The launch ceremony of the international version of xuetangX takes place at Tsinghua University, Beijing, on April 20, 2020.

The launch ceremony of the international version of xuetangX was held at Tsinghua University, Beijing, on April 20, 2020. Wu Yan, director of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Yang Bin, vice president and provost of Tsinghua University, and Wang Shuaiguo, president of xuetangX, the online education platform operated under MOOC-CN Education, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Holdings, were in attendance.

The ceremony was chaired by Yuan Si, deputy director of the School Affairs Committee of Tsinghua University and director of the Online Education Research Center of the Ministry of Education.

Wu pointed out that China encourages domestic higher education online platforms with rich teaching experience and influence to develop international versions. They will help contribute to the worldwide fight against the epidemic.

The construction of the first batch of international platforms should highlight quality, openness, sharing, responsibility, and love, gathering the most prestigious universities and the best teachers and introducing excellent courses, Wu said. During the epidemic, the international version of online platforms should be open to college students and learners from all over the world free of charge to provide them with high-quality teaching and learning services.

Wu stressed that China is a higher education power and Chinese universities have the ability and responsibility to share online teaching experience, achievements and resources to college students and global learners from all over the world.

Yang gave a speech at the launching ceremony. He said online education is a future-oriented strategic deployment of Tsinghua University. Since the university launched xuetangX in 2013, the online platform has been providing online education and teaching services for Tsinghua University and thousands of universities across China. It has also introduced high-quality educational resources from the world's top universities and institutions to meet the needs of overseas learners.

Higher education institutions have been undergoing a rapid transformation, from the traditional teaching model to the online education model to respond to the sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19.

Under such circumstance, xuetangX will team up with domestic and foreign universities to explore innovation in teaching content, learning methods, and cooperation models, Yang added.

Wang introduced the construction progress and planning of the international version of xuetangX. With the goal of bringing first-class online courses at home and abroad together, xuetangX has finished building the Chinese and English versions and will add versions in Russian, Spanish, French and Japanese.

XuetangX provides a variety of online education services such as MOOC, live broadcasts, certificate authentication, and online degree provision.

According to the plan, the first 109 online courses are available on the international version of xuetangX and more courses will gradually be provided.

Wu Yan, director of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Yang Bin, vice president and provost of Tsinghua University,  Yuan Si, deputy director of the School Affairs Committee of Tsinghua University and director of the Online Education Research Center of the Ministry of Education, and Wang Shuaiguo, president of xuetangX,launch the international version of xuetangX.

By early April, a total of 1,454 colleges and universities had opened online study nationwide, with more than 950,000 teachers offering 942,000 courses, which had garnered more than seven million individual visits this year. The number of times students had participated in an online class historically had reached 1.18 billion. In the first quarter of this year, the number of online MOOC courses increased by 5,000, bringing the total number of MOOCs to 23,000; other online courses have increased by 18,000.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) fully affirmed the large-scale increase of online education in China during the epidemic, and UNESCO has also actively promoted the Chinese experience.