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Chinese education authority has issued a three-year action plan in the setup and adjustment of the curriculum and majors of higher education in line with national strategic needs, focusing on urgently needed disciplines and majors targeting the nation's strategic emerging and future industries, and strengthening the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, China's Ministry of Education (MOE) announced on Thursday. 

According to the action plan for setting up, adjusting and optimizing the curriculum and majors of higher education between 2025 and 2027 issued recently by the leading group for education of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, China will establish and improve the mechanisms for setting up and adjusting the higher education's curriculum and majors, as well as talent cultivation models in line with the scientific and technological development and the national strategic needs.

According to Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, the action plan is a further stress on the adjusting and optimizing of curriculum and majors of higher education in line with the demands of national strategic, industrial development and societal and livelihood development on the basis of the previous deployment by the MOE and other four departments to optimize 20 percent of higher education majors between 2023 and 2025. 

The action plan proposed to implement an extraordinary deployment initiative for urgently needed disciplines and majors which target the nation's strategic emerging industries and future industries. 

Meanwhile, the action plan calls for accelerating the upgrading of teaching content and strengthening the empowerment of AI to education and teaching. 

The action plan also calls for the advancement of basic disciplines, increasing support for fundamental disciplines, as well as the implementation of an incubation initiative for emerging and interdisciplinary disciplines by establishing a number of exemplary interdisciplinary centers.

By establishing the new talent training platforms such as the national innovation institutes of outstanding engineers, the talent cultivation models can be further deeply reformed and dissemination and promotion of the mature models can be strengthened. 

The effective implementation of the action plan depends on upholding and expanding the autonomy of universities. Each university must adhere to its own educational mission and positioning and, on that basis, optimize the layout of its disciplines and majors, Xiong told the Global Times on Thursday. 

The action plan proposed to improve the supply-demand matching mechanism for talents and build a national big data platform.

Meanwhile, the action plan required to improve the categorized development mechanism and advancing the development and layout of fundamental, applied, and strategic disciplines and majors in a differentiated manner.

In terms of the evaluation and assessment mechanism for talents, the action plan required to improve and promote a diversified evaluation system and optimize the incentive and guidance mechanism.