Bringing Malta and China closer

During the last week of May it was my pleasure to lead a delegation to China, where I signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education for the mutual recognition of degrees granted by the universities and other educational institutions in both countries. This is a very important breakthrough and will open up many opportunities for Chinese students to study in Malta, now that they know that the degrees they obtain here will be recognised by Chinese authorities once they apply for a government job back in China.

In 2011 there were more than 340,000 Chinese students at overseas universities. It is up to Malta now to do all it can to attract a number of these students by providing courses that are relevant for Chinese students and are of the right quality and the right price when compared to others. We must also make sure that Chinese students can travel to Malta and stay here to study without having to encounter many difficulties to obtain the necessary visa and permits.

70 Chinese universities have already ventured abroad by setting up joint courses and programs and have also launched joint institutions like the Shanghai New York University, Wenzhou Kean University and Kunshan Duke University. Xiamen University, which has already started a link with the University of Malta, is set to open its first overseas campus in Malaysia in September 2015. Tongji University will open its first overseas campus in Florence, teaching courses in art, design, architecture and fashion.

Zejiang University will be establishing a campus in London in collaboration with the Imperial College of London.

Liu Baocun, president of the International and Comparative Education Institute at Beijing Normal University is urging Chinese universities to be more confident in acting on the world stage and actively present themselves as institutions that people can learn from. He argues that Chinese universities can establish campuses overseas like elite universities such as Yale and New York University.

Wang Huiyao, director of the Centre for China and Globalization, a public policy think tank in Beijing, believes that foreign campuses set up by Chinese universities overseas will help attract more quality students to China.

Last year 23,000 students, mostly from the United States, Germany, Britain and Japan, received scholarships provided by the Chinese government to study in China. The number will continue to rise in the coming years. These scholarships are also available to Maltese students and if our students want to study in some of the most dynamic universities of the 21st century they should apply for them.

Malta can be an ideal location for a top Chinese university to set up a campus and offer courses and research facilities in areas of study that can attract students from the European continent and Africa.

The European Union is keen to attract Chinese students to European universities and to send European students to Chinese universities through the new programme to be launched next year, Erasmus for All. These scholarships will be financed by the European Investment Bank, through which soft loans will be given to students for their post-graduate courses.

My delegation in China made up also of the rector Professor Juanito Camilleri and the President of the Malta-China Friendship Society Reno Calleja had the opportunity to visit four top universities in Beijing and Shanghai. We visited Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), which attracts some of China's best students, training many of China's career diplomats and top executives. BFSU asked for the assistance of both the Maltese Government and the University of Malta in setting up a programme dedicated to Maltese language and culture. We have promised to help and will do all we can to deliver. BFSU teaches all EU languages, with its students normally studying at least three languages. It showed particular interest in Mediterranean Studies and European Studies at the University of Malta.

On arriving in Shanghai, the delegation met the Vice-Mayor, Weng Tie Hui, and other officials from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. Given that Shanghai has emerged top in the recent PISA benchmark study of the OECD, the discussion focused on the strategy adopted by Shanghai in order to achieve such excellent results and international recognition. I expressed Malta's interest in collaborating with Shanghai's Education Commission in order to exchange best practices.

At Shanghai Maritime University, a discussion was held about collaboration in the field of Shipping and Navigation Studies between the Shanghai Maritime University, the University of Malta and MCAST. We also met 20 students who have shown interest in coming to Malta to take up the newly launched International Masters Programme on Ocean Governance, being held this September together with the International Ocean Institute (IOI).

Moving on to Shanghai University of Traditional Medicine, with whom an agreement was signed just a month ago, we discussed the launching of a collaborative International Masters Programme on Traditional Chinese Medicine and Culture. This Masters would also involve the Department of Health in Malta, the Mediterranean Regional Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine, Kordin, and the Mater Dei Clinic which is dedicated to Chinese medicine.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of China's top schools, comparable to the US Ivy League in calibre. The University of Malta is interested in research collaboration in the field of digital communications and media. It will be sending a technical delegation in the coming months to explore this and links with other engineering and ICT disciplines. The University of Malta and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are already collaborating in an Erasmus Mundus programme in the field of Language and Communication Technology and in particular in aspects of Natural Language Processing.

Exciting times are ahead if we grab the available opportunities to have the largest country in the world work together with one of the smallest countries on earth.

Evarist Bartolo is Minister for Education