China News Service, Beijing, March 10 (Wang Jue) Recently, Wu De, a member of the National People's Congress, deputy chairman of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Democratic League, and president of Sichuan Agricultural University, said at the third session of the 14th National People's Congress that western universities are subject to bottlenecks such as remote geographical location, insufficient resource investment, and weak scientific research and innovation. They urgently need to break through restrictions through systematic reforms and strengthen their role as an engine to serve major national strategic needs.

When talking about the bottlenecks facing the development of western universities, Wu De mentioned four aspects. First, there is a big gap in funding investment. The final accounts data of national "Double First-Class" universities in 2023 show that the total funding in the west is only 27% of the eastern part. Second, the lack of high-level talents, and the location disadvantage and talent siphon effect have caused western universities to fall into the three dilemma of "attracting talents, retaining talents, and cultivating talents". Third, the development of disciplines is lagging behind, and the number of universities and "first-class disciplines" construction points in the east and west are 3.1:1 and 6.6:1 respectively. Fourth, scientific research and innovation are not strong. From 2017 to 2023, the number of awards won by eastern universities in the three major national science and technology awards is 4.7 times that of the western region, and the gap in original innovation continues to widen.

Higher education is the strategic cornerstone of building an education power, and the development of higher education in the western region is related to regional coordinated development and in-depth layout of national strategic. Wu De suggested that the central government should implement a fiscal policy of targeted and tilted allocations and parallelism for universities in the western "Double First-Class" construction, and explore the establishment of the "Western Higher Education Revitalization Special Fund" to add incentive allocations to colleges and universities that serve rural revitalization and ecological protection.

About the lack of high-level talents, Wu De said that the "Western Talent Special Zone Plan" can be implemented to solve the talent bottleneck through the tilt of the compilation, implement the dual-track mechanism of "East salary + Western allowance" for top talents, establish an honor incentive system, and provide more honor incentives to national-level high-level talents who have been rooted in the west for 40 years.

In terms of consolidating the construction of characteristic disciplines, Wu De believes that it is necessary to base himself on the resource endowment and industrial needs of the western region (such as Shaanxi aerospace power, Sichuan biosecurity, Yunnan ecological culture, etc.), build a cluster of regional characteristic disciplines, and strengthen the inter-provincial university alliance.

Wu De also suggested promoting eastern and western universities to upgrade traditional "counter-to-peer support" into a "coordinated innovation consortium of eastern and western regions" for physical operation, and building the "Western Science City" with the "Western Triangle" as the core, etc., through the joint construction of national key laboratories, sharing large-scale instruments and equipment, and prioritizing the support of western universities to take the lead in applying for major scientific research projects, etc., to promote substantive cooperation.