Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng pledged continuing support for local higher education. He was speaking at the University Presidents Forum this morning in Fudan as a part of the hundredth university celebrations for the local university.
"Shanghai will contribute 21 percent of its fiscal income this year to the development of higher education," the mayor said.
Describing the close cooperative relationship between Fudan and Shanghai as "a honeymoon", Han said the honeymoon has been sweet for the past 15 years and it has not ended yet.
Citing Fudan's new Wujiaochang Campus for an example, Han said the city government has never hesitated on the decision to reserve the 1-million-square-meters of land for Fudan.  The land, which is being offered free of charge to the university, has a market value of 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion), he noted.
Responding to his promise of more support for Fudan in finance and policy, Fudan president Wang Shenghong gave his heart-felt appreciations and described it the best gift possible from the government for Fudan's centennial birthday.
In Han's keynote speech, the mayor said the Shanghai government thinks higher of higher education than of city development and has been paying great attention to this sector.
The efforts have been paying off as the number of local universities has grown from 49 of 1980 to the current 59, while the number of students on campus has soared from 80,000 to nearly 500,000.
Having achieved a larger education scale, the city has now shifted its support from that of only initial capital input to that of policy-making, he said, with the development of a university being incorporated into its nearby community and industrial parks.
In conclusion, the mayor said the topic of the Interaction between City Development and the University is a matter of endless discussion.