The “2011” Plan is the plan to improve the innovation ability of higher education institutions, which is a major national special plan for higher education launched after the “211 project” and “985 project”. It is a strategic project at the national level. One of its important guiding ideals is to grasp the four keys: “national urgent need, advanced system, great contribution and world class”.
The national urgent need is to emphasize the problem-oriented approach and to solve major problems for the country. Any research in humanities and social sciences, when condensing the direction, should address the issue of landing, footing and implementation. We must figure out “how to build to meet the urgent needs of the country”. In the process of condensing the construction platform, determining the topic and forming the team, we must focus on the “urgent need”. To dialectically look at the urgent need, there is an urgent need at the moment, there is more urgent need in the long run, to improve the cultural soft power is certainly the urgent need of the country.
Advanced system, that is, the reform in place. The “2011” plan is also a reform plan. 30 years of education reform has now faced a new stage from partial reform to overall reform. The core is to realize the trinity of discipline construction, talent training and scientific research. It is necessary to break through the reform of core elements of higher education, including eight major reforms of organization and management, personnel management, talent cultivation, contribution evaluation, scientific research model, resource allocation, cooperation and exchange, and cultural environment. This is the general drawing of the reform. Seeing the reform not only depends on the drawing but also on the construction status, and the construction is not applicable.
To make great contributions means to produce first-class results through a collaborative approach, including scientific research results, reform results, governance results, talent training results, exchange results, etc. “2011” plan is not a research project, but a strategy to support reform. Its funding is invested in software, not in hardware, so it cannot be used for infrastructure. From the perspective of funding allocation, it is also a guide and leader, how to use it scientifically needs to be discussed again.
World-class, is to provide the world’s influential intellectual products and excellent talent, conducive to the scientific spirit and the level of theory. The key is to develop ideas, perspectives and methods, and eventually build an academic theory system and academic discourse system with Chinese characteristics and world level.
“2011” plan is also an important grasp to promote the construction of university think tanks. In Chinese academics, studying the past is our advantage; after the reform and opening up, with the central government’s attention and continuous promotion, scholars have played an important role in studying the present, but studying future is still far from enough. Therefore, we focus on strategic research, and the think tank which reserves programs and ideas for the country is itself the cultural soft power.
As a thousand-year institution of learning, Hunan University enjoys a great reputation, has a deep humanistic heritage, and has an advantage in the study of cultural soft power. Now there is strong support from Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and some central related departments, which can be called solid cooperation. We wish the National Collaborative Innovation Center for Cultural Soft Power Research new achievements and new contributions.
(The author is the Director of the Department of Social Sciences, Ministry of Education)