KARACHI: Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad has announced that his office will set up a help desk at Governor House with the mandate to facilitate establishing academic ties between universities across the province and those in China, officials said on Tuesday.

“[The] Governor saheb has informed us that his office is going to establish a help desk at Governor’s House for coordination between the universities of Sindh and China,” said an organiser of the three-day conference between the universities of Sindh and Hainan on its second day at Hotel Marriott.

Dr Ibad announced it while talking to a 10-member delegation representing four Chinese universities and 13 vice chancellors of universities of Pakistan at Governor House.

The Chinese academicians introduced their programme for international institutions and students to the governor and said that for Pakistani students, the Chinese authorities had more to offer because of brotherly relations between the two countries.

Dr Ibad said the desk run by his office in that regard would take care of coordination and collaboration of the universities of Sindh with Chinese authorities and academic high-ups.

He said Governor House had already established a similar desk for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in which investors and companies were being offered with facilitation regarding investment in the CPEC projects.

“Basically, CPEC is future of our region,” the governor was quoted as saying.

He added intellectuals would be spearheading the future interaction between the two countries, thus the universities would be playing key role in grooming and providing those intellectuals.

The governor praised Dr Mohammad Ali Shaikh, vice chancellor of the Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU), for engaging Chinese universities and establishing the students’ exchange programme that he said was the first such link in the history of Pakistan. “It is good to know that Sindh has taken lead in establishing contacts with the universities in Hainan province of China,” he said.

Dr Shaikh said the Sindh-Hainan Universities Forum, which organised the ongoing conference, founded an unparalleled academic cooperation between the two countries.

Meanwhile, officials of the four leading Chinese varsities on the second day of the conference introduced their campuses and faculties to the audience.

Representatives of the Hainan University, Hainan Normal University, Hainan Tropical Ocean University and Sanya University gave introduction of their institutions at series of sessions during the conference organised by the SMIU.

Yundi Chen, secretary of the Party Committee, International Education School of the Hainan Normal University, said under their government’s policy of internationalisation and globalization of the higher education, the number of universities in China was on the rise; thus, it was also increasing the number of international students.

He said the foundation of the Sindh-Hainan Universities Forum was historic, which would help China and Pakistan to start mutual programmes relating to higher education and training in the two countries.

Prof Jianbao Li, president of Hainan University, Haikou, invited universities of all the provinces of Pakistan to send their students to the largest university of Hainan.

Xuebing Ling, deputy director of the international cooperation and exchange of Hainan University, Prof Ziju Yang, vice president, Hainan Tropical Ocean University, Prof Zuocong Chen of Hainan Tropical Ocean University, Lu Dan, president, Sanya University and his associates including Che Yi, Gao Yilan, and Li Hiyan, representing various disciplines and Zhijun Qing of Hainan Normal University’s journalism and communication school, gave presentations about their respective institutions.

They said the Chinese government; Hainan’s provincial government and universities themselves offered scholarships to foreign students at their institutions.

The audience was informed that more than 30,000 students were enrolled with the Hainan University alone.

In a presentation, an official of the Hainan Normal University said the university’s culture experience museum spread over around 4,500 square metres while its library boasted more than 157.5 million volumes.

The audience was informed that Chinese campuses had been opened up for international students since 1988 and at present students from the five continents were enrolled with those universities. Most of the Chinese universities, they added, had academic ties with universities in different countries.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2016