Global Ambitions: Internationalisation, Polarisation, and China’s Rise as Knowledge Hub

• In Event: The Renaissance of Chinese Universities: An Alternative Model for the Global Responsibility in the Post-Covid Era?

Proposal

The importance of the year 1978 cannot be overstated, representing China’s landmark re-entry into the world of global scholarship and higher learning, after the catastrophic losses of the Cultural Revolution decade. As a former Australian Ambassador recently remarked, “Deng’s opening of China … should not be seen in purely economic or political terms. It should also be seen as an opening of the mind.”

While Reform and Opening needs to be set against a longer history of oscillation between more open and more hermetic eras in Chinese history, there is no doubt that huge strides have been made in higher education over the ensuing four decades. This embraces both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, with China now producing some 8 million graduates each year, and with more than 10 per cent of among the world’s top 500 universities being Chinese.

The analysis focuses on two linked elements. First is the internationalisation of the Chinese higher education system, including its rise as a major destination for overseas students, its growing links with the region, and capacity to draw on its substantial high-skilled knowledge diaspora. These are currently being affected by both geo-strategic concerns, notably US-China rivalries, and COVID-19. The former, including the recent revocation of more than 1,000 visas of Chinese science and technology scholars in the US, is part of increasingly rancorous US-China relations (increasingly acknowledged as not just a trade war, but a tech war, and potentially a cold war), that have substantial implications for well-established international scholarly networks and cooperation. The latter is also having a substantial impact, with travel restrictions limiting student flows to China. Second, and somewhat connected, is its rise as a global centre for research, reflecting an unrelenting determination to build both world class institutions and world class disciplines, albeit with more of an emphasis on high-tech science and technology fields, than in the social sciences, where China’s rise (or more accurately renaissance) as an intellectual centre has thus far produced less formidable results.

The analysis charts both, points to connections between the two and assesses the prospects for the higher education system, at a pivotal point in international relations, including international research collaboration, and staff and student flows.

Author

• Anthony Welch, University of Sydney