Leading a delegation of 5 including International Affairs Vice President Wan-chin Tai, President Flora Chia-I Chang went to Guangzhou University for the Opening Ceremony of the Joint Construction Engineering Research Center for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control and signed academic exchange agreement with Guangzhou University President Jian-she Yu. Thus Guangzhou University has become TKU’s 19th sister university in the Mainland.

President Flora Chia-I Chang said that although TKU had academic cooperation with about 20 Mainland universities, the agreement was the first for a long-term technical cooperation with Mainland China. She believed through both sides’ endeavors, it would be possible to benefit each side in natural disaster prevention and reduction. In his speech, President Jian-she Yu expressed that the Joint Research Center would fully develop research resources, take good advantage of both sides’ excellent research teams, take large-scaled constructions as practical research targets to develop and consummate construction theories and technologies for disaster prevention and control. TKU Secretary-General Ting-chi Hsu pointed out that for the first time both sides across the Strait had set up a joint research center. In the future there would be more such cooperative projects and more exchanges.

Since 1992, TKU gradually signed academic exchange agreements with Mainland universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shanxi, Harbin, etc. Wan-chin Tai indicated that TKU would have further cooperation agreement with Zhejiang University in the near future. TKU would also cooperate with government’s Mainland policies to promote various academic exchanges continually. ( ~Dean X. Wang )