This paper briefly reviews the history of Chinese higher education. It points that modern Chinese higher education enters a new era to build an education power by opening up to the outside, learning extensively from other’s strong points, bringing forth new ideas for changes with our confidence, and transforming into new intension development. However, new measures of transforming common colleges into applied ones and constructing new arts have baffled some colleges and universities, which diverges from the national strategy of higher education development. Thus, this paper illustrates the imperative of such transformation and the novelty of constructing new arts with Chinese characteristics. With the hope of further researches with joint efforts, it further treats in detail the high-level system construction for applied talent development specialized in new arts with Chinese characteristics.