Chinese government encourages and supports domestic colleges and universities to carry out more cooperation with foreign counterparts, said Chinese State Councilor Chen Zhili here Tuesday.

In a meeting with visiting President of University of Michigan Mary Sue Coleman, Chen spoke highly of University of Michigan's efforts in promoting exchanges and cooperation with Chinese universities.

"Chinese colleges and universities should further enhance cooperation with foreign counterparts in such fields as jointly running schools and exchanging overseas students, in a bid to promote the reform and development of China's higher education," Chen said.

Earlier Tuesday, Coleman signed an agreement with China's prestigious Beijing University, launching a Joint Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences.

One of the program for the center is to apply Quantitative Social Science into a population survey, which is aimed at learning the living situation of Chinese families.

According to Xie Yu, an expert on population studies and one ofthe participants to the program, Beijing University and University of Michigan plan to conduct a survey every two years beginning from August 2006 when such survey will be carried out in central China's Henan and northeast China's Liaoning provinces.

In the two provinces with a combined population of 150 million people, about 10,000 families will be chosen as representative samples. Chinese and US experts will use data to picture these families' living situation, such as income, education, job and social security.

The survey will be a scientific record of Chinese people's living situation, which will be conducive for each individual to learning more specifically about the existing social problems and will provide data evidence for the government to set public policies, Xie said.

The joint program between the two universities "will enrich academic discourse and national policy in both countries, and at least as important, it will give us a fuller and more honest glimpse of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going," said Coleman at the signing ceremony.

Source: Xinhua