Chinese universities and enterprises should further cooperation to achieve common prosperity, said representatives attending an international forum on cooperation between firms and educators that was held recently in north China's Tianjin municipality.

The evolution of the knowledge-based economy will inevitably affect the joint development of both, so it is time for China to look for ways to combine production, learning and research effectively, Long Yongtu, Chinese vice-minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, was cited by October 24's Business Weekly as saying.

"Motivated by profits, enterprises will pursue technical innovation, and cooperating with universities will be the best shortcut to it," Long said.

Without cooperation with enterprises, on the other hand, students, as the products of universities, will have no market, which would reflect a failure on the part of their schools, Long said.

More than 20 representatives from universities and enterprises, including Bill Veggenhorn, vice-president of Motorola, and Hiromitsu Ishi, president of Hitotsubashi University of Tokyo, attended the forum.

Motorola has already established Motorola University, which has created a core curriculum concerning human resource development in cooperation with Beijing University and Nankai University MBA programs.

Each year Motorola University provides various training programs for all 35,000 Motorola employees in Asia.

"We should learn experiences from other countries and develop our own ways in cooperation between universities and enterprises according to our actual conditions," Long said. (Xinhua)