Electronic Precinct - March 1996

Visit of Chinese Planners

Chinese Delegation with Professor Madden

Pictured in the Department of Civic Design are the Chinese delegation, with Professor Moss Madden and Mme Chen Xiaoli, leader of the group, in the foreground.

The University of Liverpool recently played host to a group of ten high-ranking Chinese town and regional planners and planning academics, sent by the Ministry of Construction in Beijing for a four-week training programme. China is in the early stages of setting up a planning education accreditation system, and of relating this to the development of a planning profession and a professional organisation.

The delegation included Mme Chen Xiaoli, the Director of the Urban Planning Department of the Ministry of Construction, and the chief planners of Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu province.

The training programme, put together by Professor Moss Madden of the Department of Civic Design, is intended to inform the Chinese delegation of the breadth and depth of planning education and practice in the UK and other parts of the EU.

The delegates spent two weeks in Liverpool before moving on to Nottingham, Berkshire and London. In each location they met with academics and practitioners, and visited a range of sites of planning interest.

Professor Madden says, 'We expect that this programme will lead to further collaboration between the Ministry of Construction, the Royal Town Planning Institute and the University, as the People's Republic of China moves to establish a full professional planning system.'

'A colleague from the RTPI and I presented papers on the UK planning profession at the first conference of the Education Committee of the China Association of Urban Planning held in Shanghai last October, and then went on to Beijing for discussions with the Ministry. There is a lot of interest in China in the UK model. This is an ideal opportunity for us to influence favourably the entire planning profession in the most populous country in the world, with obvious long-term beneficial effects for Sino-British relations.'

The British Council in Beijing sponsored Professor Madden's October visit, and has expressed strong interest in funding a three-year programme of exchange between experienced British planning practitioners and academics and their Chinese counterparts. The Department of Civic Design will play a key role in any such exchange programme.

March 1996 Index