Dear alumni,

Peking University President Xu Zhihong attended a university presidents

conference at UC Berkeley between 6/20 and 6/22. PKU Alumni Association of

Northern California (PKUAANC) organized an alumni gathering in the evening of

6/22 and invited President Xu to speak on recent progress in PKU. Dr. Sikun

Lan, PUAASC president, attended the meeting and had a good discussion with

President Xu and Board of Directors and Executive Committee leaders of PKUAANC.

The following is Dr. Lan's account of President's speech.

Best regards,

PUAASC

6/25/2002

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President Xu has served as the President of Peking University for two and a

half years. The University received 300, 600, and 900 million RMB for the last

three years respectively. Teachers' salaries have increased greatly, many new

laboratory equipment has been upgraded, and university staff are motivated to

perform well. Now he has submitted applications for continuous 600 million RMB

per year funding from the government for PKU's continuous growth.

From the official evaluation of university achievements, Peking University

remains to be the leader among universities in China. For example, the

Education Ministry recently announced the National Key Academic Disciplines

(Zhong4Dian3Xue2Ke1). PKU was No. 1 among universities in China with 81.

(Tsinghua was second with 49. Fudan had 44. Zhe-Da and Nan-Kai each had 20

plus.) This demonstrated that Peking University had outstanding achievements in

many disciplines as a comprehensive university.

There have been many programs that overseas PKU alumni can visit PKU and give

talks. It has been several years CASBEA (Biology) students were invited to give

talks every summer. This year, 100 CASPEA (Physics) students were invited to

PKU for a conference.

President Xu said although he was pleased with the quantities of scientific

papers published by the university professors and researchers, he emphasized

more on the quality. There were six papers published on Science journal and

Nature journal authored by PKU professors.

He said the university encouraged senior undergraduate students to participate

in their professors' research projects as part of their training. He promoted

academic freedom and respected each professor's independent academic opinion.

He emphasized on the cross-discipline collaboration. There have been over 10

such research centers, for example, the Theoretical Biology Research Center and

the Public Health Research Center. The Theoretical Biology Research Center

consists of professors from the Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Medical

Schools. And the Public Health Research Center consists of professors from the

Medical , Economics, and Law Schools.

The communication channel between the university heads and students were open.

The online "President's Mailbox" operated smoothly. Every month, he and his

Vice Presidents received a monthly summary of the messages to the Mailbox and

the President or a Vice President will have an open forum with student

representatives every month. There has been no disruption in the university's

normal operation.

He said that the university started two trial first year classes in which

students deferred their choices of majors until their second year. They were

also discussion possibilities for first year students to freely change their

majors.

PKU established a graduate school and a medical research center in Shenzhen.

PKU professors and medical school doctors go to Shenzhen by rotation. Another

PKU branch may be open in Qingdao for software, business, and oceanology

disciplines.

President Xu expressed his best wishes to our Southern California alumni. He

apologized for not being able to visit us this time. He asked Dr. Lan for phone

numbers of a few alumni in Southern California he met during his trips to LA in

2000 and 2001. President Xu looked very enthusiastic and confident as he always

was. He grew a lot more gray hairs on his challenging job. Dr. Lan expressed

warm wishes to him and to our Alma Mater. He provided President Xu a copy of

news reports on the China News Daily about our 2002 convention attended by 150

Peking University and Beijing Medical University alumni.

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