When education meets PPP: the indissoluble bond between Longyuan construction and education
On August 20, 2018, Longyuan Construction Group won the bid for the education PPP project of Weibei Middle School, Lintong Modern Industry Group, Weibei Industrial Zone, Xi'an Weibei Industrial Zone. The project invested 51,09.81 million yuan and operated in the PPP mode. The cooperation period was 12 years. This is the thirteenth educational PPP project that won the bid of Longyuan Construction. However, the relationship between Longyuan construction and national education has already begun before the PPP project, and can be traced back to the 1980s at the earliest.
Nearly 40 years of entrepreneurship, reluctant education feelings
Longyuan Construction was founded in 1980. Its predecessor was Zhejiang Xiangshan Erjian Group Co., Ltd. It entered the Shanghai construction market in 1984. Its headquarters moved to Shanghai in 1993 and landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2004. In 2017, the Group undertook nearly 50 billion yuan of business, ranked the top three in the comprehensive strength of construction enterprises entering Shanghai for 26 consecutive years (the first in 17 consecutive years), and ranked the top 500 private enterprises in China for 9 consecutive years.
As a listed company with the aim of "serving the society", Longyuan Construction has always been based on its own business and practiced corporate social responsibility since its establishment. In the mid-1980s, Longyuan Construction took the lead in putting forward the slogan of "Quality for Business". It regards quality as the basis for the survival and development of enterprises and assuming social responsibility, and firmly grasps quality management. Up to now, Longyuan Construction has served nearly 100 colleges and universities, and has constructed nearly 300 cultural and educational projects, of which more than 50 high-quality projects at or above the provincial level have been obtained. Longyuan can be seen everywhere in Shanghai, which includes not only Fudan University Academic Exchange Center, Tongji University Business School, Shanghai Jiaotong University Bao Zhaolong Library, Shanghai East China Normal University Yifu Building, Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade and many other universities, but also the ten key projects of spiritual civilization in Shanghai in that year. —— Shanghai Bookstore Building on Fuzhou Road, Dongtan School affiliated to Shanghai Experimental School, which has just won the 2017 Magnolia Prize, and so on.
At the same time, Longyuan Construction has always been a firm practitioner of philanthropy in China, and its total investment in public welfare and poverty alleviation has exceeded 100 million yuan. Since the early 1990s, when Mr. Lai Zhenyuan, chairman of Longyuan Group, donated money to Lai Lan Hope Primary School, the road of building educational public welfare in Longyuan has never stopped.
In 2005, Longyuan Construction launched the project of "100 needy college students are subsidized free of charge every year". Every year, excellent students are selected from Fudan University, Tongji University, East China Normal University and many other universities to be subsidized free of charge. During President Barack Obama's visit to China, among the 100 student representatives of Fudan University, Longyuan Construction Group funded students.
In 2007, Longyuan Construction Group set up a charity fund for Xiangshan County. The interest on deposit of 6 million yuan was used to help the poor, relief and students. At present, the charity foundation of Xiangshan is in charge of the management.
In 2009, Longyuan Construction funded 300,000 yuan, and Wenhui Longyuan Hope Primary School, located in Longquan City, Zhejiang Province, was jointly funded by Wen Hui and Wen Hui Bao. The teaching building was named Longyuan Building.
Longyuan Building, Longquan Wenhui Longyuan Hope Primary School, Zhejiang Province
Since 2011, Longyuan Construction and Ningbo Radio and Television University of Zhejiang have jointly built "Longyuan Architectural Class". A group of students from poor families in Ningbo have already graduated and served Longyuan Construction Project Department throughout the country.
As a result of professional and educational public welfare activities, Longyuan has become the practice base of assisting students in Tongji University, the "production, teaching and research" base of Shanghai University of Engineering and Technology and Zhejiang School of Construction Vocational Education. In addition, branches across the country are also continuing to carry out warm charitable action. Continuously subsidize Zhang Guoqing Team of Guangdong Branch of Yuqing Poor Students in Zunyi, Guizhou, Zhou Quanmao Team of Shaanxi Branch of Weinan Local School, set up Ningbo Branch Staff of Free Classical School to deliver classical strength, and donate 300,000 yuan to Shangfang Design Institute, a subsidiary of Yanling Primary School in Jinggangshan, for library construction. These are all the modest efforts that Longyuan Group has made for China's education. However, the relationship between Longyuan Group and education is more than that.
When education meets PPP, the construction of Longyuan has gone ahead quietly.
In September 2014, the State Council issued Opinion No. 43 on Strengthening Local Government Debt Management (Guofa [2014). It proposed that "the cooperation model between government and social capital should be popularized and used. The government should make investors have long-term and stable returns through the prior and open revenue agreement rules such as franchise, reasonable pricing and government subsidies." " This means that the country has begun to vigorously promote the PPP model.
PPP model, full name of Public-Private Partnership, that is, government and social capital cooperation model, refers to a long-term cooperative relationship established by government and social investors for the construction of infrastructure and the provision of public services. One of its great advantages is that it can use market mechanism to rationally distribute risks and increase the number of public goods and services. Quantity, quality and efficiency can help the government smooth financial expenditure and effectively relieve the financial pressure of the government.
With the support and promotion of national policies, many governments have embarked on PPP express ships and launched a large number of PPP projects. The successful application of PPP model in other infrastructure and public service fields also promotes the application and development of PPP model in education industry to a certain extent. According to the statistics of Mingshu data, as of the end of August 2018, 371 PPP projects have been set up in the national education industry, with an investment amount of 190.872 billion yuan, a scale of 1.64% and a number of 4.64%. It can be seen that at present, the traditional mode of government direct investment is still the main mode of investment projects in the education industry, and there is still much room to improve the application of PPP mode in the education industry.
The rise of PPP mode also brings many opportunities and challenges to traditional construction enterprises. On the one hand, PPP mode provides a broader stage for construction enterprises, and enterprises with more investment projects can make a big contribution to the wider dimension of urban infrastructure construction. The role of investors expands more profit-making space for enterprises. On the other hand, due to the large investment and long duration of PPP projects, under the premise of imperfect legal system and management mechanism of the current government, the divergence of management concepts from the government and the errors in enterprise decision-making may lead to poor project management, thus affecting the return on funds. In addition, for the traditional construction enterprises themselves, the strategic level of adjustment, the overall capital operation capacity, the operation capacity of later projects is put forward higher requirements.
At the same time, on December 8, 2014 (the 6th day after the establishment of the PPP Center of the Ministry of Finance), Longyuan Mingcheng Investment Management (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Longyuan Group, was officially established. When many local governments took a wait-and-see attitude toward "PPP+education". At that time, Longyuan's first educational PPP project was quietly launched.
Longyuan Education PPP Road, Feelings and Temperature
On October 19, 2015, Longyuan Construction Group won the first educational PPP project, the infrastructure construction project of Juxian People's Government of Rizhao City. The total investment of the project is 1.6 billion yuan, which includes six projects: Wenxin Middle School Apartment Building, School Stadium Promotion Project, High-level Talents Innovation Pioneer Park, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Park, Tianwang Project and Qingfengling Reservoir Ecological Wetland Project. Among them, the Wenxin High School Apartment Building project was completed and put into use on August 31, 2017, and then completed 44 elementary and secondary school stadiums in November 2017 and passed the acceptance. With the establishment and application of the project, the local school-running conditions have been significantly improved, which not only meets the needs of teachers and students for outdoor sports and undertaking various sports activities, but also solves the shortage of students'dormitories, laying a solid foundation for the next expansion of enrollment.
Infrastructure Construction Project of Juxian People's Government of Rizhao City - Wenxin High School Apartment Building
Similarly, in 2016, as far as Linwei District, Weinan City, Shaanxi Province, in the northwest, six newly-built schools also landed successively through the adoption of PPP model. Among them, Weinan Ruiquan Middle School is a key high school project in Shaanxi Province, and also a PPP demonstration project of the Ministry of Finance. The project consists of 13 single buildings and an underground garage, with a total construction area of about 126,000 square meters, and an estimated total investment of 895 million yuan. At present, the project of Ruiquan Middle School and Xi'an Road Primary School has been put into use in advance, and the installation and commissioning of some single fine decoration and facilities and equipment have been completed. This opening season will officially meet with the majority of new teachers and students.
In May of the same year, another PPP demonstration project of the Ministry of Finance, the PPP project of Shangzhou Senior High School in Shangluo City, Shaanxi Province, held a grand opening ceremony. It took less than half a year to practice the whole project from beginning to landing. The project covers an area of 250,000 square meters, and the newly built building area is 11.425 square meters. The original campus needs 26,000 square meters for renovation. The whole building is built according to the standard of "provincial demonstration high school", with a total investment of 528 million yuan. After completion, Shangzhou Senior High School will reach the school scale of 120 standard classes, 6000 students and 480 staff.
On August 31, 2018, another education PPP project: Ganzhou Zhanggong Yangming Middle School, Zhangjiang Road Cultural and Sports Center and Parking lot PPP project neutron project - Yangming Middle School new project junior middle, basically completed the construction of teaching area and delivered to use.
Since its establishment, on the one hand, Longyuan Mingcheng has accumulated experience in the construction and operation of educational projects through the successful PPP projects; on the other hand, it attaches great importance to the expansion and development of operational resources in various fields of education, and has set up a special operation and management department for high-quality educational operational resources. Up to now, Longyuan Mingcheng has signed strategic cooperation agreements with Hailiang Education Group and Tiankun International Education Group, jointly docking educational PPP projects, sharing resources and complementing advantages.
It is precisely because Longyuan's construction is proactive in the standardized operation of educational PPP projects. Even in document 92 (* November 2017, the Ministry of Finance issued document 92 -"Notice on Regulating the Management of Project Base of Comprehensive Information Platform for Government and Social Capital Cooperation"), which is called the most stringent PPP normative document in history. After the introduction of the normative storm of PPP, Longyuan Construction has maintained steady growth based on its first-mover advantage and adhered to the bottom line of compliance. Since November 2017, Longyuan Construction has won five education PPP projects, including the relocation project of Zhejiang Yuhuan Secondary Vocational School, Xinfeng Cultural and Educational Park and Weibei Middle School, with the winning bid amounting to 5.513 billion yuan. This achievement comes from Longyuan's long-standing educational sentiment, and more from the professional and pragmatic spirit of compliance.
Since Juxian, up to now, Longyuan has won 13 educational PPP projects, requiring 33 new schools and more than 50 school playgrounds. Educational PPP projects account for up to 20% of Longyuan's PPP projects. The project is distributed in Shaanxi, Shandong, Jiangxi, Yunnan, Zhejiang and Hebei provinces. Except for the three projects that have recently won the bid, all the other projects have been successful.利开工，开工率达76%，部分项目已陆续建设完工并投入交付使用。
拥抱PPP，续写新的教育情缘
由于教育行业的特殊属性，我国教育行业引入PPP模式较晚，仍处于起步阶段。据全国PPP综合信息平台入库项目显示，现有教育PPP项目仍以学校建设及配套设施改造等辅助性活动为主，其中新建占比达88.74%，缺乏教育内容服务等软性服务合作。一直以来，关于教育PPP到底要不要做，到底该如何做的行业声音褒贬不一，龙元建设也在一系列教育PPP落地项目中不断探索与实践。
不可否认的是，教育项目引入PPP模式首先可以缓解地方政府的财政压力。当前我国正经历快速的城镇化进程，有限的公共财政导致基础教育资源供给严重不足，尤其在经济比较落后的贫困地区。赣州章贡区PPP项目就是这样一个例子。作为市府所在区，章贡区人口密集、生源密集，现有的办学规模已经无法满足日益增长的教学要求。按照传统模式，政府在项目建设时相对集中支付建设资金，并且还要负责学校的运营管理工作，财政压力较大。此时，适时地引入PPP模式，可以有效缓解中短期财政支出压力。政府可以利用节省下来的资金参与其他教育项目，更好的发展当地的教育事业。
此外，充分调动社会资源、提高公共服务效率及质量是PPP模式的第二大优势。当前，随着居民生活水平的提高，对于高质量、多样化、个性化的教育需求也日益增大，政府在这方面的供给依然十分有限。教学质量高的学校存在超规模办学状况，教学质量低的学校又面临生源不足。PPP模式的导入，未来不仅仅将改变教育资源硬件投入不足的现状，还将有助于教育软实力的提升。社会资本通过引入优质教育管理团队，扩大优质教育资源总量，进一步提升教育质量，满足多元化的教育需求。
因此，教育类PPP项目，它不是功绩、不是作品，而是可以成为推动教育发展和社会发展的重中之重。它将有助于帮助政府优化教育资源配置，引导教育事业的良性发展，推动基础教育与社会经济、城市发展相适应，对构建和谐社会具有十分重要意义。
教育是立国之本，是强国之基。如同教育需要长期的深耕细作，可以预见，教育PPP前行之路依然漫长且坎坷。但肩负使命的龙元集团，一定会迎难而上，用强大的社会责任感，努力把自己锤炼成具有丰富教育类PPP项目投资、建设、运营经验的顶尖专家。未来，龙元集团将通过一个又一个教育类PPP项目，和国家教育事业共同续写新的情缘。
