The International Consultative Committee (ICC) of the Chinese Society of Engineers (CSE) held its first meeting in 2023 in Beijing on May 26th. The meeting was hosted by Prof. GONG Ke, Chair of ICC and Immediate Past President of World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO). Ms. WU Qidi, Director of the International Centre for Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO (ICEE) and Past Vice Minister of Education, and Ms. LUO Hui, CSE Vice Chairperson and Joint Secretary General as well as Director General of the Department of International Affairs of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), attended the meeting and gave opening remarks.
Ms. WU Qidi said that ICEE hoped to jointly promote comprehensive and balanced development of engineering education around the world with global engineering science and technology organizations, striving to make greater contributions to global sustainable development.
Prof. GONG Ke expressed his hope that CSE could carry out careful researches on the UNESCO engineering report, and guide the Chinese engineering community to develop best practice cases with the goal of contributing to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
LUO Hui said that CSE would strengthen its exchanges with the international engineering community and promote international mutual recognition of engineers qualifications, to better implement the SDGs. She hoped that ICC could play a significant consultative role in CSE’s future work.
Mr. ZHANG Bin, Deputy Secretary-General of CSE, introduced the engineering capacity building and international exchanges of CSE. Mr. WANG suｎ.u and Mr. QIAO Weifeng, leaders of CSE Engineers Multilateral Agreement Research Group, analyzed CSE’s preparations to apply for the International Engineering Alliance engineers agreements membership from a third party perspective. Members of ICC made their suggestions on topics about Chinese engineers capacity building and professionalism and internationalization of engineers. It is agreed that China has the largest number of engineers and the largest scale of engineering practice in the world, and Chinese engineers should strengthen cooperation and exchange with engineers from all over the world to deal with common challenges posed by climate change and natural disasters, contributing wisdom from the engineering community to the realization of SDGs.
16 members of ICC from Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and Africa including GONG Ke, Ashok Kumar Basa, Dirk Bochar, Refilwe Buthelezi, Chuah Hean Teik, Marlene Kanga AM, Ania Lopez, José Macharé, Damien Owens, Mustafa B. Shehu, suｎ.Fangping, Elizabeth Taylor, José Vieira, WANG Rui, WANG Xue, Yuen Pak-leung as well as employees and experts from CAST Department of International Affairs, CSE secretariat, and CSE Engineers Multilateral Agreement Research Group participated in the meeting online and offline.
The first ICC of CSE is composed of 21 influential international engineering experts in education and business who are from significant international engineering organizations and major member organizations of engineering multilateral agreements. ICC will act in an advisory capacity to help CSE facilitate open cooperation of the engineering community.
