On November 20th 2018, distinguished scholars from Tsinghua’s Schwarzman College paid a visit to the University of Electronic Science and Technology’s School of Management and Economics. These scholars hail from different top world universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of California, Birmingham, Pennsylvania, among others. These students were from the US, Chile, Panama, UK, just to name a few.

To welcome them were several PhD, Masters, and undergraduate international and Chinese students of the UESTC’s School of Management and Economics and School of Public Administration. We were divided into 6 groups. Each group was a good mix of 6 to 8 students; half UESTC students, half Schwarzman scholars.

The main topic of the meeting was the Belt and Road initiative. Alongside this, discussions on the differences between Chongqing, Beijing, and Chengdu was covered. After these topics were exhausted, the groups were permitted to chat about other topics. Thus you could find the students all having a great time, laughing, joking, and listening to one another’s ideas on various topics such as food, travels, music, Sino-international relations, and learning about one another’s countries and cultures.

At the end of the discussions, one person from each group was chosen to make a summary of their group discussions. Half of these were Schwarzman scholars, and half were UESTC SME students. Also, one of the UESTC students introduced his Chinese learning website for foreigners.

Overall, the meeting was very successful. The meeting was a great opportunity to learn and discuss with individuals from various cultural and educational backgrounds as well as create long lasting friendship.