1st LD-Writethru: Billionaire donates 300 mln yuan to cyber security training

Philanthropist Henry Cheng, chair of Hong Kong jeweller Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Ltd., donated 300 million yuan (45.6 million U.S. dollars) to China Internet Development Foundation (CIDF) on Tuesday to support cyber security training.

Cheng, who is also a Standing Committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made the donation at a ceremony hosted by CIDF in Beijing.

The money will support education and training.

The donation will strengthen China's cyber security capability, said deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China Wang Xiujun.

According to Wang, cyber security requires specialists, thus, support and investment is needed from the government and the private sector.

Lin Huiqing, vice minister of education, lauded the donation, while stressing the significance of support from all walks of life to strengthening China's cyber security.

The ceremony was attended by officials from several state administrations, representatives of engineering universities, as well as other public figures.

China has attached great importance to training in cyber security in recent years.

In 2015, MOE set cyber security as a first-class science and came up with a series of standards on its degree and teaching.

With almost 700 million Internet users, however, China is still lacking cyber security expertise. Only 8,000 or so graduate from majors related to cyber security per year, according to Zhao Zeliang, an official at CAC.

Universities with these majors are expected to come up with new ideas to improve the quality of courses, Zhao added. Endi