China – Beijing
Team Finland Knowledge's key aim in Beijing is to provide higher education institutions and the wider education sector with considered and up-to-date information on developments in China's education and science policy. Cooperation works best when Finland understands both the opportunities China offers and the challenges and risks involved.
Olli Suominen has more than twenty years' experience of working with China through his research and professional roles. He completed a doctorate on China's education policy at the University of Turku in 2021. Before moving to Beijing, he worked at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs as the desk officer for China.
olli.suominen(a)gov.fi
+86 138 109 924 07
Olli Suominen on LinkedIn
Website of the Embassy in Beijing
Embassy in Beijing on LinkedIn
Current knowledge of China offers Finland new opportunities
Team Finland Knowledge's key goals in Beijing are to keep Finnish higher education institutions up to date on developments in China and to promote partnerships. Team Finland Knowledge supports the interests of Education Finland member companies and represents the Finnish education sector in Mongolia, the Finnish Embassy's country of non-resident ambassador.
China has invested heavily in centrally directed RDI activities. These investments have made it a major power in science and research. Indexes that measure the quality of frontier research show that China has become a rival to the United States in many key STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in just a few decades. China's broad national research system carries out cutting-edge work across many disciplines. This creates synergies where advances in one field help drive progress in others.
To stay at the forefront of education and science, Finland needs to follow developments in China closely. Finland also needs to choose the fields where cooperation is possible within the challenges and risks that China presents. China and Finland share development goals in sectors such as the environment and health. In addition, China has system-level development goals that cut across sectors. These also offer Finland opportunities for making a meaningful contribution. For example, relatively weak links between universities and industry have made it harder for China to turn basic or applied research into practical innovations and technologies.
China's growing investment in vocational higher education has also created a wealth of opportunities for Finnish organisations. While the field is fairly saturated in the coastal megacities, opportunities for education and research cooperation are emerging in the second-tier cities. These cities are major inland centres of education, science and economic acitivity.
Working with China while recognising the challenges
Cooperation with China brings opportunities, but also many challenges and risks that people in the field need to understand. State-level espionage and influence activities can make cooperation difficult. Parts of China's higher education sector show a weak commitment to established principles of open and ethical science. China's push for scientific and technological self-sufficiency also means that cooperation is not always seen as mutually beneficial. These developments have helped drive the growing focus in Western countries on what is known as responsible internationalisation, developed largely in response to challenges in working with China.
For education and training companies, China can be a demanding market because of cultural and language differences, a strict regulatory environment and rapid competition from Chinese businesses. Even so, some opportunities remain, for example in school camps and early childhood education and care.
Mongolia offers only limited opportunities for Finnish organisations. However, there is some scope for deeper cooperation in education and research in the mining and forestry sectors and in student recruitment.