Wenlan Forum: A Broad Platform for Students to Become High-quality Academic Talents

On April 3th,2014, WeChat official account of the postgraduate student union of ZUEL posted its first tweet——The First Welan Forum of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. Four years has passed since the first “Wenlan Forum” was held. On February 2nd,2018, the WeChat official account of the postgraduate student union posted a tweet Retrospect the History of “Wenlan Forum” and Join Hands to Write its Future to sincerely call for contributions from other colleges and universities. 

“Wenlan Forum” has many labels——“academic forum”, “soliciting contributions from colleges and universities ”, “researching hotspots”. It seems that there exists no difference between “Wenlan Forum” and academic forums of other schools, but it has many unique features in that it is not only a paper awarding activity but an exchange forum based on paper awarding; it does not extensively cover all the subjects, instead it specializes in economics, law and management science, one of which will be chosen as the research content each year. In 2017, the forth postgraduate “Wenlan Forum” took “The Revolutionary Path of Economic Development Under the New Normal” as topic. This year, it thoroughly implements the spirit of the 19th CPC national congress taking legal subject as its research content and “The Socialist Rule of Law Theory and Rule of Law Road with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” as topic.

From the first session to the fifth, much progress has been made in the four years. From no experience in holding such event to the collaboration of all departments of postgraduate student union to make sure that every detail has been taken care of. What has been changed in the four years is not only the quality of our contribution inviting tweets but also the number of contributions we receive each year. We endeavor to explore a “Wenlan” mode which is exclusive to ZUEL in cultivating academic abilities of postgraduates and promoting teaching quality.

Calling for Contributions Widely

To collect more high-quality papers, Baiyu, the office director of the ideological and political education office of the party committee of the postgraduate work department, made great efforts in the publicity of soliciting contributions when the forum was first held. “At that time, we were very worried about the quantity and quality of the contributions because of the lack of experience, so we actively contacted our peer colleges for assistance and support as we motivated graduate students in our school to contribute.” She said.

Considering that issuing announcement on our school’s web page was not efficient enough for the forum to be propagated widely, the postgraduate school and the postgraduate work department of party committee came up with the idea of “point to point” contact——to invite certain colleges and universities to recommend excellent papers. Then we searched the contact information of other colleges and universities by referring to their postgraduate school or postgraduate work department of party committee websites and contacted them one by one. Thanks to that, we received hundreds of contributions in a short time.

The new media played an important role in publicity as well. Doctor Hu Yan from Renmin University of China learnt the postgraduate “Wenlan Forum” from network. She thinks the postgraduate “Wenlan Forum” is a domestic academic brand forum with rigorous academic attitude and strict academic requirements for young students, which is an excellent platform for Chinese young students in social science fields to communicate and study.

At the same time, student cadres of the postgraduate student union are trying their best to expand the forum’s influence when going out to attend meetings. Gao Jahe, the current chairman of the postgraduate student union, said that whenever he took part in the exchange activities held by postgraduate student unions of other schools, he would recommend postgraduate “Wenlan Forum” to them and invite them to attend forum activities, which greatly increased the popularity of the “Wenlan Forum” during colleges exchanges.

Zhou Jialin, the director of the postgraduate work department of party committee, recalled that when postgraduate “Wenlan Forum” was first held in 2014, it received hundreds of contributions from dozens of colleges and universities nationwide. “We felt really surprised at that, but it also proved the huge influence Zhongnan University of Economics and Law has.”

By contacting one by one and accumulating bit by bit, 577 contributions were received in the first forum and the number continued to grow year by year. And there were also contributions from HongKong, MacaoandTaiwanregions as well as overseas colleges and universities in recent 2 years . Up to March 16th, the organizing committee of the 5th “Wenlan Forum” had received 666 contributions in total, of which 299 are from our school, 437 from other schools like Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China and China University of Political Science and Law; 556 from postgraduate students, 110 from doctoral students, 9 fromHongKong, MacaoandTaiwanregions and 1 from University of Osnabruk in Germany.

Strict procedure to examine the manuscripts

There is a requisite task mainly undertaken by the academic apartment of the postgraduate union after receiving the manuscripts. “We will arrange the stuff to classify, mark and anonymize these manuscripts.Besides, they will confront 50 to 60 manuscripts a day when there is a large number of manuscripts”,the vice chairman of the Graduate School expresses thatcollecting the manuscripts statisticsand classifying themis to make the review more convenient,rigorous and equitable.

The manuscripts' review is a very important process of this forum. In order to guarantee the high quality, the judging panel of the forum draws up regulatory manuscripts review system and treat with each contribution fairly. At the stage of reviewing the manuscripts, the judge’s panel of the forum conduct cross review and anonymous review of all the manuscripts from thetopic, conception and the content of the articles. They appraise and elect 35 outstanding papers finally after the preliminary examination, reexamination and final judgement. To select the high-quality paper, the Postgraduates WenLan Forum will invite some academic experts to review the papers every session.

There are some experts who have been the judges of the jury several times,such as HuLijun, LiXiaoping and QianXuefeng. Their brief introductions are as followings,

HuLijun, the dean of the Postgraduate School, professor of the School of Business Administration, doctoral supervisor and executive director of the Social Economy Committee of Systems Engineering Society of China.

LiXiaoping, the vice president of the Economic School, cadre of the Ministry of Education in new century and youth expert who has made outstanding contributions in Hubei.

QianXuefeng, the dean of the Business Administration School, WenLan special professor, deputy secretary-general International Trade Cooperative Group of National University Youth Forum and committee of CSWE(China Society of World Economics).

XuGongwei, the associate director, professor and doctoral supervisorof LawSchoolof ZUEL, first batch of ZUEL excellent middle-young teacher. Xu Gongweisaid that he has many feelings during the process of manuscript anonymity. He made a strong case that Postgraduate WenLan Forum provides a new platform of studying and comprehending the knowledge toyouth where all the students apply solid knowledge and newmethods to create numerousexcellent works with both theoretical depth and innovative highlights

withtheory and creative ideas,and put forward groundbreaking views on various legal issues in social reality.

ZhouJialing said, “Many experts support our work and they all volunteer to take each paper seriously because they all think it is meaningful to hold the WenLan Forum.”

Chances forStudents

Postgraduate WenLan Forum is an academic forum which is held by students and for students.It is aim to give students opportunities to exert full organizational skills of them to this Forum. It turned out that students in the Postgraduate Student Union have played more signification rolein the previous five sessions.

The Public Relation Department ofPostgraduate Student Union is mainly incharge of soliciting manuscripts. The students in this department often start to working in winter holiday. There are over 20 students , every one of which is in change of teachers from four universities and the chairman of the Postgraduate School. They will use telephone, message, WeChat, e-mail and any other contacting methods to collect more excellent papers from universities. TangZhaoyan, the associate minister of the Public Relations Department expresses that they sort out the address lists, contact with many colleges and post the posters in universities, only to increase the amounts of manuscripts received as more as possible.

We often encounter with refusals. GaoJiahe, who was responsible for the tasks about contacting with others said they were refused frequently, such as refusal of phone calls, messages and WeChat. Once these situationoccurred, the only thing they can do is being patient.

The main workofPropaganda Department of Postgraduate Student Union is editing WeChat articles with the combinationof hot topicsand the relevant information of theForum. Last year, the WeChat article of Propaganda Department took the popular TV series “To the Sky Kingdom”(《三生三世十里桃花》) as the theme to call on readers to submit their manuscripts, and number of article readinghad risen to 2,367 times.

Focus on Cultivating

The original intention of founding the postgraduate Wenlan Forum is to establish a platform based on characteristic subjects for academic exchanges among postgraduates nationwide, and to cultivate their academic literacy and improve their enthusiasm for innovation and scientific research.

At the same time, the postgraduate Wenlan Forum is not only a platform for academic exchanges, it focuses more on practical use. Each session of the forum takes hot issues in the field of social economy, law and management as a reference, and then chooses one topic after thorough discussion by experts and scholars. On the occasion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, guided by Xi Jinping's thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, we chose the socialist rule of law theory and road with Chinese characteristics in the new era as the theme, and received high-quality theses such as The Legal Boundary of Data Competition Behavior In the Age of AI and MAP And Its Application In Tax Treaties Under the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Guo Jinggu, a postgraduate of Peking University, won the third prize of this year's postgraduate Wenlan Forum for his thesis. He believes that the postgraduate Wenlan Forum chooses economics, law and management as its research contents, and its theme conforms to the social needs as well as fully reflects the research hotspots and frontier issues in the field of economics, law and management. The legal issues concerning financial stability coincide with my research fields and interests, so I submitted the latest research findings for mutual discussion. In the sub-forum, well-known experts and scholars in this field gathered together with students to discuss current hot academic issues, create thought collisions, and enjoy the cultural feast.

Zhang Zhefei, a doctoral student of ZUEL, won the grand prize of this year's postgraduate Wenlan Forum for his thesis Technological Rule of Law: Logic and Development of Administrative Regulations on Standards of Scientific and Technological Risks. As a ZUELer, he is proud of growing up among a galaxy of talents in such a comfortable, knowledgeable and well-rounded school. This forum encourages doctoral and postgraduate students to concern and study social reality, to pioneer and innovate academically, to actively participate in the construction of our country, government and society ruled by law, and to contribute their own strength to the promotion of comprehensively managing state affairs by law. As a representative of the award-winning authors, he said at the award ceremony.

Hu Lijun, Dean of the postgraduate school, was the director of the evaluation committee of the 4th postgraduate Wenlan Forum. In his opinion, the postgraduate Wenlan Forum is an academic forum for cultivating comprehensive talents. Firstly, the academic atmosphere of the postgraduate Wenlan Forum guides students to think actively In this process, students write papers after looking for references and communicating with teachers, which can be beneficial to the improvement of students' academic level. Secondly, the annual theme of the postgraduate Wenlan Forum conforms to social trends. The forum studies the problems that need to be solved by the state and society. For instance, the study of Xi Jinping's economic thought can not only be applied to social practice and can also help to cultivate students' sense of social responsibility.

Zhou Jialing, who has witnessed fivesessions of postgraduate Wenlan Forum, said with love and passion, It's just like my own child, as I watched him born and raised him up. She said that the postgraduate Wenlan Forum is very meaningful, for it trains students’ ability to solve problems and broaden their horizons in thinking, while deepening the communication between teachers and students as well as stimulating students' enthusiasm and potential, I wish the postgraduate ‘Wenlan Forum a better future.  

Wu Fan, Deputy Minister of Postgraduate Affairs Office of Party Committee, said that the postgraduate Wenlan Forum is a large-scale comprehensive platform for academic exchanges that opens to China and the world, which aims to improve the quality of postgraduate cultivation, encourage postgraduates to devote themselves to scientific research and innovation, and give full play to their academic expertise so as to contribute to the academia of our society and country.  

Under the determined leading of school leaders and teachers, the forum has become famous with extensive participation of students. Public praise is the best illustration.Sometimes I went to other schools to participate in activities. When I introduced myself as a student from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, everyone knows that our school has been organizing a well-known academic activity called the postgraduate ‘Wenlan Forum’. At that time, I really felt very proud. Gao Jiahe said.  

All five sessions of the postgraduate Wenlan Forum condensed hard work of the teachers and students of ZUEL. It is a legacy, a platform for postgraduate students to show themselves, and a supporting power for cultivating outstanding postgraduates.