Beijing Forestry University

Beijing Forestry University was founded in 1952 and is China's leading institution for forestry, landscape architecture, environmental science and ecology, part of Project 211 and the Double First-Class Initiative. Its relevance to Kazakhstan is narrower than the agricultural universities but real in specific areas. Desertification control, shelterbelt forestry, land degradation and soil conservation are Chinese research strengths developed for arid and semi-arid regions, and Kazakhstan faces the same problems across its steppe and southern regions. China's large-scale afforestation programmes, whatever their contested results, have generated substantial applied expertise in planting and maintaining vegetation on degraded arid land. That is directly transferable to Kazakh conditions. Landscape architecture is a further distinctive strength, and Beijing living costs of CNY 30,000 to CNY 55,000 a year are the principal offset.