The ‘angel board’ that helped XJTLU begin

By dawn, the promises around the table had to become something more concrete: written conditions, stamped documents and a plan that both the Ministry of Education experts and the UK partners could accept.

The meeting had begun at 10pm in a makeshift meeting room in Dushu Lake Higher Education District. It was early 2005. Each person had a bowl of noodles; in front of them were the questions that would decide whether a proposed university could move from agreement to operation.

Students would need places to live. Teaching space had to be secured. Facilities had to be made available. Local commitments, until then expressed in principle, had to be put on paper.

Feng Ye

The joint working group from Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU) and the University of Liverpool (UoL) had come to Feng Ye with a problem that could no longer wait. Newly appointed as Executive Deputy Director of the Dushu Lake Higher Education District Office, Ye gave a direct answer: no one would sleep that night. The result had to be ready before the UK side ended its working day.

Looking back, Ye does not describe the meeting as a renegotiation. What happened that night was more practical: existing commitments were made usable. By morning, support had begun to take the form of conditions Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) could carry into the approval process.

An “angel board” for a university not yet ready to stand alone

Ye later found a phrase for that early local role: an “angel board” for a new university.

It was not a formal board. It was a way of describing the support around a young institution before it could stand on its own.

Professor Daqing Fang (right) and Feng Ye (left) accompanying Qidi Wu (centre), then Vice Minister of Education, during a research visit to XJTLU in October 2006

XJTLU had its academic foundation in the partnership between XJTU and the UoL. What Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) had to help provide was the ground beneath it: space, services, coordination and a way through the practical questions of approval and early operation.

Before the first students arrived, classrooms had to be available, accommodation arranged, services connected, and admissions supported. For Ye, this was part of the public responsibility of helping a new university get on track — then stepping back as it built its own capacity.

From left: Professors Daqing Fang, Wenquan Tao, Youmin Xi, and Hongcai Wu exchanging ideas during the Ministry of Education expert panel review in March 2006

Chenqian Zhu, now Deputy General Manager of Dushu Lake Science and Education Development Co Ltd, says XJTLU was like a “small baby”. The local side helped it learn to walk. Once it could walk, and later run, the “angel board” could let go.

Shared facilities made the University visible before its campus was complete

Junhua Wu, who was responsible for XJTLU’s concrete preparation work on behalf of XJTU at the time, saw how that support became visible during the expert visits from China’s Ministry of Education.

In September 2006, Chee-hwa Tung (centre), then Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee and a University of Liverpool alumnus, visited the newly approved XJTLU during his trip to Suzhou

In March 2005, when the experts came to SIP, XJTLU’s main teaching building was still under construction. They supported the direction of Sino-foreign cooperative education and trusted the two parent universities, but they still needed to see whether the conditions for running a university could be secured.

Dushu Lake’s shared facilities helped answer that question. Accommodation, sports facilities, canteens, transport and other public services gave XJTLU a base from which to start before its own campus was complete.

The Ministry of Education expert panel conducting its review in March 2006

When the experts returned in March 2006, the change was visible. Teaching space and surrounding infrastructure had taken shape. For Wu, that year of progress showed the local government’s efficiency, attitude and determination — and gave the experts more confidence that XJTLU could take root.

XJTLU's first teaching building, the Foundation Building on Ren'Ai Lu, being constructed in 2006

Before families asked about scores, they asked what XJTLU was

In the first admissions season, XJTLU was a name many families did not recognise.

Approval came relatively late in 2006. Zhu remembers that some on the Liverpool side considered waiting until the following year to admit students, but local leaders felt the University should start once approval had been granted, even with a small first cohort.

XJTLU holding its unveiling ceremony and recruitment press conference in May 2006

The first cohort eventually grew to more than 160 students. Finding them, however, was a different kind of work. There was no mature admissions system yet, only a small preparation team willing to go out and explain the University from the beginning.

Zhu even took members of her family to the Wuxi examination authority. They set up a roll-up banner and began talking to students and parents. Before they could discuss majors, courses or future pathways, they often had to explain what Sino-foreign cooperative education was, who the University of Liverpool was, and why a new university in Suzhou carried that name.

Professor Sir Drummond Bone visiting XJTLU in 2018. From left: Professor Sir Drummond Bone, Chenqian Zhu, and Professor Youmin Xi

Some parents misheard the Chinese name for Liverpool (Liwupu) as the company Philips (Feilipu), and asked where “Xi’an Philips” was.

The work later became more organised. The Education Development Investment Company set up what staff informally called an “external admissions office”, and the Higher Education District Office helped bring Suzhou’s college application consultation fair to SIP, with shuttle buses taking interested families to the campus.

Seven or eight years later, Zhu was again sitting at an admissions consultation desk when a parent came up. This time, there were no questions about what XJTLU was. The parent simply took out the child’s exam score and asked: “Can this score get in?”

The distance between “Where is Xi’an Philips?” and “Can this score get in?” marked the slow work of recognition.

When the “angel board” could step back

For Ye, the meeting that lasted until dawn did more than solve one immediate problem for XJTLU. It also left Dushu Lake Higher Education District with experience in how to support a university in its founding stage.

Over time, that experience became a way of working: shared public resources, early administrative support and coordinators who helped universities work through practical procedures. XJTLU was one of the earliest and most demanding cases. It benefited from the mechanism, but it also helped test and shape it.

Yet for Ye, the success of an “angel board” was never that it remained in front. It was that one day it would no longer be needed in the same way.

He had thought this process might take 15 or even 20 years for XJTLU. Instead, the University moved faster than expected, helped by the foundation of its two parent universities, its location in SIP, and later by Professor Youmin Xi and the XJTLU team’s work in building the University’s own momentum.

As XJTLU developed, the relationship with the local side changed as well. What began as support for a young institution gradually became a more two-way form of cooperation.

“Now XJTLU has already taken flight,” Ye says. “And it will surely bring greater honour to Suzhou and SIP.”

By Bo Kou
Edited by Patricia Pieterse