In response to the 2023 Earth Day initiative, the International Cultural Exchange School (ICES) of Donghua University (DHU) successfully held the Chinese Bridge "China-US Cultural Cloud Forum", an environment and climate themed exchange event. Mr. Lu Zhou, director of Chinese teaching at ICES and director of the Chinese Language Center, DHU, presided over the event.
The event specially invited Dr. He Ping, President of the International Fund for China’s Environment (IFCE), to give a lecture on the theme of "Environmental and Climate Challenges and Sino-US Cooperation" and exchange views with Chinese and foreign youths. Dr. He graduated from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. In 1996, he co-founded the IFCE in Washington, USA with 30 environmental experts. The IFCE is one of the important forces to promote environmental exchanges between China and the United States. In the lecture, Dr. He shared with the students the major events concerning environment and climate that he knew or actually participated in. He talked about the formulation of international climate policies, the cooperation between the US and China in international climate agreements and in the field of low-carbon technologies, international and regional exchanges and cooperation, challenges and further development directions. He also focused on the new progress of China and the United States in terms of technological change and environmental protection equipment upgrades, as well as a series of popularization and education activities of environmental protection carried out by the IFCE, and encouraged Chinese and foreign students to participate in environmental protection volunteer activities and environmental issue research.
More than 60 international students signed up for this online forum. All the students were divided into six groups, and each group had two Chinese students who participated in the discussion. The students introduced, around the topic of "environment and climate", their own country's environmental and climate status and the measures taken. The Chinese students introduced local environmental protection practices based on cases such as "garbage classification", "bicycle sharing" and "Ant Forest". The Chinese and foreign students also looked forward to future development and cooperation. Each group selected a student representative to make a summary statement, which Dr. He gave professional comments on and provided suggestions for in-depth thinking.
The event broadened the international vision of the Chinese and foreign students in the subject area and improved their ability to analyze international affairs from multiple angles. With the students actively participating in the discussion and interaction, the event was a success. This forum is one of a series of activities carried out in response to the theme of this year's Earth Day “Earth4All". The students will subsequently practice the green concept of sustainable development through poster design, waste utilization and other activities.
