French President Emmanuel Macron to Visit Guangzhou, China

French President Emmanuel Macron paid a state visit to China from April 5 to 7, 2023. During his visit to China, in addition to the capital Beijing, Macron will also hold an exchange meeting with young students at the gymnasium of Sun Yat-sen University on the afternoon of April 7.

Macron's trip to China has attracted much attention. It is reported that this is also Macron's third visit to China after assuming the presidency, and it is his first visit to China since he began his second term. On his previous two visits to China, he visited Xi'an and Shanghai.

For Guangdong, Macron's arrival has special significance. Because this is the first sitting French president to visit Guangdong. Why did Macron choose to communicate with students from Chinese universities in Guangzhou (广州, also called Canton)? What is the relationship between Sun Yat-sen University (中山大学) and France? The reporter of Southern Finance and Economics All Media sorted out this.

Exploring the way for Sino-French cooperation in running schools

Macron was accompanied by a large group of entrepreneurs, including representatives of EDF (Electricité de France, French Electricity Corporation), Alstom, Veolia and aerospace giant Airbus.

Among them, EDF's cooperation with Guangdong has quite a long history, as early as the Daya Bay nuclear power plant, and recently Taishan nuclear power, which is known as "providing a successful example for the construction of the world's third-generation nuclear power plant".

It is worth mentioning that EDF, as the founder and partner, also participated in the establishment of the Sino-French School of Nuclear Engineering and Technology of Sun Yat-sen University.

The establishment of the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology is related to the adjustment of China's energy strategy and the rapid development of China's nuclear power industry since the new century. In December 2009, witnessed by the prime ministers of China and France, Sun Yat-sen University officially signed a contract with the French Civil Nuclear Energy Engineers Teaching Alliance to establish the Sino-French School of Nuclear Engineering and Technology. The signing ceremony was officially held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

In September 2010, the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology officially enrolled students. As one of the representatives of Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools, the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology has attracted much attention since its establishment. The Joint Administrative Committee of the College is composed of representatives from China and France, with the President of Sun Yat-sen University as the Chairman of the Committee.

Students of Sino-foreign cooperatively-run classes, who meet the training requirements according to the agreement and are willing, can obtain the qualification of master's exemption, that is, four years of bachelor's degree and two years of master's degree, corresponding to the three-year preparatory department of the French engineering school, plus three years of engineering study.

The Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology is also unique in that graduates of the Sino-French cooperation program not only receive bachelor's and master's diplomas from Sun Yat-sen University, but also nuclear energy engineer certificates certified by the French Commission for the Qualification of Engineers (CTI).

"It's something to be proud of in the global education system." Professor Wang Biao, founding dean of the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, once said. As the first case in the field of nuclear energy in China, the college passed the strict certification of the French Engineer Titles Commission (CTI) twice in 2016 and 2022, and the certification period was the longest 6 years.

Obtaining the certification of CTI marks that the discipline talent training and scientific research strength have been recognized by the international nuclear energy community, and also means that the "Nuclear Energy Engineer Certificate of Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology" issued by the college is recognized by the French government.

For the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Wang Biao once said bluntly: "The Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering is to borrow from the French method and concept of training elite engineers."

In the eyes of the industry, the significance of the establishment of the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology is actually to explore a set of high-end talent training system for nuclear engineering and nuclear technology in line with China's national conditions, and to obtain international recognition. In fact, after years of development, the school draws on more than ten years of experience in learning and practicing French preparatory engineering-engineer excellence education, and has created a Sino-French integration training model.

Higher education in France is divided into two categories, one is grande école, called "grande", and the other is université, that is, universities, from which France's elite engineers mainly graduate. École de Paris, HEC Paris, and now most of the presidents of French politics and most of the corporate world have graduated from such schools.

The reporter of Southern Finance and Economics All Media learned that the "Sino-French Nuclear" college is small class teaching and personalized tutoring, with a teacher-student ratio (1:8), and international teachers account for 35%. Because multilingual learning (more than 40% taught in French, nearly 40% in Chinese classes, and 20% to 30% in English), the study tasks are more onerous than in ordinary majors, and some students report learning "head iron".

In June 2016, he graduated from the first master's degree of the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology. So far, the college has produced a total of 462 graduates in seven cohorts. Most of these students are engaged in the nuclear energy industry and contribute to the development of nuclear energy in the country. About 24% of them chose to continue their studies. Among the master's graduates employed, 80% have signed contracts with nuclear energy enterprises and institutions.

Deeper Sino-French educational cooperation is worth looking forward to

Relying on the Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, in 2010, the Nuclear Engineering and Technology International Cooperation Base of Sun Yat-sen University was approved by the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, and it cooperated with the French Civil Nuclear Energy Engineers Union represented by the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission to create a demonstration national cooperation base integrating scientific research cooperation, discipline construction and talent training.

In fact, the cooperative scientific research projects between Sun Yat-sen University and the French side are much more than that. According to CUHK statistics, CUHK has established cooperation and exchanges with nearly 30 universities and research institutions in France, and since 2018, CUHK has cooperated with France in a total of 8 scientific research projects, focusing on healthcare, biotechnology, environment and resources.

As early as 2000, Sun Yat-sen University cooperated with the University of Lyon III, and in 2012, the two universities renewed the university-level framework cooperation agreement, under which they signed a student exchange agreement, a joint training agreement for French master's students and an agreement for French undergraduate students.

Wang Jianhua, a retired professor at Sun Yat-sen University's School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, recalls that he participated in the preparation of this project as the first faculty member to work at Sun Yat-sen University after the reform and opening up. "In 1999, I went to the Ministry of Education to apply for this project, which is also the first Sino-foreign cooperative education project approved by the Ministry of Education in the history of Sun Yat-sen University, the French Consulate General in Guangzhou and the French Cultural Association, which gave us strong support for this project, which is a successful case of Sino-French friendship and educational exchanges."

In December 2015, Sun Yat-sen University, the University of Lorraine and the French Institute of Agri-Food Environment (INRAE) established the "Sino-French Joint Laboratory of Soil Environment" (ECOLAND) to focus on major soil environmental pollution problems. In 2018, the laboratory was approved by the Ministry of Education as the "Soil Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Innovation and Intelligence Base" (111 Intelligence Base), which is also the first innovation and intelligence base for soil remediation in China. In 2018, ECOLAND was named one of the 12 most successful international collaborations of the last two decades by the French Agri-Food Environment Institute (INRAE).

Another successful example of Sino-French cooperation is the Lehn Institute of Functional Materials at Sun Yat-sen University. The institute is a high-level international joint research institute established by Sun Yat-sen University in cooperation with French Nobel laureate Professor Jean-Marie Lehn. The unique feature of the institute is that it has established long-term and stable cooperative relations with nearly 10 well-known universities in France, Switzerland, Germany, etc., forming a two-way interactive working mechanism of "foreign PIs regularly come to work in the institute, supervisors and scientific research assistants of both sides assist and guide, and postdoctoral postdoctoral students are regularly sent abroad for joint training".

Li Zhongshu, associate professor at the School of Chemistry at Sun Yat-sen University, is a beneficiary of this working mechanism. Zhongshu Li received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in 2013 and joined Sun Yat-sen University in 2014 as a candidate of the "China Postdoctoral International Exchange Program".

Li Zhongshu introduced that during the two years of full-time scientific research, he can communicate experimental progress and scientific research ideas with the two supervisors anytime, anywhere and receive guidance, which allows him to lock in the most reasonable and effective experimental plan faster. After the postdoc successfully exited, he decided to stay at Sun Yat-sen University for scientific research. In the following three years, as a distinguished associate researcher, he used the research platform of the School of Chemistry of CUHK to make his own characteristics in the field of organophosphorus chemistry.

In European countries, many researchers go through a process of "habilitation" before obtaining formal teaching positions in universities, that is, independent university teacher qualification training, mainly to train young people in independent scientific research. In Li Zhongshu's view, this position is similar to the full-time scientific research post of CUHK, and the postdoctoral guidance and training mechanism of Sun Yat-sen University is fully in line with the international frontier.

A young scholar from a university said in an interview with a reporter from Southern Finance and Economics All-Media that how to give full-time researchers with postdoctoral as the main body a better stage, establish a suitable high-level scientific research team for this group, and empower national key technology research and local economic development industries, which is still a thorny problem in many universities at present. In exchanges and cooperation with France and even Europe, Sun Yat-sen University is exploring a talent innovation and development path more suitable for China's national conditions, which is the significance of foreign exchanges and cooperation. From the perspective of major country diplomacy, educational exchanges and joint scientific research can also play more bridges.

According to the communiqué of the French presidential palace, strategic issues, economic and trade practical cooperation and responding to global challenges will be the three major focuses of Macron's visit. Cui Hongjian, director of the Institute of European Studies of the China Institute of International Studies, mentioned in his analysis of the Global Times on the 3rd that the exchanges between the two sides in terms of humanities and society may also become the highlight of Macron's visit to China.

Will Macron's visit to Guangdong universities stimulate more "chemical reactions" in Sino-French educational exchanges and cooperation, and promote more meaningful deep-level educational cooperation? This is undoubtedly very exciting.

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