Recently, Chairwoman Anne Elizabeth Ely, Vice Chairman Peter Ely, and Trustee Ling Thompson of the Sino-British Fellowship Trust (SBFT) visited China to attend the ceremony to re-sign the "Sino-British Fellowship Trust Project" agreement. They also attended three seminars held in the eastern, northwestern, and southwestern areas, featuring scholars who formerly participated in the project. After a comprehensive review of the academic activities of the scholars since their return to China, they gave an assessment of the success of the project thus far.

The re-signing ceremony was held at the Wukesong Building of the OUC Press on the morning of May 30, 2011. OUC President Yang Zhijian, Vice Secretary Zhang Shaogang, and China Scholarship Council (CSC) Vice Secretary-General Yang Xinyu attended the ceremony. The rights and obligations of both parties during the next five years were specified in the renewed agreement. The SBFT and CSC will continue to sponsor three to five scholars from the national Radio and TV university system (giving priority to scholars from the western and remote areas) to study at British universities for three to four months.

Thirty-two scholars from the OUC and 14 provincial Radio and TV universities attended the three seminars hosted separately by the OUC, Shaanxi Radio and TV University, and Guangxi Radio and TV University. At the seminars, the scholars demonstrated their achievements in work and research after they returned to China. The most outstanding feature was that they were able to integrate the advanced concepts and practical experience of British distance education with that of Chinese distance education, and continued to explore and innovate in their own teaching, management and scientific research, contributing to the development of China's distance education.

Chairwoman Anne Elizabeth Ely and other delegates of the SBFT listened to the reports carefully, conversed with the scholars at length, and highly recognized their diligence during their study in the UK and their achievements back home.

Background Information:

Since the official initiation of the "Sino-British Fellowship Trust Project" jointly sponsored by the SBFT and the CSC in 1999, it has been run for the past twelve years by the CSC and OUC. Fifty-nine people engaged in teaching, management and research have been sent to British universities for study and research, including Hull University, the Open University, the University of Nottingham, Sheffield Hallam University, Newcastle University, the University of Southampton, the University of East London, the University of London, and the University of Leicester. The OUC has compiled two books called The Collected Work on Practice and Research into Sino-British Distance Education (І) and The Collected Work on Practice and Research into Sino-British Distance Education (ІІ), which contain the reports and academic dissertations of the scholars from the first nine sessions of the project.

Dai Jing, the OUC