China encourages its universities to develop all-round, in-depth and diversified exchanges and cooperation with their foreign peers, said Chinese state councilor Chen Zhili Wednesday.

Chen made the remark at the opening ceremony of the second Chinese-Foreign University Presidents' Forum.

She said the exchanges and cooperation should be on an equal and reciprocal basis, by both government and private sectors and in bilateral and multilateral forms simultaneously.

Chen noted that in an era of heated international competition, higher education has been greatly reformed worldwide, aiming at more effective and sufficient use of human resources.

These adjustments include closer links between universities and economic and social progress, more coordinated development of various forms and levels of higher education and a clearer focus on demand of students.

She advised Chinese universities to attach greater importance to the teaching of basics and education quality, build more frontier disciplines and educate more innovative students.

She said Chinese universities, despite their leapfrog growth inrecent years, still lag behind the global leading ones in terms of operation, management, and particularly innovation capacity.

China's higher education system should learn from international experience and transform itself from one with large scale to one with high quality, Chen said.