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Session Submission Summary

Breakthroughs and bottlenecks: Chinese higher education 1978-2018.

Wed, April 17, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Pacific Concourse (Level -1), Pacific H

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

2018 marks an historic turning point: 40 years since the beginning of China’s Reform and Opening in 1978. Nowhere has this change been more significant than in China’s higher education system, after the devastating decade of the Cultural Revolution. As a Western Ambassador of the time recently reminded us, “Deng’s opening of China .. should not be seen just in purely economic or political terms. It should also be seen as an opening of the mind.”

It is therefore a particularly opportune moment for a collection of four leading scholars from Hong Kong, China, the UK, Canada and Australia to propose this panel, that comprehensively charts and analyses the key achievements and challenges faced by Chinese higher education over the period 1978-2018, and assesses prospects for the future.

Drawing on longstanding theoretical debates such as zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong, (the balance between indigenous Chinese knowledge and Western influences), forms of governance, and the influence of the global ranking regime, papers are based on original data, policy documents and analytical literature from both China and the West.

Clearly sited within the Higher Education SIG, the proposal comes at a time when China’s profile in higher education has reached new peaks: 10% of the World’s 500 leading universities are now from China (ARWU 2018). And in the vigorous competition in what has been termed the Global War for Talent, China is drawing high-skilled researchers, both Chinese and non-Chinese, from around the world, to work in Chinese universities. China’s huge worldwide knowledge diaspora (Welch and Zhang 2007, Yang and Welch 2010), numerous Foreign Talent Schemes (Welch and Cai 2011), and rising rates of returnees (Welch and Hao 2012, Hao, Wen and Welch 2016), especially since the GFC, gives it a distinct advantage in this competition. In an era of Network Science, when publications featuring authors from at least two countries rose from 25% to 35% within fifteen years (Royal Society 2011), China has already become a major knowledge partner of higher education institutions and systems from the EU, Asia, North America, Oceania and beyond. Yet growing global tensions threaten to undermine the growth of international partnerships, including Chinese scholars. The signature Made in China 2025 policy promises to raise the competitive stakes in global research in high-tech fields such as New Materials, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence. The ambitious Yi Dai Yi Lu (One Belt One Road) holds the promise of developing closer relations with universities, not merely among China’s immediate neighbours, in South East Asia, and Central Asia, but also the Middle East and Eastern Europe, at least.

In one of the world’s more clearly stratified higher education systems, China’s top tier universities are charged with becoming ‘World Class’, something that has thus far proved to be more easily attained in the natural and applied sciences than in the social sciences (Yang, Xie and Wen. 2018). The panel will make an original assessment of the achievements and challenges of the Chinese higher education system, including its sustainability, the extent to which the system has achieved ‘world class’, a ‘higher education with Chinese characteristics’, and the long held, if elusive, goal of synthesising East and West within a major knowledge system.

Bibliography
Hao, J. and Welch, A. (2012). A Tale of Sea Turtles: Job-Seeking Experiences of Hai Gui (High-Skilled Returnees) in China. Higher Education Policy, 25(2), 243-260.

Hao, J. Wen W. and Welch, A. (2016) ‘When sojourners return: Employment opportunities and challenges facing high-skilled Chinese returnees. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25(1), 22-40.

Hayhoe, R. (1996) China’s universities 1895-1995. New York, Garland.

Hayhoe, R. (2018) Asia’s Gift to the Research University, Plenary address, CESA, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Marginson, S. (2011) ‘Higher Education in East Asia and Singapore: rise of the Confucian Model’, Higher Education 61, No. 5 (May 2011), pp. 587-611.

Marginson, S (2018) ‘China’s national/global synergy in higher education and science since 1978’ Frontiers of Chinese Higher Education (In Press)

Marginson, S. (2018) ‘The new geo-politics of higher education’ Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Working Paper 34.

MoE, MoF and NDRC (2017) “Implementation measures to coordinate development of World-class Universities and First-class Disciplines Construction”

Royal Society (2011) Knowledge, Networks and Nations. London, Royal Society
Welch, A. and Hao, J. (2013) ‘Returnees and Diaspora as Source of Innovation in Chinese Higher Education.’, Frontiers of Education in China, 8(2), 214-238.

Welch, A. and Zhang, Z. (2007) ‘Higher Education and Global Talent Flows: Brain Drain, Overseas Chinese Intellectuals, and Diasporic Knowledge Networks. Higher Education Policy, 21(4), 519-537.

Wildavsky, B (2012) The Great Brain Race. How Global Universities are Re-shaping the World. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Yang, R. (2002) Third Delight. The Internationalisation of Chinese Higher education. London, Routledge.

Yang, R. (2013) Yang, R. (2013). Indigenised while internationalised? Tensions and dilemmas in China’s modern transformation of social sciences in an age of globalisation. M. Kuhn & K. Okamoto (Eds.), Spatial social thought: Local knowledge in global science encounters. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press.

Yang, R. Xie, M., and Wen W. (2018) Pilgrimage to the West. Higher Education DOI 10.1007/s10734-018-0303-9.

Sub Unit

Individual Presentations

Discussants