China’s Ministry of Education recently announced a list of new majors (in 2021) to be included in the catalog of undergraduate programs in higher education institutions. Among the 37 new majors (departments), engineering related programs occupy the lion’s share. About one third of the new majors are in AI and electronic engineering, including intelligent surveillance engineering, intelligent mining engineering and quantum information science.
Since the end of 2020, the president of China, Xi Jinping, has repeatedly stressed the need to strengthen national science and technology forces, to enhance the capabilities of controlling the industrial supply chain and to solve the problem of “being strangled” in key technologies.
In addition to AI, China is also trying to accelerate the development of its own semiconductor industrial talents. 2020 saw the establishment of an Integrated Circuits University in Nanjing, also known as the first “chip university” in China. In early 2021, Anhui University is also setting up an IC (integrated circuit) college. The Shenzhen University of Technology in Guangdong Province established the School of Integrated Circuits in collaboration with China’s leading semiconductor company SMIC in June of this year.
Source: Radio Free Asia, June 30, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/5-06302021102334.html