind”. To that end, he made a three-point proposal. First, greater efforts should be made to create more open collaborative platforms to unleash the potential of basic research in universities for addressing common global threats and challenges. Second, IT solutions should be mainstreamed in education, in order to facilitate step changes in teaching and educational governance. Third, educational cooperation should be deepened through an inclusive and open approach to bring together the best resources from different cultures.

Dr. Noraini Ahmad, Minister of Higher Education of Malaysia and Niki Kerameus, Minister of Education and Religious Affairs of Greece delivered video messages. Raja Nushirwan Zainal Abidin, the Ambassador of Malaysia to the People’s Republic of China, attended the symposium. Liu Limin, President of China Education Association for International Exchange, presided over the opening ceremony of the conference. Shen Xiaoming, Governor of Hainan Province, and Stephanie Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, delivered keynote speeches.