After a roughly $30,000 trip to China this summer, Chancellor James Oblinger came back with high hopes for partnerships with Chinese Universities.

“I had decided in this summer period that I would go to China and take some deans with me,” Oblinger said.

He said after Research Triangle Park business leaders found out about the trip, they decided to take one of their own in hopes of building relationships, and met the Chancellor’s group in China several times.

A group of students from N.C. State were studying abroad at Zhejiang University as part of first-time program and the Chancellor and the deans met with them as well to talk about their experiences in China.

“I’m a business management major and I have a strong interest in China and business opportunities China has to offer,” Brian Mathis, a junior and participant in the five-week study abroad program, said.

Mathis said the only major difficulty was the language barrier, but he managed it with the help of a Chinese speaking TA.

“It’s really a great opportunity to experience another part of the world,” Mathis said.

He said although the American students were different from the Chinese students, something they shared was similar, which he couldn’t pinpoint. He said he made friends that he is still in contact with from China.

NCSU faculty led the classes, but faculty for Zheijang University led a cultural class for the students.

This trip to China with the Chancellor’s delegation was a continuation of an initiative the provost started, signing academic agreements with Chinese universities.

Zheijang, according to the Chancellor, is NCSU’s sister University, offering its students a mix of disciplines, with the addition of a medical school.

According to Terri Lomax, dean and associate vice chancellor of the graduate school who was part of the Chancellor’s delegation, the trip opened her eyes to a different experience.

“In China, everything is built on relationships, so [the trip] deepened our relationships with some universities and started relationships with others,” she said.

According to Oblinger, Chinese institutions want the same quality of education for their students as do American universities. 5,000 Chinese students were granted full rides to American universities and Oblinger said of all the universities his delegation visited, 1,400 of those students were going to come from them.

“This is a long-standing interest that I’ve had,” Oblinger said about international university partnerships. “It goes back to when I was a dean in agriculture and life sciences.”

He said as provost, he had an increasing interest with Japanese universities, although partnerships with China to this extent were not in his plan.

“In the world we live in today, there’s an international dimension,” Oblinger said.

He said Chinese students are the second largest group of international students at the University with 398 students, mainly in the statistics, chemistry and computer science departments. 85 percent, he said, are on assistantships.

“We will have working relationships with these institutions instead of just on paper,” Oblinger said. “We’ll be able to leverage that.”

He said these partnerships are an important part of the current globalization of the world.

“[UNC System President] Erskine Bowles told us, he said a long time ago when he ran the tsunami relief for President Bush and Clinton, he spent a year in that area … ‘I will never forget walking into a Chinese classroom, seeing students with laptops, studying math in English,'” he said.

According to Oblinger the language barrier has been much improved in recent years and that many Chinese students were speaking English fluently.