The 2026 China – Russia Conference on Development of Education and Industry Integration has begun its work in the city of Qingdao, People's Republic of China.
This year’s participants discuss the interaction between education and industry. Vice-Rector for Education Marina Potapova has presented SUSU’s achievements in terms of interaction with industrial partners on the example of “VirtUM” and “Digital Ural” educational centres, and has shared on our university’s practices of opening industrial faculties (Faculty of Mechatronics and Robotics, and Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Technology), as well as on the experience of implementation of joint academic programmes together with universities in China.
“Friendship between our countries today is possible only on the grounds of technological sovereignty, joint engineering solutions, and grants-based interaction in science. China is demonstrating phenomenal successes in digitalization, artificial intelligence and platform solutions. Russia has a most powerful fundamental school and strong mathematics, physics and engineering training to offer,” noted Marina Potapova. “Today, we propose a transition from occasional lectures and seminars to network programmes of a new type — not only in economics, but also in the fields of artificial intelligence, big data processing, and “green” technologies. This means that a student from Russia and a student from China could conduct a joint project and defend it simultaneously before professors at universities in Qingdao and in Chelyabinsk.”
Our colleagues enthusiastically welcomed a proposal to create joint research laboratories in the format of a quadrilateral interaction: a Russian university – an industrial partner from the Russian Federation, and a university from the People's Republic of China – an industrial partner from the People's Republic of China. Linyi University and Shenyang University of Technology expressed their readiness to support such format of interaction.
The total of more than 30 universities and 50 enterprises took part in this event. Within the frameworks of the Cross Years of Russian-Chinese Cooperation in Education announced by the Government, such initiatives help significantly increase the number of educational projects, including those involving industrial partners. Currently, more than 80 thousand students are engaged in joint academic programmes of our two countries, and their number should reach 100 thousand by 2030.