Great Moments: Growing links to Asia

Building academic relations with China

On June 23, 1980, the UVic Board of Governors approved a proposed partnership agreement between UVic and East China Normal University (ECNU). The following May, President Howard Petch led a UVic delegation to Shanghai, where the agreement was signed — making UVic one of the first Canadian universities to establish formal relations with a Chinese university.

Also during that trip, at an extraordinary UVic ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Petch presented an honorary degree to the revered Mme. Soong Ching-Ling — wife of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founding father of nationalist China — recognizing her work “from improving the welfare of children, to elevating the status of women, to extending health care to such a large portion of humanity and to supporting the goal of World Peace.” The ceremony was Mme. Soong’s last public appearance; she died a few days later.

“In those early years, the UVic-ECNU collaboration was the largest such relationship between a Chinese university and one anywhere else in the world,” said UVic’s Dr. Jan Walls, former cultural attaché at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Under the auspices of this relationship, scores of faculty members and students participated in exchanges, workshops and summer institutes at ECNU, and English-language listening curriculum materials were developed that have since been used by tens of millions of Chinese students.

These events signalled the beginnings of a strong and continuing relationship between UVic and leading universities and organizations throughout Asia, and foreshadowed the establishment of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives in 1987.