On 16 September 2021, the 2021 Indonesian University Presidents’ Seminar, hosted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (MoECRT) of Indonesia, was held online. Mr. Djauhari Oratmangun, Ambassador of Indonesia to China, Mr. Nizam, Director General of Higher Education, Research and Technology of MoECRT, Ms. Paristiyanti Nurwardani, Secretary of the Directorate General of Higher Education, Research and, Technology of MoECRT, and Mr. Fasli Jalal, Vice President of Cooperation of Private University Indonesia-China attended the seminar. Mr. Chen Dehai, Secretary-General of the ASEAN-China Centre (ACC), attended and addressed the opening ceremony. 

Ms. Paristiyanti stated that with the deepening of people-to-people and educational exchanges between Indonesia and China, the two sides should further enhance the cooperation in the field of higher education within the framework of Indonesia-China high-level people-to-people exchanges mechanism.

Mr. Fasli Jalal said that facing the serious challenges posed by COVID-19, Indonesia and China should strengthen cooperation in distance education, promote the sharing of information and knowledge in various fields, and give full play to the potential of the cooperation among universities.

Mr. Djauhari Oratmangun highly appreciated the efforts made by ACC to intensify the cooperation between Chinese and Indonesian universities. He stated that China has long been an important economic partner of Indonesia and the two sides have achieved remarkable results in the fields of education, culture and society in recent years. He hoped that this seminar would enable Indonesia to have a deeper understanding towards Chinese universities, boost extensive cooperation between the universities of both sides, and build more top world-class universities.

According to Mr. Chen Dehai, Indonesia is an important member state of ASEAN, as well as a close and friendly neighbor of China. Strengthening educational exchanges and cooperation is of great significance to closer people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and the sustainable and sound development of the bilateral relations. ACC is ready to play its role as a bridge to fully cooperate with Indonesian education departments,Embassy of Indonesia to China and other organisations to contribute to Indonesia-China educational exchanges and cooperation. 

Mr. Nizam suggested that enterprise-university links should be included in the exchanges and cooperation of higher education between the two sides, so as to fully tap the potential of the students and prepare them for future careers.

Tian Jin University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, and Sun Yat-Sen University respectively gave presentation on cooperation channels of international students, characteristic disciplines, and scholarships programmes, and academic researches. The representative from Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB) University of Indonesia made a keynote speech on Sustaining Internationalisation of Higher Education: Sharing Best Practice-Universities in Indonesia and China.

This seminar brought together elite universities and high-quality resources of Indonesia and China. It successfully provided a platform for institutes of higher learning from the both sides to draw upon experience of each other, build consensus, and deepen cooperation.