Summary:
Recently, China’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) officially announced that 21 additional local (provincial-level) universities would receive support under the 111 Project, which will provide funding for discipline development and the recruitment of foreign experts over the next five years. A further 13 bases whose initial funding period started in 2012 have had their funding renewed for a further five years.
As SIEM news introduced previously in March this year (https://education-services.britishcouncil.org/news/market-news/introduction-china%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9C111-project%E2%80%9D-0), the “111 Project”, originally launched in 2005, aims to draw leading overseas scholars and researchers from worldwide top 100 universities and research institutes to designated “innovation and talent recruitment bases” in China. These innovation bases are located at universities, and each focuses in a particular field within the broad areas of engineering, technology and applied science. Examples of fields from the most recent batch of approvals include advanced cement-based materials science, rubber and plastic materials and engineering, and green petroleum and chemical engineering.
The minimum amount of funding that each base will receive is RMB 1.8 million RMB (£200,000) per year, jointly funded by the SAFEA, provincial governments and the base universities. The funding is guaranteed for a five-year period, after which it can be renewed for subsequent five-year periods based on an assessment of the project’s results.
The 111 Project was formerly limited only to national-level universities, and this is only the second year that funding has been available to provincial institutions. The number of universities of this kind involved is also larger than last year’s 15 provincial universities. The 21 newly approved projects include new bases at Shanghai University, Fuzhou University, Zhejiang Normal University and Zhejiang University of Technology, all of which were also included in last year’s approvals.
Analysis by Kevin Prest and Xiaoxiao Liu
Although the 111 Project supports Chinese universities in employing overseas academics directly rather than cooperating at an institutional level, the designated bases do indicate expertise in the relevant fields and an international outlook. This may be of use to UK institutions looking for Chinese research partners in these areas.
Attachment:
The British Council has compiled and translated the list of Innovation Bases approved since 2012 (with the exception of 2015, for which data is not available).
Sources:
1. http://edu.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0810/c367001-29463450.html
2. http://www.cutech.edu.cn/cn/Fund/webinfo/2017/07/1487147763185930.htm
3. http://www.safea.gov.cn/content.shtml?id=12749788
4. http://www.safea.gov.cn/content.shtml?id=12749782
5. http://edu.sina.com.cn/gaokao/2017-08-09/doc-ifyitayr9970750.shtml