The 2024 Forum of Presidents, a gathering of presidents of leading Chinese and US universities under the Sino-US “10+10” program, was held in Chicago, US, on Sept. 23. Chinese Vice Minister of Education Chen Jie attended the event and delivered a speech.

Chen noted that 2024 marks the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties between China and the US. Over the past 45 years, Sino-US educational cooperation has nourished fruitful people-to-people exchanges and has laid a solid foundation for the stable development of bilateral relations. This Forum of Sino-US University Presidents represents a concrete step towards implementing the consensus reached at the San Francisco summit between the heads of states of China and the US in 2023. The first session of the Forum was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in Dec. 2023, and this year’s session was held at the University of Chicago. The Forum reflects the important mission of higher education against the backdrop of ongoing revolutions in technology and industry. It also reflects the historical responsibility of both Chinese and US universities to address global challenges. Universities in the two countries need to reinforce their cooperation in innovation, thus setting a trend for global higher education. They also need to work together on solving global issues in the post-pandemic era, while enhancing mutual learning in order to drive sound development of Sino-US people-to-people exchange.

The presidents of 14 Chinese and 12 US higher education institutions attended the forum. These institutions included Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, Nanjing University, Zhejiang University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, the CUHK, the University of Macau, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University, and Carnegie Mellon University.