Interview: Global academic cooperation vital amid geopolitical tensions, says KCL president

The returned students with international education experience are "a very strong stabilizing link," as they can jointly build common grounds among societies that would be ignorant of and estranged from each other.

LONDON, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Global academic cooperation is vital amid growing geopolitical tensions, and China will remain an important participant in tackling global challenges, said the president of King's College London (KCL).

"At a time when one has to politely acknowledge that there are increasing tensions at a geopolitical level, we, the universities, have an even more important role in maintaining those links and ensuring that the flow of the younger generation continues," Shitij Kapur, president and vice-chancellor of KCL, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

"Because ... they will inherit the future. We want to make sure that they at least have a balanced understanding of each other rather than a very myopic understanding as one might have if one only knows someone at a distance," Kapur added.

Kapur believes that health care and climate are the two important areas for global academic collaboration "because our collective fates are tied together."

"Unless we help everyone around the world to solve the climate, the globe's climate will tank together. Countries have every reason to collaborate, and I hope we will be able to find ways to continue collaborations around secular areas such as climate and health care," the president said.

For instance, KCL has established cooperation with Peking University Health Science Center, and the two are now launching a joint course in biomedical engineering in Shenzhen. Kapur said since 2018 KCL has published over 3,600 academic papers in collaboration with Chinese universities.

The talent pool size and technological and scientific advancement make China an important participant in tackling global challenges, Kapur said, adding that the collaborations between KCL and Chinese universities are vital.

"Close to nine-tenths of our work is collaborations with other universities, and almost half of that is international collaborations. These are now the bedrock of science. The really dramatic evolution in that is the integration of Chinese science into what I would say mainstream English language science before that," Kapur said.

Over the past decade, interactions with Chinese institutions have surged dramatically, Kapur said, thanks to the rise of electronic media and the Internet, and most importantly, "the rise in the quality of science being done in China."

Kapur agrees that international academic cooperation could be seen as a bridge builder, adding that the returned students with international education experience are "a very strong stabilizing link," as they can jointly build common grounds among societies that would be ignorant of and estranged from each other.

"To me, the exchange of students across our universities, partnerships between universities, are precisely the things that keep that bedrock of a relationship going, even though there is competition transition and tension along so many other things," Kapur added. "That remains my hope."