(Correspondent: Wang Tianjian) Recently, The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Development and Reform Commission have jointly released the selected list of universities and disciplines that will enter the second round of the “Double First-Class” project. Nankai University’s discipline of applied economics is in the list. The “Double First-Class” project, aiming at constructing world-class universities and disciplines, is put forward by the Central Committee of CPC and the State Council. It is a leading and symbolic project of great significance to improving the overall quality of higher education, supporting the innovation-driven development strategy, and serving China’s economic and social high-quality development.

Nankai’s discipline of applied economics has a long history and outstanding comprehensive strength. Following the principle of “Settle on international frontiers and serve China”, it has long made use of advanced approaches to serve national needs, deal with significant theoretical and practical issues of China’s economic development, and cultivate high-level research, management and innovation talents in the field of economics. After long time of development, Nankai’s discipline of applied economics has gradually formed its distinctive advantages and characteristics.

Constantly keeping national strategic needs in the first place, Nankai’s discipline of applied economics has completed many national key projects in the fields of international trade, international monetary and financial systems, coordinated development between regions, financial risks and control, free-trade zone, population aging and so on. It has also established strategic partnerships with National Bureau of statistics, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government institutions to directly serve the country’s decision-making process.

Nankai’s discipline of applied economics consists of 7 sub-disciplines, which cover most of the branches and form a complete system. Recent years, following the trend of discipline integration, chances of progress have emerged in many interdisciplinary subjects related to applied economics, such as regional economics, contemporary logistics, big data and Internet financing.

Nankai’s disciplines of applied economics and theoretical economics support each other, which benefits the construction of both disciplines. The mutual support between theoretical and practical researches makes the discipline of applied economics more scientific and lays a solid foundation for its development.

With the aim of facilitating the construction of a world-class discipline, School of Economics has long kept eyes on the frontiers of the worldwide development of applied economics. By introducing and cultivating talents, the discipline has gradually got a squad of high-quality scholars with international outlook and made batches of achievements in internationally high-level  researches. The discipline has also kept close academic collaborations with world-renowned universities from the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia and other countries or regions. It keeps providing students with multilevel plans for international exchange and has established long-term partnerships with top universities around the world, including University of California, Berkeley; Oxford University; the Australian National University; Hitotsubashi University and so on.

In the future, School of Economics will make further efforts to make its discipline of applied economics first-class. It will also continue to focus on the frontiers of discipline development, serve national strategic needs, and constantly explore and cultivate emergent fields of research on the basis of strengthening its currently advantageous fields, in order to maintain the overall leading position of its disciplines in China, and to realize the high-quality and characteristic development of its economic discipline group.