The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) and Tsinghua University (Tsinghua) had already appreciated strong relations for a long time before 2015. Besides relations at the person-to-person and department-to-department levels, UTokyo and Tsinghua held several university-wide collaborations, such as signing the agreement of academic exchange in 1999, Todai Week at Tsinghua in 2008 and Tsinghua Week at Todai in 2010.

In 2015, the relationship of the two universities entered a new stage. UTokyo has created a new scheme of collaboration called “Strategic Partnership Projects,” and chose Tsinghua as one of the strategic partner universities. Strategic partnership is a close, creative, flexible and sustainable relationship that goes beyond a usual academic exchange agreement, and aims to create a comprehensive, reciprocal, special relationship by taking advantage of the strengths of both universities, exploring areas of complementarity and thereby achieving synergy. After preparatory activities since 2015, UTokyo and Tsinghua signed “Memorandum of understanding on strategic partnership” in July 2018.

As strategic partners, UTokyo and Tsinghua are promoting collaborative actions, such as holding joint annual symposia and launching collaborative research funds.