Military-Political Interaction, Intellectual Convergence and University Competition in Modern Eastern Asia: Centered on the interaction between China, Japan and India

• In Event: Navigating and negotiating the global higher education internationalization: pathways and tensions in Chinese higher education system

Proposal

China, Japan and India, like many other countries, are latecomers to the wave of world modernization. Since its creation, higher education in these countries has taken different paths of development and has developed its own characteristics. Indian universities have followed the example of the University of London and lacked a high level of research and academic excellence. It was not until the 20th century that some of its leading universities developed a relatively systematic and institutionalized research effort and produced a series of internationally recognized results. Japanese universities, on the other hand, directly inherited the German model and reached a high academic level by the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they had already made outstanding achievements before and after World War I, and were becoming the most influential group of prestigious universities outside of Western Europe and North America. Chinese universities started even later, with widespread research activity only beginning in the 1920s, and under the influence of American research universities, a number of Chinese-style research universities grew, with Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Southwestern Union University being particularly famous in the country.

As the recipients of modern Western scholarship, the three countries have actively absorbed Western knowledge while also trying to create their own knowledge systems and educational systems (and indeed have done so quite successfully), with much intermingling in the field of knowledge and fierce competition in the field of higher education. This pattern has influenced the production and dissemination of knowledge in eastern Asia and has partly shaped the geopolitics of the region.

The above historical process of excavation vividly reveals: 1. the deep intertwining of military, political, diplomatic and academic cultures; 2. the strong inner tension between academic international intermingling (participation) and political autonomy (national independence); 3. the close and dynamic relationship between the three countries, which at times had a tendency to join forces; 4. the strong reaction of the three countries to the impact of the European and American worlds.

This study examines the long-neglected and important issue of knowledge drift and university competition in modern eastern Asia, and conducts an in-depth historical examination in an attempt to construct a new historical picture and knowledge schema. Through systematic excavation and in-depth interpretation of a large number of primary documents and through narrative research, comparative research, and time-series analysis, this study explores the deep-seated political and diplomatic factors that influenced academic convergence and university competition, and elucidates the historical accumulation and underlying structure of contemporary East Asian academics and politics. This is a highly comprehensive and in-depth study. It is not only an exploration of the history of civilizations in the original sense (comparative cultural studies) or orientalism, but also a new cross-field attempt at the politics of knowledge and cultural geography. It is a creative exploration of this academic territory and creates new possibilities for more in-depth and original research.

Author

• liu chao