Fudan University – Notes on a Lecture by Dr. Chouwen Zhu (MD) Vice Rector of University

We were ushered into a modern looking auditorium and told that the last person who gave a lecture there was Michael Dell! Dr. Zhu was also happy to inform us that the Scholarship group of 150 students was the largest to date to have visited the university and it demonstrates Fudan’s great support for the internationalization of education.
Fudan University is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China and one of the key national universities. It also had 10 affiliated hospitals. The 1st modern medical college that was established in China merged with the university in 2000.
The university had 4 campuses with the newest one established recently in the heart of Shanghai’s financial district. The university is continually growing in numbers.
The strategic plan for the university focuses on the Triple “I”:
1. International globalization
2. Information
3. Interdisciplinary studies
The university partners with over 200 universities around the world (such as Yale, in the US, the National University of Singapore, and others). 300 of its faculty visit abroad annually and it has hosted over 1200 foreign students in 2006.
Its current challenges are:
· how to cultivate leadership
· how to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship
· how to win resources for sustainable development
Its vision is to become one of the top universities in the world! FUDAN stands for “the pursuit of truth and seeking daily improvements and learning”.
In the Q&A that followed, Dr. Zhu talked about how the university supports “freedom of thought” and does not restrict access to any Internet resources (even though he acknowledged the government does). He commented, “You can the openness to answer your questions… this is new in our society.” He proceeded to say, “we have made a lot of mistakes as a country. We have learned from history to focus on human life and mind. That is why we opened the country after 2000 to the outside world and I am sure you have seen a lot of changes in our ideology. But there are still problems in our development.” Finally, he said to us, “we believe in cultural globalization and work also on global values; not just Chinese. We need to change while we keep our own ideology.”
I had the pleasure of joining him with his staff at lunch and he seemed like a person who enjoyed his duties as a host to foreign visitors. Yet, his answers to questions during lunch seemed to be a tad more evasive and he spent a good portion of it laughing while conversing in Chinese with his colleagues which had made me somewhat uncomfortable… He seemed to have signaled that the open door he had offered during his lecture has been shut…