Termination of a Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education Programme: The PKU–University of Hong Kong Dental Master's (2018)

In June 2018 the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China issued a single administrative notice — 教外厅函〔2018〕39号 — that formally terminated 234 approved Sino-foreign cooperative education institutions and programmes at the undergraduate level and above. Among the 229 named programmes in the annex was a specific, individually identified cooperative programme: the Master of Dental Surgery programme jointly operated by Peking University and The University of Hong Kong. This case study examines that termination as a documented instance of how a single cooperative programme is wound down under China’s approval-based regulatory framework, and what the public record does and does not tell a researcher.

The regulatory context

Sino-foreign cooperative education in mainland China operates under the Regulations on Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools and their implementing measures. Approval is attached to the specific institution or programme: each carries an approval certificate (批准书) with a defined validity period, and the arrangement exists only for as long as that approval is in force. Termination therefore is not a commercial decision taken quietly by the partners alone; it is an administrative act requiring the approval authority to withdraw the certificate and strike the entry from the public register.

The 2018 notice states that the terminations were approved on the basis of applications by the cooperative partners themselves, and that the institutions and programmes “met the provisions for termination set out in their articles of association and agreements.” The notice instructed provincial education departments to ensure that the operators returned their licence and approval certificates to the Ministry before 15 July 2018 and completed deregistration in accordance with the law. This is the procedural backbone of an orderly exit: the state does not simply let a programme lapse, it formally revokes the instrument that made the programme lawful.

The specific programme

The Peking University–University of Hong Kong Master of Dental Surgery programme appears by name in Annex 2 of 教外厅函〔2018〕39号 as one of the 229 programmes approved for termination. It is a joint programme (合作举办…硕士学位教育项目) between a mainland Chinese university (Peking University) and a Hong Kong institution (The University of Hong Kong). Under the register’s classification it is a joint-programme — the lightest institutional form of Sino-foreign cooperation, in which the approval attaches to that one discipline and a second discipline would require a separate application.

The public record establishes three facts with confidence:

1. The programme was lawfully approved at some point before 2018. Its presence in the termination annex presupposes a prior approval certificate.
2. Its termination was approved by the Ministry in 2018. The notice is dated 19 June 2018 and was reported by state media on 4–5 July 2018.
3. The termination followed a partner application, not a unilateral enforcement action. The notice’s wording attributes the trigger to the cooperating parties’ own request under their articles of association.

What the record does not contain is the programme’s opening year, enrolment history, or the specific reasons the partners chose to discontinue. Those details are not published in the termination notice.

Why this case matters

The 2018 batch was, at the time, the largest single exercise of the exit mechanism in the history of Sino-foreign cooperative education. Reporting by China Youth Daily and People’s Daily framed it as a signal that the regulatory system was moving from pure expansion toward a “eliminate-the-obsolete, optimise-and-upgrade” posture — building a closed loop from market entry to market exit. For researchers, the value of this case is not the fate of one dental master’s degree; it is the demonstration that China’s cooperative-education register is not a static approval list but a managed population in which entries are added and removed through named administrative acts.

The PKU–HKU programme is a useful anchor because it is individually named in a primary official document, which lets a researcher point to a specific line in a specific notice rather than to a statistical aggregate. That specificity is what separates a documented case from a rumour.

What the record shows

1. A named programme was terminated by formal Ministry approval in 2018. The Peking University–University of Hong Kong Master of Dental Surgery programme is listed by name in Annex 2 of 教外厅函〔2018〕39号.
2. The termination was partner-initiated. The notice states the discontinuations met the termination provisions of the partners’ own articles and agreements, following applications by the cooperating parties.
3. The instrument was withdrawn, not merely expired. The Ministry directed return of the approval certificate and deregistration, an active administrative revocation rather than a passive lapse.
4. It formed part of a batch of 234 terminations (5 institutions, 229 programmes). The single programme sits inside a broader, documented exit exercise.
5. The public register reflects the change. The Ministry’s supervision platform maintains a list of approved terminations at the undergraduate-and-above level.

Limits of this record

1. This case study documents a termination, not its cause. The public notice gives the legal basis and procedure but not the commercial or academic reasons the partners discontinued the dental master’s programme. Researchers should not infer quality failure or financial distress from the termination alone.
2. The opening year, enrolment, and teaching-out arrangements are not in the source cited. Those facts would require the programme’s original approval record and any subsequent variation notices, which are outside the termination notice.
3. A batch termination is not representative of all exits. Partner-initiated discontinuation under articles of association differs from termination for regulatory breach; the two should not be conflated.
4. This is one jurisdiction’s record. The mechanism described applies to mainland China’s approval-based system and should not be read as describing Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, or the UAE.

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This case study was compiled from primary regulatory documents and contemporaneous state-media reporting accessed on 28 July 2026. Numerical and procedural claims trace to the cited Ministry of Education notice and the supervision platform; where a specific fact (opening year, enrolment) is absent from those sources, it is stated as absent rather than inferred.