5月22日，澳大利亚颇具影响力的全国性报刊《澳大利亚人报》（The Australian）刊发了题为A bold step along the new Silk Road 的报道，作者为澳中商会前首席执行官、现任澳大利亚新南威尔士大学中国战略及发展部主任Laurie Pearcey，文章中阐述了新南威尔士大学加入“新丝绸之路大学联盟”的重要战略意义及中澳高等教育的未来合作发展。与此同时，新华网国际频道、哈萨克斯坦驻华使馆官网等媒体也对联盟成立予以重点关注和报道，充分肯定了联盟成立对于国际高等教育合作的重要战略意义。现将《澳大利亚人报》（The Australian）报道全文转发如下：

 

A bold step along the new Silk Road

What on earth is the relationship between Tony Abbott’s decision to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the fate of the Coalition’s university fee deregulation package in the Senate?

The answer may surprise you.

Designed to address the forecast multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure shortfall across the region, the US$100 billion ($125bn) AIIB is the centrepiece of China’s ambitious ‘One Belt One Road’ foreign policy initiative.

With China’s status as a major political and economic power reverberating everywhere from Israeli technology companies and Pakistani gas pipelines to the Pilbara’s iron ore deposits, Beijing is no longer content simply being an actor in old world geopolitics.

With the Silk Road Economic Belt weaving through Eurasia, and the Maritime Silk Road spreading across South-East Asia and into Australia, China sees this as critical to consolidating growing regional economic interdependence, and core to its political and trade diplomacy priorities.

So what does this mean for Tony Abbott’s stalled higher education reforms.

Putting the AIIB to one side, China is separately investing more than $50bn in a New Silk Road Fund designed to build capacity and further integrate the regional economy.

The region’s higher education community is rapidly answering Beijing’s call to action.

Led by China’s prestigious Xi’an JiaoTong University, this month sees the birth of the Universities Alliance of the New Silk Road at the symbolic start and finish of the historical and modern day incarnations of the famed ancient trade route.

The new alliance captures over 60 universities spanning the emerging powerhouses of Asia, the Middle East and Russia as well as some of the world’s great research-intensive including the University of Liverpool, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Milan Polytechnic and the University of NSW.

Aiming to do what no institution would be capable of doing independently, this alliance recognises that super regional connectivity to China will be vital to the evolution of the research and innovation ecosystems of the future.

The contrast could not be starker between the political priorities governing China and Australia’s higher education and research systems.

As political inertia and a deadlocked Senate continue to plague Australia’s higher education funding, the nation’s higher education institutions must chart a course to Asia to future-proof their competitiveness.

Australia finds itself in the unfortunate position of enjoying the world’s third highest GDP per capita and languishing at the bottom of the OECD for some of the lowest levels of investment in public higher education.

China has embarked on the largest investment in research and development in human history, and the OECD forecasts China will overtake the US as the world’s largest spender on science and technology by the end of the decade.

The cold mathematics of this scenario indicate that Australian universities cannot continue to reinvest fees from large numbers of Chinese international students to subsidise research activity — as Asian universities assume stronger positions in rankings and the value proposition of a degree from Asian institutions will increase dramatically.

Unless Australian universities become part of Asia’s rise, their historic competitiveness will be eroded.

Australia’s very notion of what constitutes the region needs to shift if we are to fully grasp and take advantage of its promise.

The One Belt One Road initiative will see hundreds of billions of dollars of capital fuelling new development in a new super region across all points of the compass in a vast expanse from Hobart to Rotterdam and Nairobi to Vladivostok.

The new skills and technology required to support this super regional economy in a way that does not deplete ecosystems or destroy national balance sheets represents an unprecedented challenge.

Australia’s task is to suspend the parochialism of its current higher education debate before it plunges into the depths of another Canberra winter, and take that bold first step along the New Silk Road.

文章大意如下：

随着中国作为政治和经济大国的地位在世界各地日益明显：从以色列的技术公司、巴基斯坦的石油管道到皮尔巴拉的铁矿，北京已经不仅仅满足于在传统的世界地缘政治中有所作为。丝路经济带横贯欧亚，海上丝绸之路连通东南亚直抵澳大利亚，中国将这一战略看作是巩固其不断增长的地区经济互通的核心，以及政治和贸易外交的重中之重。

若不提及亚投行，中国正投入500多亿美金至新丝路专项基金中，旨在构建实力并提升地区经济一体化。该地区的高等教育界也迅速响应北京的这一行动号召。由中国著名学府西安交通大学发起，本月将在著名的古代贸易之路的历史起点和历史和现代交汇的终点见证丝绸之路大学联盟的成立。

新的联盟将囊括来自实力与日剧增的亚洲、中东和俄罗斯以及一些世界知名研究型大学的60多所大学，包括利物浦大学、香港科技大学、米兰理工大学和新南威尔士大学。旨在合众之力，该联盟提出中国与多个地区的连接对于发展未来研究和创新生态系统至关重要。

澳大利亚的高等教育机构须连通亚洲以在未来提升其竞争性。纵观人类历史，中国已经在研发领域做了最大的投入。根据经合组织的预测，在十年内中国在科技领域的投入将超过美国。这表明澳大利亚大学不能继续依赖大量中国留学生的学费来补贴科学研究，因为亚洲的大学在世界排名中也占据了较强的位置，亚洲大学颁发得学位含金量也会不断提高。除非澳大利亚大学加入亚洲崛起的战略中，否则其历史竞争性将会受损。摆在澳大利亚眼前的任务就是跳出当前关于高等教育的争论的狭小眼界，朝着新丝绸之路沿线迈出新的一步。