Recently, good news came from the Municipal Education Commission that the “Guiding Program for Excellent Party Building Personnel Cultivation” applied by SPI had been successfully selected as a project of the 2020 Shanghai First-Class Postgraduate Education Guiding Program after the expert review and had obtained the special funding support.

    It is reported that the "Shanghai First-class Postgraduate Education Guiding Program" is a high-end talent cultivation   program developed by the Municipal Education Commission to deepen the comprehensive reform of postgraduate education, improve the quality of postgraduate cultivation, develop first-class postgraduate education that matches first-class universities and first-class disciplines, better keep in line with the goals determined by the important indicators of Shanghai's modern education development, and continuously meet the need for high-level personnel in national and regional development.

    In September 2019, SPI started the project application for the "Shanghai First-Class Postgraduate Education Guiding Program". Under the guidance with overall consideration by the Provost MEI Lihong, the Postgraduate Division set up a project application working group and,after the steps of project argumentation by external management experts and external financial experts, finally brought out a detailed plan for the "Guiding Program for Excellent Party Building Personnel Cultivation" based on serving national strategic needs and combining SPI’s self-defined role and development direction.Guided by XI Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the fundamental principles of the 19th CPC National Congress, this project focuses on serving the strategic need for comprehensively enforcing strict Party conduct, and actively keeps in line with the Party building requirements for the new era in Shanghai and the strategic goals of Shanghai's modern education development. It aims to tap and integrate the unique resources of a Party school, to give full play to a Party school's operational advantages in postgraduate education on the basis of sticking to the standards of national education, to cultivate the excellent young Party building personnel that are innovative, practical, interdisciplinary and urgently needed by the society in accordance with the standards of first-class postgraduate education, to form a system of disciplinary development and postgraduate cultivation that is in differentiated competition but joint development with colleges and universities, and to build SPI into a "small but strong" new force in Shanghai's postgraduate education.

    The project having been selected successfully is an embodiment and epitome of the continuous improvement of SPI's postgraduate education quality and cultivation system. It will provide strong support for SPI to develop first-class postgraduate education, will help improve the quality and highlight the features of SPI's postgraduate cultivation, and will promote SPI's excellentdisciplinary and academic resources to better serve the Party building work in Shanghai.