The Third Party Congress of HNUST has set several clear goals of development for the "14th Five-Year Plan" period and even for a long time to come. To achieve these goals, we must dialectically look at the opportunities and challenges faced by HNUST during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, seize the opportunities and face these challenges accurately, scientifically and actively, turning crises into opportunities.

Internationally, a new round of scientific and technological revolution has advanced by leaps and bounds and become an important driving force for great international changes. Major technological revolutions have accelerated the upgrading of industries, transformed the traditional industries, and created new ones. This new round of scientific and technological revolution not only provides technical and industrial support for the development of higher education, but also requires higher education to provide talent and intellectual support for it.

Domestically, China has entered a new stage of high-quality development. The major social contradictions have made historic changes related to the overall national situation, but the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development is still prominent. Higher education plays a quite important role in supporting and leading the process of building a powerful modern country. Therefore, we must profoundly grasp the characteristics and requirements of this new development stage, make clear historical orientations, guiding principles and ways of each work, guide each work with the new development philosophy, find the focus and breakthrough of the integration into a new development paradigm to have a better and faster development.

From the perspective of higher education itself, the environment of higher education development has undergone profound changes. At present, there are still some problems, such as insufficient supply of high-quality resources, unbalanced education distribution, incapability of meeting the diversified and personalized education needs of the people. In order to adapt to these new requirements and changes, colleges and universities must update education and teaching concepts, adjust students training objectives, optimize professional structure and curriculum system, reform education and teaching methods and means, and comprehensively improve the quality of higher education.

In terms of provincial situation, Hunan Province has obvious location advantages, abundant science and education resources, solid industrial foundation and rich human resources. To build a modern Hunan province in the fields of economy, science and education, culture, ecology opening up etc, it needs strong support of talents, science and technology, intelligence and culture. HNUST, as a first-class construction university in Hunan province, should undertake its own historical mission, give full play to its multiple advantages of talents, science and technology, intelligence, and make its own unique and great contributions to the construction of a modern Hunan Province.

For HNUST itself, during the "13th Five -Year Plan" period, the Party Committee of HNUST united and led the teachers, students and staff of the school, making profound changes in various undertakings and all-round achievements, and laying a solid foundation for the development of HNUST during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.

While we are facing good opportunities, we must clearly realize that we are also confronted with unprecedented challenges, which come from both the higher education system and our university itself.

The competition among colleges and universities in China is fiercer. Because of the limited resources of local colleges and universities and the regional disadvantages, our school cannot effectively attract high-quality students and resources, which place HNUST in a disadvantageous position in the competition; The limited funds cannot fully meet the growing needs of teachers, students and staff; It is still necessary for us to make arduous efforts to highlight the advantages of traditional disciplines, strengthen the fundamental position of virtuous education, greatly improve the academic level and scientific research strength of HNUST, fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the majority of teaching staff, and enhance the executive ability of cadres at all levels.

Facing the severe and complicated situation, we should dialectically understand and grasp the general trend at home and abroad, and deeply understand the new changes and requirements that higher education is facing. We should also have a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by colleges and universities during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, continue to make joint efforts, turn crises into opportunities, strive to achieve a more efficient and sustainable development of higher quality, and make unremitting efforts to build HNUST as a comprehensive university with distinctive characteristics, a first-class university in China and a university with great international influence.

(Translated by Wangjing)