China urged to prepare students for challenges of AI and ageing population

At ‘two sessions’, Chinese lawmakers and political advisers call for changes to education system to ‘solve future problems’

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Some lawmakers warn that China’s universities do not offer enough specialised medical programmes focused on treating the elderly. Photo: Peking University

Published: 4:00pm, 12 Mar 2025

Chinese lawmakers and political advisers have urged the country’s education system to make quick changes to cope with challenges brought by artificial intelligence and a rapidly greying population.

These suggestions echoed remarks made by President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the “two sessions”, the annual meetings of China’s top legislature and political advisory body. Xi said on Thursday that China’s education system must change to produce the scientific talent needed for the country’s grand technological ambitions.

Gao Song, president of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, said Chinese universities, like their global peers, were teaching students based on outdated knowledge that could not solve the problems of the future in the AI era. Gao is also a deputy of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislature.

“China and other countries in the world are still using past knowledge to teach current students to solve future problems. Cultivating students’ creativity to deal with an uncertain future is the core challenge facing the current education system now,” Gao said in an interview published by Shanghai-based news site The Paper on Tuesday.

He noted that three graduates of Sun Yat-sen University’s school of computer science and philosophy department were on the core research and development (R&D) team of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek.

Gao, a chemist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said his university encouraged cooperation between departments to encourage interdisciplinary projects while strengthening offerings in core general courses such as AI and logic.

He said the university would carry out AI-enabled R&D on low-altitude aircraft, intelligent deep-sea exploration, mining, transport equipment, and intelligent medical diagnosis and treatment.