Dr. Liu Jinghui (right) with AIT President Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai
visit to Thailand and AIT for the first time, the secretary-general
said CSC would consider the institute’s proposal to support
post-doctoral fellows and visiting scholars from China to do joint
research at AIT, and indicated a willingness to increase support for
doctoral students under CSC Scholarship from 3 to 4 years.Mr. Zhou Gaoyu, First Secretary, Embassy of China to Thailand,
Bangkok, also attended the meeting. Mr. Li Yanguang, Director, Division
of International Students Affairs, CSC, and Ms. Li Xin, Deputy
Director, Division of Asian and African Affairs, accompanied the
secretary-general.The CSC delegation visiting from Beijing was warmly welcomed to the
institute by AIT President Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai for in-depth
discussions with senior level institute officials.
“We are happy to cooperative with AIT, as we know it is a highly
international institution and Thailand is one of our target countries
in Asia,” Dr. Liu said. CSC has existing cooperation agreements with
200 universities around the world, including AIT. “Our visit is to know
situation of education in Thailand, and to understand AIT
operations.”
The China Scholarship Council is a non-profit institution with legal
person status affiliated with the Ministry of Education. Dr. Liu
explained that its mission is to select and support Chinese citizens to
study abroad and to facilitate international students to study in
China. Last year the council aided 85,000 Chinese to further their
education in 88 countries and 37,000 foreign nationals to attend
Chinese universities, she said.
CSC currently supports AIT with 10-14 scholarships each year. But the
secretary-general noted that AIT is not well known in China and
needs to provide more information to universities in her country
to attract larger numbers of graduate students.
President Worsak requested CSC’s assistance to have Chinese nationals
as AIT faculty members, saying this was a good way to increase research
collaboration and academic exchanges with Chinese universities. Moving
forward, AIT will submit to CSC some draft revisions to the current
partnership, for eventual agreement.
