Asia–Link symposium
Beijing, 19 October 2007

Check against delivery

[Acknowledge authorities in attendance]

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Zunjing de (authorities in attendance),
Zunjing de ge wei lai bin,
Nv shimen Xianshengmen,

Wo hen gaoxing he rongxing nenggou zai zhongguo he oumeng jian kaizhan hezuo.

I am pleased and honoured to be here today to open with you a new channel for mutual understanding and practical cooperation between Europe and China.

I believe that this Asia–Link Symposium in Beijing is a real step forward towards collaboration in higher education.

Today’s meeting provides an ideal platform for dialogue at a time when higher-education exchanges between our academic and political authorities are growing at an unprecedented pace.

I warmly welcome these developments. I am sure that they will bring great benefits to both sides thanks to a clear framework of cooperation and a disciplined process.

Going through the programme for today’s works, I can see that all the major areas of debate will be covered.

Speakers, panellists and the audience will discuss the need to establish a policy framework and a joint agenda for the exchange of students, academics and researchers.

We need to understand where things stand at present and we need to plan future developments. Above all, we need to realise that there is a great deal we can learn from each other.

We have vastly different experiences in our distant and recent past. However, we both have a tradition of learning that goes back many centuries and both our peoples give enormous importance to education.

This is perhaps the most striking similarity between Europe and China when it comes to giving shape to our joint programmes and policies.

According to a survey conducted on the then 25 countries of the EU at the end of last year, Europeans believe that getting a good education is the most important thing for getting ahead in life.

This is a view shared by as many as 62% of the respondents. By comparison, the second most important factor turned out to be ‘working hard’, with 45%.

There is ample evidence that education is of paramount importance in China as well. One indicator is the high level of household savings, which is partly explained by the desire of Chinese parents to give their children the best start in life.

I believe these are good foundations on which we can build our common understanding and future cooperation, because they are rooted in what our peoples really want.

I feel we have no higher responsibility—academic and political authorities alike—than to serve the people we represent and design the policies that bring them the benefits they expect from us.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am sure, that this spirit of service is what will drive our debates today. This Asia–Link Symposium is the ideal forum for the launch of a more structured policy dialogue between the EU and China on culture, education and vocational training.

This policy dialogue will take concrete shape in the next few days when two joint declarations are signed between the Chinese ministries of culture and education on one side and the European Commission on the other.

The declarations will cover issues of common interest such as lifelong learning policies, language learning, sectoral cooperation and mobility.

There is no doubt that we are both interested in having regular exchanges of experience and best practices, because—as I said—the EU and China have a lot to learn from each other.

Our dialogue will also cover a thorough review of policy developments and challenges in the domain of learning.

Finally, our policy dialogue will consist of discussions concerning existing and future forms of cooperation that will be identified jointly by the two parties.

I attach a great deal of importance to these declarations and to the practical outcomes that they will make possible.

Higher education is fast becoming a global business, it is a good idea that partners from distant regions of the world share a platform to analyse its trends and plan their policy response together.

An open and sustained support to these actions will bring us both positive returns for at least three reasons:

First, the EU and China together are home to 1.8 billion people. Any form of co–operation and mutual learning between our education and training systems is bound to help raise educational standards throughout the world.

Second, past experience in Europe and elsewhere shows that joint efforts in education and training typically have positive effects on the economy.

It is to be expected that, in a not so distant future, the strategy of cooperation that we are launching today will translate into stronger trade links between the European Union and China.

Finally, I cannot overestimate the cultural and political significance of our joint declarations.

They explicitly acknowledge “the crucial contribution of culture to improve mutual understanding and tolerance” and express the intent to “further the mutual recognition of academic degrees” of certain institutions between China and EU countries.

I believe that these are words of wisdom. There is no better place to build lasting and fruitful understanding between two peoples and cultures than a centre of learning.

Again, I can draw on the rich European experience of academic exchanges to prove this point. The European institutions have been running a students’ and teachers’ exchange programme for exactly twenty years—you probably know it well—it’s called the Erasmus programme.

From a rather unassuming start, 1.7 million young Europeans travelled with Erasmus so far, and the goal is to bring the figure to 3 million in five years’s time.

Why am I telling you this? Because Erasmus is by far the best known and most apppeciated programme among all the programmes and actions of the EU.

You go around Europe and you will see that Erasmus has become a byword for our united Europe; people identify it as a practical European success.

I believe much of this success is due to the fact that with Erasmus we managed to take the idea of European integration into classrooms and campuses.

Young people in an educational setting are the most fertile ground where the seeds of openness, mutual understanding, and curiosity towards the other can grow and become strong.

The positive effects of Erasmus have been felt far and wide across Europe as the union was expanding to its present 27 countries.

In educational terms, this exchange of people and ideas contributed to the reform and to the integration of the whole higher–education sector in Europe; a process that our Member States started in earnest in 1999 and that is still going on.

In cultural terms, Erasmus has brought together the peoples of Europe like no other action of the EU.

Now, we believe that what has worked within Europe can work as well with our partners around the world.

This is why we established Erasmus Mundus; a programme that opens EU universities to the students, teachers and researchers of the world.

And the facts are beginning to show again the power of higher education as a factor for inter–cultural dialogue. After only 3 years, Erasmus Mundus is already a success story in China.

Over 400 Chinese students and 85 academics have come to Europe to attend Masters’ programmes and to do teaching and research.

The numbers may not look too large for the most populous country in the world, but the rate of participation has grown dramatically over the last three years, and we look forward to continuing to develop this flagship programme.

There are other EU initiatives in education cooperation with third countries, and they complement each other well.

One is, of course, our Asia–Link programme, which promotes cooperation between European and Asian universities on several levels.

But there is another aspect of our joint declarations that I would like to stress before closing my address: and this is language.

The declaration devoted to education and vocational training mentions language teaching and learning three times.

This is indicative of our strong belief that languages are the best channels through which we can establish deep and lasting intercultural dialogue, no matter how distant the cultures involved may be.

The languages we speak identify us as individuals and communities. If we are serious about getting to know each other better, we simply must make the effort to speak each other’s languages.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Since the time when traders and explorers travelled along the silk road, China and Europe know a great deal more about each other.

In our time, no two countries or regions of the world are distant enough as to think they are unconnected. Globalisation means above all inter–dependence and—I would add—it demands from us all the utmost care in our respect of cultural diversity. But it also means defending those values which we hold most dear and explaining our commitment to them to our partners.

Every responsible political leader has realised by now that we all face common challenges—just think of climate change—and we must work together if we are to overcome them.

Today we are taking a step in the right direction.

Renewing and extending our commitment in the fields of education, training and culture sends a clear message of peace, dialogue and cooperation on the international scene.

Thank you.