Higher Education Quality Assurance conference was held on December 16 for three consecutive days at the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel organized by the Tertiary Education Services Office of the Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region, the City U of Macau and together with ten other universities.

Zhang Yu, Secretary of Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao Special Administrative Region, Liu Xiao Hang, Director of the Department of Culture and Education, the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Macao Special Administrative Region; Jin Qian, Director of Commissioners’ Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China in the Macao Special Administrative Region; Ai Hong Ge, deputy director of National Ministry of Education, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs Office; Sou Chio Fai, Director of Macao Tertiary Education Services and Prof. Yan ZeXian, Rector of City U of Macau, presided over the opening ceremony.

The representatives of relevant departments of the Ministry of National Education, mainland Portugal and institutions of higher learning leadership and well-known scholars, Hong Kong and Taiwan and other related institutions of higher education evaluation experts and scholars gathered in Macau to discuss higher education quality assurance. The theme of the seminar included how to improve the quality of teaching and learning through evaluation, “Higher Education Evaluation and trends "," The opportunities and challenges of higher education evaluation implementation, "studies in higher education teaching quality assurance and evaluation, the research and comparison among higher education evaluation system in the Greater China region " among many others.

In order to further promote the role of being the regional cooperation and exchange platform among China and the Portuguese-speaking countries, Rector Yan ZeXian took part in the  "Chinese and Portuguese universities Presidents’ Forum - Sino-Portuguese cooperation in higher education and exchange" held in the morning of December 18 and spoke about  “The internalization of higher education under the scope of internationalization of cities.” His speech earned praises and acknowledgement from the representatives and guests. Dra Rita Santos, Permanent Secretariat Deputy Secretary-General (Macau SAR Government representative), China and the Portuguese-speaking Countries Economic Cooperation Forum (Macao) hosted a lunch on December 18 and gave a speech to introduce Macau’s role as the platform among China and Portuguese-speaking countries to the leaders, experts and scholars from the higher education institutions in Portugal and China.

Through the conference, the organizers expect to let the higher education sector to share and exchange the experience of more mature countries and regions in the development of higher education evaluation, Macau's future implementation assessment could learn from other systems and lay the foundation. Vice Rectors of City U of Macau, Aliana Leong, Xing WenXiang and others submitted five papers. Vice Rector Aliana Leong’s paper titled, “Australian higher education reform & quality control experience: implications to Macao” was invited by the organizer to be presented before the closing ceremony. 

The organizers believe that through this conference, leaders, experts and scholars from Portuguese and Chinese higher education institutions explore more deeply the direction of future cooperation among institutions, and strengthen communication and exchange, as well as promote mutual development of higher education in Portugal and China.