The institute has established wide collaboration and academic communications with governments, NGOs and national and international research institutes. Currently it has formed a platform supported by forces of three levels – universities, national and international levels.
· University platform: “ Team of Excellency of Xi'an Jiaotong University”
“Team of Excellency of Xi'an Jiaotong University” proposes to improve dominant disciplines or disciplines urgent for development to an internationally advanced level. It intends to introduce groups of top international scholars in soft ways to the university, conduct scientific research and talents training, strengthen existing dominant disciplines, disciplines urgent for development and team building of national key research base, and shorten the gap between our disciplines and international advanced level. Sponsored by the program of “Team of Excellency of Xi'an Jiaotong University”, the institute cooperated with Stanford University under the direction of Professor Marcus Feldman. The cooperation focuses on diverse fields such as gender and social development, demography, ecosystem services and environment and aims to cultivate talents for the institute.
· National platform: “Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in Universities ” of Ministry of Education of China
“Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Team in Universities” aims to support excellent innovative team in universities nationally, improve creative capacity and competitiveness of technology teams of universities, and facilitate the construction of high-level universities and key disciplines. With emphasis on significant demographic and social issues in the fields of gender imbalance and public security, population and social development, the team explores pragmatic ways of public administration and strategic stimulation through deep theoretical and empirical researches as well as experience of community practices. The program not only intends to make basic theoretical innovation, but also to cultivate a group of high-level scholars, which makes contributions to building a creative and competitive team.
· International collaboration platform:
The institute builds substantial cooperation and strategic collaboration frame with world-class universities from North America, Europe and Asia. Through advanced academic research exchange, international project cooperation, and co-construction of high-level international forums, the institute can learn experiences of related policy innovation and implementation, which help comprehensively internationalize its academic and social influence. Substantial long-term cooperation has been established with high-level universities in USA (including Stanford, Harvard, UCI, USC, and Syracuse University, University of Maryland, and Santa Fe Institute), Canada (University of Victoria, University of Toronto), Europe (University of Oxford UK, INED L'Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques France), Australia (The Australian National University, University of New South Wales), Japan (Waseda University), and so on. Moreover, the institute receives long-term support from international organizations and foundations, including Ford Foundation, United Nations (UNFPA, UNIFEM, UNICEF and FAO), and Plan International.
The institute has cooperated with Stanford University for over thirty years since the 1980s. Prof. JIANG Zhenghua, the institute’s founding director, and Prof. Marcus Feldman, director of Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford University, initiated and promoted a close collaboration in sophisticated mathematical modeling and cultural diffusion of son preferences. Their researches have acquired advanced academic achievements. Currently, the institute has extended its cooperation with Stanford University into several research institutes. Funded by the Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies of Stanford University, the institute did joint research with departments of Anthropology, Biology, History and Morrison Institute on the topic of “Female deficit and social stability in China: Implications for international security”, and implemented deep cooperation with Woods Institute for the Environment, the Natural Capital Project, and Asia-Pacific Research Center in the fields such as family dynamics and livelihood and environmental transition in rural China. The comprehensive cooperation with Stanford University includes co-research projects, regular visits of students and professors, collaboration on paper writing, joint-training programs of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral research, co-establishment of research institutes. These activities have contributed greatly to increasing the international academic influence of Public Administration and Social Science Studies of Xi’an Jiaotong University, stimulating public administration discipline construction, and improving the internationalization of research-oriented talents.
The institute has also conducted influential researches on aging and health with many international prestigious universities. With the cooperation of USC, Syracuse University, Stanford University, University of Maryland, and University of Victoria, it has established the first longitudinal database of the wellbeing of elderly families in rural areas under the background of mass rural-urban migration. The longitudinal survey started from 2001, and succeeded to follow and replenish samples in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015. There are currently over ten professors, both from China and abroad, and their teams involved in the development of the database, which produces an outstanding achievement of research papers and work and achieves great academic influence nationally and internationally.