From September 17^th to 25^th, Renmin University Vice President HONG Dayong traveled to Britain, Poland, and Bulgaria to participate in the Sino-British Innovation Forum held in Cardiff and organized jointly by the China Education Association for International Exchange and the Association for Higher Education in China and Central & Eastern Europe. In addition to RUC’s delegation led by Vice President Hong, representatives from Beijing University and 25 other Chinese universities and colleges joined the event.

Premier LIU Yandong delivered a keynote on September 18^th  in which she stressed the importance of transnational cooperation and innovation in higher education for comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the United Kingdom. She is confident that the two countries will continue to promote a path toward innovation and mutual respect based not only on equality, tolerance, and appreciation but also on the will to exert creative efforts in learning from each other.

On September 21^st, Vice President HONG traveled on to Warsaw to participate in the third policy dialogue session of the Association for Higher Education in China and Central & Eastern Europe. In the course of dialoguing, constructive suggestions were offered on how Chinese and European universities might better work together in the future in terms of information sharing, mutual recognition of course credits and degrees, faculty and student exchanges, and cooperation on scientific research projects. Further steps toward the internationalization of higher education institutions, the Erasmus exchange program, and other issues were discussed at the presidents’ forum on September 22^nd. Also on the agenda of topics discussed were joint-degree and English Master’s programs. Vice President HONG invited representatives from Warsaw University and other Polish institutes of higher learning to visit RUC in the near future to discuss projected exchanges.

On September 24^th, Vice President HONG visited the University of Bulgaria. Stronger ties between Chinese and Eastern European universities are seen as providing added institutional support, in the area of higher education, for China to further develop its One Belt, One Road initiative in cooperation with its Eastern European economic partners.