Fang Qiansheng, President of Anhui Jianzhu University
On September 7, 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed for the first time that "Silk Road Economic Belt" should be built together in Kazakhstan, and during his visits to Central and Southeast Asian countries in September and October of the same year, he made major initiatives to build "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "21st-Century Maritime Silk Road". The construction of the "Belt and Road" is a grand conception and a Chinese plan put forward by Comrade Xi Jinping so as to promote the common prosperity of the whole world and build a community of common destiny for all mankind after he thought deeply about the future and destiny of mankind as well as the development trend of China and the world. It is an organic part of Xi Jinping's thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, and it opens up a new realm for China to participate in and lead the global open cooperation.
Ⅰ. Opportunities and Challenges of Architectural Colleges and Universities under the Background of the "Belt and Road"
1. Opportunities of Architectural Colleges and Universities Brought by the "Belt and Road"
Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road has made it clear that infrastructure connectivity is a priority for the construction of the "Belt and Road".
At present, the infrastructure of the "Belt and Road" to be built and under construction has exceeded 1 trillion yuan, and cross-border investment has reached $52.4 billion mainly in railway, highway, airport and water conservancy construction. The total scale of infrastructure investment projects for the "Belt and Road" reached 1.04 trillion yuan in 2015, wherein 500 billion yuan in railways, 123.5 billion yuan in highways, 116.7 billion yuan in airport construction, and over 170 billion yuan in port water conservancy.
In 2013, the overseas income brought by the "Belt and Road" strategy accounted for 16% of the total revenue of China's 8 major construction companies, greatly increasing the proportion of overseas income of China's large-scale construction companies. Nearly 60 countries along the Belt and Road have clearly expressed their willing to support and actively participate in the construction.
In the first half of 2015, Chinese enterprises contracted 1,401 projects in 60 countries along the "Belt and Road", and the total direct investment reached $7.05 billion.
The total output value of the construction industry in the country was over 20 trillion yuan in 2016, an increase of 7.1% over the same period of last year. The number of employees exceeded 50 million. The construction industry was an important pillar industry of the national economy.
The World Bank predicts that from 2016 to 2030 nearly $50 trillion will be required by global infrastructure investment, equivalent to $3.3 trillion per year. Estimates show that Asia's infrastructure investment in the next decade will be about $800 billion each year, which will bring about huge market space for the construction industry.
This brings a great opportunity for China's construction enterprises, especially infrastructure construction enterprises, to achieve leapfrog development. At the same time, as architectural colleges and universities, we have natural discipline and the professional advantages and can have more opportunities to serve the "Belt and Road" during the construction and development of the "Belt and Road".
2. Challenges of Architectural Colleges and Universities Brought about by the "Belt and Road"
The bottleneck of the "Belt and Road" strategy is not capital, nor technology, but talents, especially talents in infrastructure construction. China's existing construction talents only have project operation experience under the domestic market environment, even most of whom can survival only in the province or region, while the "Belt and Road" now has more infrastructure construction projects, which have huge investment and long cycle. Many of the projects have improper research, demonstration and even design in the early stage.
II. Advantages of Architectural Colleges and Universities in Serving the Construction of the "Belt and Road"- Taking Anhui Jianzhu University as an Example
1. Make full use of location advantages and jointly build a better future for the "Belt and Road"
On September 25, 2014, Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt by Relying on the Golden Waterway located Hefei as the vice-center of the world-class urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta, the world's sixth largest urban agglomeration. On March 28, 2015, Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road located Hefei as an important node city of the "Belt and Road". Covered by the two national strategies, Hefei gradually becomes the "bridgehead" of the development of the open economy.
In recent years, Hefei has been approved as China’s first pilot city for scientific and technological innovation and comprehensive national science center, and Anhui has taken an important position in China's innovation pattern, become an important force to participate in global science and technology competition and cooperation on behalf of the country and an important part of the international innovation network, and provided strong support for the long-term development of China's science and technology and the construction of an innovative country.
Facing the major historical opportunities of infrastructure connectivity in the construction of the "Belt and Road" as well as the urgent demand for architectural talents and science and technology, Anhui Construction University located in Hefei has been provided a great opportunity.
2. Insist on the development road characterized by "Architecture" and "Anhui" marks
Founded in 1958, Anhui Jianzhu University is the only multi-disciplinary university featured in civil engineering in Anhui Province. It is a joint university with the Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Construction. It is a university co-founded by Anhui Province and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, an outstanding university for the evaluation of undergraduate teaching work level by Ministry of Education, a provincial project construction unit entitled to grant doctorate, a university implementing national "Educational Training Program for Excellent Engineers", a demonstration unit of national conservation-oriented public institutions and an important research base of Anhui style architecture. Anhui Jianzhu University is composed of 12 colleges, offering 60 undergraduate programs which cover the fields of engineering, management, science, art, literature, law and economics. There are approximately 18,000 undergraduate students, of which over 1000 are graduate students.
Our school now has seven first-level disciplines, 32 master's degree programs of the second level disciplines, 2 professional degree program categories, 7 professional degree programs, 8 provincial key disciplines, 1 national engineering laboratory, 4 provincial key laboratories, 11 national and provincial engineering (technology) research centers. Significant results have been achieved in five key research areas, that is, energy conservation & environmental protection, urbanization & Anhui style architecture, underground engineering, public security, advanced building materials. Relying on the newly-built scientific research platform, our school will focus on supporting new cross-disciplinary fields like new building industrialization, rail transit, sponge city, smart city, urban management and so on, actively adapt to and serve the regional economic development, and further promote the development of architectural colleges and universities under the background of the "Belt and Road".
3. Overview of the "Belt and Road" Cooperation and Exchanges of Anhui Jianzhu University
Our school has signed cooperation agreements with Dresden University of Technology of Germany, Illinois Institute of Technology of the U.S., Hanseo University of Korea, Central Michigan University of the U.S., Swansea University of the U.K., University of Bridgeport of the U.S., and Brest State Technical University of Belarus, to strengthen talent exchanges and cooperation and supply a large number of international talents for the construction of the "Belt and Road".
In 2015, the school, as one of the seven leading universities in the country, established the "Belt and Road "National A-level Comprehensive Investigation Team jointly with six other construction universities in the country. In the same year, the "Belt and Road" Comprehensive Investigation Team won the honor of excellent team for national college students in "Realizing China Dream" of "Silk Road New World ·Youth China Dream". In recent years, the "Belt and Road "Comprehensive Investigation Team conduct investigation in Shanghai City, Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province, Ningbo City of Zhejiang Province, Xi'an City of Shaanxi Province, Fuzhou City of Fujian Province, Chengdu City of Sichuan Province, Chongqing City and other places, formed professional research reports and sent them to the Youth League Central Committee.
Although Anhui Jianzhu University has made fruitful achievements in talent training, scientific research, discipline construction, cooperation and exchanges and so on, there are still some deficiencies and points that need to be improved. Therefore, the establishment of the Belt and Road Architectural University International Consortium is of great significance in promoting the exchanges and cooperation of architectural universities along the "Belt and Road", innovating the mechanisms of architectural talent training, exploring the construction of cross-cultural architectural disciplines, promoting the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and serving the development and construction of countries along the "Belt and Road" and Eurasia.
We will take this opportunity to do the following:
Cultivate high-quality skilled talents. Adhere to the integration of science and education, build an international team of teaching staff, set up a school of international education exchanges, actively promote two-way study abroad, and cultivate a team of talents who adapt to the construction of the "Belt and Road" infrastructure projects.
Enhance basic research. Give full play to the advantages of the university like subject synthesis and raise the basic research to the level of serving the "Belt and Road".
Strengthen bilateral cooperation. Work with countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" to keep channels of scientific research cooperation open and jointly address the problems and challenges faced by countries along the "Belt and Road" by jointly building cooperation platforms.
Promote the construction of think tanks. Carry out policy research and consultation on the "Belt and Road" through multidisciplinary cross-disciplinary research, in particular make scientific research and judgments on the development of the "Belt and Road" construction in the next 5 years, 15 years and 50 years, and provide forward-looking guidance for the "Belt and Road" construction.
The bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms, regional and sub-regional cooperation concepts advocated by the "Belt and Road" provide the opportunity to deepen development for universities in international new exchange and cooperation model (regional alliance cooperation), and the establishment of the alliance can further give play to the advantages of architectural colleges and universities, promote resource sharing, enhance collaborative innovation, promote talent training and improve the level of international research and cooperation and enhance the ability and level of international exchanges and cooperation. Let’s work together to promote mutual benefit, and draw a new blueprint on the development of architectural colleges and universities under the background of the "Belt and Road"!
