STUDY ABROAD: Students from AADTU study in Denmark (COURTESY OF ACADEMY OF ARTS AND DESIGN AT TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY)	AIMING HIGH: Award-winning works of a promising young designer on display (COURTESY OF ACADEMY OF ARTS AND DESIGN AT TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY)

"Innovation and sharing are the core ideas of KF, and we have reproduced KF creative design center's 'innovation engine' in China," said Cui.

The KF creative design center, located several hundred meters away from the famous Little Mermaid statue, assembles designers of many globally recognized brands such as Prada, Gucci and Ne·Tiger.

The joint lab at Tsinghua University has become an important platform linking designers and enterprises. The Chinese fur industry has developed rapidly in the last 20 years, turning China into a major fur garment manufacturing base and retailing market. However, behind the prosperity lie a series of challenges, such as outdated designing concepts and a limited number of designers. Fortunately, the AADTU platform is bringing much-needed resources to China's fashion industry.

Overseas training project

After China adopted the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, some students went abroad to study art individually. But lack of state support hindered many others from studying abroad. In 2009, however, the National Treasury Department of China began to finance an overseas training project for young and middle-aged artists, which, implemented by the Chinese Artists Association (CAA), sponsors about 10 artists to study abroad each year.

"China's first generation of artists, such as Xu Beihong (1895-1953), Lin Fengmian (1900-91) and Liu Haisu (1896-1996), all had the experience of studying abroad, which is of great importance to the development of Chinese art," CAA Vice Chairman Wu Changjiang said at the recent 2012 launching ceremony of the training project at Renmin University of China (RUC).

The project is committed to drawing on the latest achievements of world civilization and the development of contemporary art, with the purpose of promoting Chinese art to the world and carrying out exchange with the global fine arts community. In the past few years, this project has continuously improved, becoming more and more targeted, scientific and effective. Due to the unremitting efforts of research personnel, many fresh results have been brought home to China, greatly enriching Chinese art and shaping a team of young artists with an international bent.

"Before launching a new project each year, CAA will convene an expert forum to identify subjects that we need to break through, based on researches about the development of Chinese art and the results of previous project," said Xu Qingping, jury member of the overseas training project and Dean of the Xu Beihong Art Research Institute at RUC.

Thus far, the project has sponsored four batches of young artists abroad, with some in the last group setting foot in Africa, South America and Oceania for the first time. "This is bound to fill in the blanks of our research into international art," said Wu.

"The short-term overseas study has inspired me so much," said Wang Rui, an assistant research fellow with the Chinese National Academy of Arts, who participated in a recent overseas study project. "During the three months, I visited nearly all the important museums of early-stage Greek arts and collected a large amount of precious data, which will be very helpful for my future research."

Besides visits to Western art museums and agencies, the young artists also get chances to have face-to-face communication with renowned scholars and participate in discussions at top universities, said Tao Qin, Deputy Secretary General of CAA.

Xu Weixin, Dean of the Art School under RUC, said short-term study abroad is a good complement for Chinese art education and helps promote the development and research work of Chinese art.

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