Dear colleagues and students,I would,on behalf of the college, like to extend our warm welcome and sincere congratulations to all the students coming from different parts of the country and from other parts of the world. We welcome you to the place where more than 5000 previous students enjoyed their life and study. We congratulate you to step on a new stage of your academic career and to usher in a new chapter in your lifetime.

Like our students, the College of Public Administration is young and vigorous, gaining impetus with the development of our country and the rejuvenation of the nation. Through the joint efforts of our teachers and students in the past 18 years, the discipline of Public Administration ranks in the A category among its kind in all the universities of our country. The College has a strong teaching and research team, with many of them enjoy quite a influence both in domestic and abroad. All of our faculty members have PhD degree, and over 80% of them are Professors and Associate Professors. The College of Public Administration can confer PhD degree in the discipline of Public Administration and possess the postdoctoral research center. It can recruit both Master’s and PhD candidates in the sub-disciplines as Administrative Management, Land Resource Management, E-government, and Non-traditional Safety. The Public Affairs Management at undergraduate level is the featured specialty recognized by the Ministry of Education of China. It ranked first successively for many years according to the Evaluation of Chinese Universities. The college is now moving towards the grand goal of building world-class discipline. As the best of your peers, all the students here have obtained outstanding achievements. We believe you are here to realize your dream and you will have a bright future.

People engaged in Public Administration share the common desire to cultivate themselves and lead the world. Therefore, we must think about the issues in the coming years as how to perfect the personality, build-up the body, and achieve success in learning, and how to remain true to one’s original aspiration, to enhance one’s responsibility and to serve the country.

We are living in a great era. Looking domestically, it is the time when the Chinese government is adjusting its economic structure, transforming its mode of production, streamlining administration, delegating power and optimizing services. Looking globally, we are facing a world full of value disputes, trade frictions, ethnic rivalries, poverty and terrorism, and human beings are in need of more public goods. China has proposed new solutions to those problems: Belt & Road Initiative, shared development. Under these circumstances, we should take our responsibilities and make our contributions.

Our university provides a unique atmosphere for the growth of our students. Our motto, “Virtue, Knowledge, Truth, Originality” reflects not only the values upheld by the university, but also the requirements casted on the students. By advocating “virtue”, the university initiated cultural quality education and becomes the banner in this filed among the universities in China. Besides, it carried out among teachers and students the projects of practicing the core values of higher education in new China under the leading of the Communist Party of China, and witnessed the emerging of a number of hero groups such as Huang Qun, Hu Jiwei. By advocating “knowledge”, our university owns more national laboratories and national big science projects than any other universities under the Ministry of Education; it set up a complete discipline cultivation system based on the combination of general education and specialty education, which lays a solid foundation for students to build up profound knowledge. By advocating “truth”, the university strives to follow the rules of education, respects knowledge and talents, and gains a comprehensive strength among the best of domestic universities. The rigorous study of students has become a common practice, following the example of academician Luo Jun who has been studying the gravity constant for 30 years. By advocating “originality”, the university ranks top for the number of the national grand prize and outstanding entrepreneurial talents; we should not only write knowledge on books, but also put it into practice, striving to fulfill the promise of serving the society and making innovation and entrepreneurship our business card.

Honored as the cradle for leaders and the think tank for the government, our college places ardent expectations to everybody here. Our teachers take the responsibility not only to pass knowledge, teach lessons and solve problems, but also to share with you passion, innovative mind and critical spirit. We hope that you can have lofty ideal and firm belief, focus on the major problems facing China and the human society, be proactive in learning and practice, strengthen exchanges with the students at different levels and from different countries, enhance continuously your own influence. We hope that every one of you can play your strength, apply what you have learned to the practice, and make outstanding contribution to the well-being of the people as well as the development of the society.

Broader is the river view with the high tide, and higher hangs the sail while the wind blows right. We hope that our students can cherish the time, gain full experiences with the fun of knowledge acquisition, the joy of ability enhancement, the happiness of quality improvement, and the fineness of personality shaping, and become the virtuous and talented mainstay for the society as soon as possible.

Sincerely yours,

Prof. Xu Xiaodong

Dean of CPA