On the occasion of the coming of the new year, OUC President Yang Zhijian and Secretary of the OUC Party Committee and Vice President Ruan Zhiyong sent their new year greetings to all staff and students of open universities across China, to friends from all walks of life who have been concerned for and supported the development of open universities, and to open university schoolmates at home and abroad. The following is the full text.

Dear colleagues, students and friends,

The unforgettable year of 2010 will soon end and the promising 2011 is coming.

On behalf of the Open University of China, we would like to take the opportunity to bid farewell to the old and usher in the new, extend our cordial greetings and best wishes to all the staff and students in the open university system and our schoolmates at home and abroad, and to express our heartfelt thanks and highest regards to friends from various circles who have long been supporting us. We wish you all a happy new year!

2010 has been a year of great significance in the history of the reform and development of education in China. The Party Central Committee and the State Council held the first National Conference on Education in the new century and put into force the National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020)(the Outline), which has made an overall plan for scientific development of education in China and started the new journey to strive from a big nation of education to a powerful nation of education, and from a big nation of human resources to a powerful nation of human resources. Open universities in China fully acted on the Scientific Outlook on Development and the Outline, taking into consideration the overall goal of building a national lifelong learning system and a learning society, which depends on deepening educational reform, enhancing connotation construction and focusing on efforts in building open universities so as to fundamentally achieve the goals stipulated in the 11th Five-Year Plan, positively carrying forward the work of constructing the top planning of open universities to lay a good foundation for building an advanced open university system with Chinese characteristics.

In this year, systematic construction of open universities has been continued thoroughly, and the cohesion of the whole system has been further improved. Work to assist the local open universities and to establish model local open universities has been getting on well and obtained outstanding achievements. Faced with the devastating earthquake and mud-rock flow disasters, open universities all over the country offered a hand to the open universities in both Qinghai Province's Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Zhouqu of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. They confronted all difficulties hand in hand, once again displaying the brotherly friendship among the open universities in China and their fine social image, enhancing the cohesion of the open university system and the students' sense of belonging.

Construction on teaching infrastructure has been effectively carried forward. Enrollment in open education has kept increasing steadily, specialty construction has been making progress, the teaching reform oriented to the learning characteristics of in-service adults has been further developed, and the quality of professional training has been improving. Directed to the construction demands of learning communities and learning cities, the open universities all over China are actively engaged in exploring the construction modes and operational mechanisms of public service platforms for lifelong learning as well as integration and sharing mechanisms for digital learning resources. New achievements in community education, new modes and new experiences of online training for official leaders have been extended throughout the country. The supporting role of the open university system in the construction of a learning society is becoming increasingly apparent.

2011 marks the beginning of the 12th Five-Year Plan. In the new year we will take Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of the Three Represents as our guide, earnestly practise the Scientific Outlook on Development, and implement the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. We will seize the opportunity and make good use of the favorable situation to achieve new goals in running open universities according to the requirements of the Outline. We will stimulate a new round of development in the coming series of reforms. We are determined to make greater contributions to social and economic development of the country by taking the reform and innovation as motivation, the improvement of professional cultivation as the core, the constructions of the information network platform, the learning resources and teaching team as the focus, and the reform of internal management system and operational mechanism as the guarantee.

A new journey carries hopes and opening fulfills dreams. As a new start in the new year, let's unite as one and blaze new trails with a pioneering spirit so as to write a new chapter for the reform and development of open universities in China and create an even better future for the cause of open education!

Wishing you all good health, success in your career, happiness at home and good luck in everything in the coming year! 

President Yang Zhijian

Ruan Zhiyong, secretary of the OUC Party Committee and vice president of the OUC

Yang Zhijian and Ruan Zhiyong
December 26th, 2010