In 2016, the OUC's Opinions on Promoting the Construction of the School Organisational System and Opinions on Strengthening the OUC Headquarters’ Teaching Departments for the Coordinated Management of Teaching were successively promulgated.

In July 2016, a working conference on OUC construction was held in Hefei, Anhui Province. The conference participants reached five consensuses:

First, clarify the orientation of school operation and serve national lifelong learning; second, persevere with the system of school operation and promote the transformation of the RTVUs; third, strengthen connotation construction and deepen education teaching reform; fourth, exercise the leading role of the OUC and continue moving forward together; fifth, suggest that the Ministry of Education (MOE) pay high attention to the renaming of open universities.

In May 2017, a workshop on preparation work for the OUC Council was held in Nanning, Guangxi Province. During the workshop, they reached the following consensuses:

First, adhere to the community concept and systematic school operation, build the OUC community, achieve win-win results by moving forward and backwards together, as well as creating prosperity together to better exercise the role of the OUC community in serving the construction of a learning society.

Second, strengthen connotation construction, clarify the division of responsibility, and deepen education and teaching reform. All the parties involved in co-construction should fulfil their responsibilities, and accelerate community construction and the implementation of various teaching reform measures.

Third, positively encourage all the branches to cultivate their own respective advantages, strengthen integration with the headquarters, and increase the core competitiveness of the OUC community.
Fourth, continue exercising the leading role of the OUC, actively gain policy support, promote the 39 provincial-level RTVUs to enable transformation and upgrading, build a unified image of the open university system, better mobilise local governments and society to promote the transformation and upgrading of the RTVUs, better hold together the forces of the open university system, and accelerate their transformation.

In 2016, the OUC signed agreements on issues such as co-construction of branches with cooperative units, the selection of OUC Council members, and the recommendation of teaching affairs committee members. Currently, 39 RTVUs at the provincial level and five local open universities have signed an OUC branch co-constrcution agreement with the OUC.

The OUC community has taken shape and adopted a "unified brand, standards, platform, management, and evaluation" according to the working principles of "voluntariness, equality, cooperation, and win-win results" and the principle of "co-negotiation, co-construction, co-management, sharing, and win-win results" in order "exercise its role and give full play to its advantages.” It has built a school operation community that features intensive group-running, with diverse bodies, the integration of "regions, industries, and enterprises", to realise co-construction, co-management, and sharing, and covering urban and rural areas across China.

Written by Sun Fuwan, Edited by Yan Jingzhen, www.China.org.cn