Beijing, 16 July 2025 - To implement the 2024 -2035 Master Plan on Building China into a Leading Country in Education and its Three-Year Action Plan, and to advance the construction of a digitally-empowered ubiquitous and accessible lifelong learning system, the Open University of China (OUC) invited Professor ZHENG Qinghua, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Secretary of the CPC Tongji University Committee to give a lecture “AI-Empowered Innovation and Development in Education”. The session was chaired by OUC Vice President FAN Xianrui.
The lecture centred on the theme of AI-empowered educational innovation. With strategic vision, scholarly rigour and real-world examples, Academician ZHENG demonstrated why AI is indispensable for shaping new educational models and for driving scientific and industrial transformation. He outlined many practical steps, including a “teacher–machine–student” co-learning paradigm, which provided methodological guidance for AI-driven reform and the digital transformation of education.
Academician ZHENG underscored the need to maximise AI’s positive impact while adhering to the principle of “technology for good”. Educators should respect the intrinsic laws of education and remain steadfast in fostering virtue through education. He called for bold experimentation in pedagogy, technological tools and content delivery to realise the vision in which “humans possess human intelligence, machines possess machine intelligence, each excels in its own intelligence, and all intelligences coexist in harmony”.
During the interactive session, Academician ZHENG and OUC staff discussed how AI can effectively underpin the construction of a lifelong-learning system and enhance teaching evaluation. After the discussion, Vice President FAN praised the lecture and encouraged the university to use it as a catalyst for deeper reflection on the mission of moral education and innovation in the digital era, to deepen the integration of AI with teaching and learning, and to open a new chapter in the high-quality development of OUC.
Written by YU Qijing, DU Qian
Photos by ZHUGE Huanyu