The China Scholarship Council (CSC) recently announced the recipients of the 2025 “Program to Promote International Cooperation and Talent Cultivation with Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.” NEFU’s proposal, the “Sino-Russian Innovation and Practice Program for Top Talents in First-Class Forestry Disciplines,” was approved, marking our first successful application for this CSC program.

The program builds upon NEFU’s existing partnership with St. Petersburg State Forestry Technical University in Russia. Leveraging both universities’ strengths and utilizing jointly established overseas research and practice bases will foster collaborative, high-level international talent development. The goal is to cultivate highly skilled, globally competent forestry professionals with strong cross-cultural communication skills. Over the three-year program period, NEFU can send three master’s and three doctoral students annually from related fields like Forestry, Forest Engineering, Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management, and Applied Economics to St. Petersburg State Forestry Technical University for exchange studies.

Established in 2020 by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), the program aims to strengthen cooperation between China, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus across various fields and to promote international talent development through partnerships between Chinese universities and institutions in these countries. This grant represents a significant achievement for NEFU, building upon our previous success with the CSC’s “Innovative Talent International Cooperation Training Program.” It will deepen our educational exchanges and collaborations with Russian universities, expand opportunities for graduate students to study abroad with government support, and enhance NEFU’s overall internationalization and the quality of our high-level international talent training.