You can't blame lack of desire to learn on the student, you have to inspire them to learn, that is your job

I'm not sure that is entirely true for the adult students that the previous poster was talking about. Yes you should be engaging and students should be motivated to learn in a university class but they are adults and they have made a choice to be studying at that level. Their motivation should come from an interest in the subject matter and they should also be more keenly aware of the importance of doing well in their studies in regards to what they want to achieve in the future which should again serve as motivation. Yes, you will find unmotivated and lazy students at uni level in any country, both boys and girls. I find that Chinese university students sometimes lack a bit of maturity and a few life skills. One of the first things i like to do with a new class (especially first and second year uni students) is impress upon them how they are now adults, that they will be treated as an equal within my class and they will have all the other advantages that come with adulthood. On the flip side as an adult you also need to take responsibility for your own actions. Therefore, if students don't want to come to class or they don't want to participate, etc., etc. that is their choice but they must also realize that there are consequences to their decisions.

Further to the above i generally spend at least an hour in my first class with a group of uni students doing the following
1. Within groups a discussion about what a student should/shouldn't do to be successful within xxxxx class - feedback and further discussion as a class
2. Within groups a discussion about what makes a good teacher of xxxxx class - feedback and further discussion as a class
There is of course always the opportunity for the teacher to add anything important that might have been missed during the discussion
3. A pyramid discussion about what students want to learn from xxxxxx class - feedback as a class followed by teacher presenting the syllabus
You'd hope that the syllabus you present matches fairly well with the expectations the students have. Depending on the course and the university you teach at you may be able to make amendments to what is taught.
4. Teacher introduces how final grading will be calculated - again it's dependent on the course but i personally like to dedicate a chunk of the final grade towards attendance/participation. That does mean that you have to be dedicated to taking attendance and carrying out some form of ongoing assessment to determine how to grade a student's participation accurately.

Personally I've found this approach of letting the students know your expectations while simultaneously understanding theirs is quite successful in engaging them with the class. Of course there are always students who struggle with motivation but at uni level i have to say i don't generally chase them too much (for the reasons stated above). What i usually do is at the half way point of a class i'll sit down and have a look at which students might fail the class. In my experience 9 out of 10 of those who are likely to fail are due to motivational/attendance issues. I'll then contact the student (via email) to tell them they may fail the course while at the same time i'll contact the department head and tell them i have a student(s) who could fail as a result of these issues. From hard experience you do need to cover your posterior from time to time when working as a teacher. As i mentioned above it's often uni students who aren't sufficiently mature who don't realize the consequences of their actions and they will sometimes seek to shift blame for their failings on to someone else i.e. the teacher. I endeavor to make my classes engaging, i make it clear to my students what is expected of them, i include them within the learning process, i am happy to tell them if they are falling short of the expectations for my class and i'm always available to them should they have any issues they wish to discuss. At some point the blame for a lack of desire can't rest solely with the teacher ............