Case study 1: Tsinghua University (China)

• In Event: Strengthening University Sustainable Entrepreneurship: Critical Reflections on COVID-19 Crisis Management with Glocal Engagement

Proposal

Tsinghua University is a leading comprehensive research university in Beijing, China. In April 2021, Tsinghua jointly promoted with participants in the Global Forum of University Presidents the Tsinghua Consensus 2021 to build more open, more integrative, and more resilient universities for a sustainable future. This Consensus encapsulated lessons and experiences of Tsinghua and many universities across the world from combating the COVID-19 pandemic and other global challenges through sustainable entrepreneurship.

(1) This case study first discusses Tsinghua’s emergency strategies in crisis management in the ongoing pandemic with campus-closure in spring and summer 2020 and Tsinghua’s major glocal engagement with special reference to online education, pandemic research, and related public service.

Tsinghua’s main campus in Beijing has a 442-hectare campus operated like a small city with a residential community of 54,000 students and 9,900 households. Since January 2020, Tsinghua has closely worked with the national and municipal governments and local communities in emergency responses as well as ongoing preventions against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tsinghua deployed a comprehensive COVID-19 emergency response soon before China declared top-tier Public Health Emergency state and nationwide school closures in late January 2020. Then in early February 2020, Tsinghua was among the first residential university in China adopting emergency university-wide online teaching. Innovations in online learning reciprocated with those in the university’s digital strategy and global strategy.

(2) In the second part, this case study discusses major innovations in Tsinghua’s “new normal” strategies in post-crisis management. Since autumn 2020, Tsinghua altered the crisis state of university operation according to changes in pandemic state in Beijing, including whole-time blended learning for all domestic and international students and staff. The changes included temporary campus lockdown with most student on campus while most staff off-campus in May-June 2022.

The study discusses Tsinghua’s pandemic lessons and experiences in relation to Tsinghua’s three new 2030 world-class university building strategies put forward in December 2021, including a new global strategy. The study examines the notion university sustainable entrepreneurship in relation to crisis management, glocal partnership building, and digital transformation.

Author

• Zhou Zhong, Tsinghua University