New MOOC icon
Others high up in Chinese education agree. "I have a dream that all who want to be a student of Peking University can be a student of Peking University," said Peking University President Zhou Qifeng earlier this month.
In 2010, the university made headlines by making a few of its courses available for study online free of charge.
Language has been the main obstacle for MOOC's spread in China; it is much more popular in India and other English-speaking countries. There is general agreement that the best way for MOOC to spread in China is to shoot Chinese-language videos in the country.
As an education pioneer of Chinese origin, Ng wants to express his own "loyalty" to China; he believes the value of Chinese courses needs to be shared around the world.
In August, Coursera will launch a Chinese-language platform linked to a Taiwan university's history classes, according to Ng. Similar services for a Chinese opera course run by the Chinese University of Hong Kong are likely to begin soon.
Coursera's co-founder is in talks with mainland universities, though he declines to elaborate. The key issue is which Chinese websites, institutions and companies will win dominance in the emerging MOOC sector in China. Investors are watching.
Tsinghua's Sun Maosong suggests Chinese institutions may prefer to set up their own versions instead of join foreign platforms. It could be more practical for out-riding professors to join Coursera, rather than a whole university.
"Chinese courses need to be made in China," he says, stressing that MOOC is still "in the experimental phase" and that some universities may wait for the platforms to prove themselves before explicitly backing them.
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