Universities confident about US-China future
An artist's impression of the second phase of Duke Kunshan University.
Despite the ongoing trade war, China-US joint-venture universities in China seem confident about such educational cooperation programs.
After New York University Shanghai began constructing its second campus in Qiantan in the Pudong New Area in May, Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan in neighboring Jiangsu Province also broke ground recently on the second phase of its campus.
Covering more than 153,000 square meters, the project is scheduled for completion around the end of 2021 and will more than double the size of its existing campus.
Once phase two is complete, the university will have 26 new classrooms and 18 to 22 new laboratories, as well as a new library, sports complex and residence halls for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students.
The campus will also be able to accommodate 2,000 undergraduate students, 500 to 800 graduate students and 800 employees.
In addition to phase two, whose green coverage ratio will be 35 percent, work has also officially begun on Duke Kunshan Gardens, which will cover 288,540 square meters and include a picturesque lake and wetland. Designed to capture the spirit of a traditional Kunshan water town, the garden is expected to open in June 2021 and provide students, faculty and other visitors with a sense of serenity and inspiration.
Started in 2013 with graduate students, Duke Kunshan University welcomed its second class of 325 undergraduate students last week. The young scholars include 225 from the Chinese mainland, 12 from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and 88 international students from across six continents. It received the first batch of 259 undergraduates last year and plans to increase the annual enrolment to 500 year by year.
“The onset of phase two construction is testimony to the fact that Duke Kunshan has achieved full liftoff and is well on its way to becoming a high-caliber global university,” said Denis Simon, its executive vice chancellor.
He said the university had not been affected by the current US-China situation as its staff and students have been traveling between the two countries regularly although some Chinese students and visiting scholars in other universities were reported to have encountered visa problems that stopped them from visiting the US.
As its first class of undergraduates will begin to rotate to the Duke University campus in the US next year, Simon said Duke Kunshan was in regular communication with the US embassy, the US consulate in Shanghai and China's educational authorities, to make sure everything is okay.
“Even if some tensions exist, the reality is that at the people-to-people level and projects like DKU, we continue to grow and prosper and have a very optimistic view of the future,” he said.
“On general Sino-American cooperation, our sense is that the relations in the past 40 years periodically had some bumps, but the bumps have not undermined the basic underpinning of the collaboration between the two countries.”
Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for government relations and public affairs at Duke University, which set up DKU with China’s Wuhan University and the government of Kushan, said he was excited to see DKU grow into such a vibrant university.
He said collaborations between Duke and its Chinese partners, including the DKU program, had not been affected by politics.
“Duke is a global university, and we believe that education and research should not have boundaries and borders,” he said. “Politics is always something you have to pay attention to, but we will continue to be focused on our mission that is the most important to us — education, research, service, having an impact and developing the skills and talent of students at DKU and Duke Universities."
Undergraduate Social Lounge
Community center lobby
Sports complex
Phase two of the campus
