Reimagining China-US University Relations

• In Event: Highlighted Session: A rapidly changing field: Cross-border and transnational education

Proposal

This study is among the few that attempt to connect two popular topics, the rapid growth of Chinese higher education and the shifting China-US higher education relations. Now both the Chinese and US higher education are among the top systems in the world—in terms of size and standard—while they start decoupling with each other. Against this backdrop, this study situates the growth of Chinese higher education and China-US university relations in the discourse of a global higher education ecosystem, and explores how the China-US university relations would evolve, as well as the implications for a global higher education ecosystem. This study draws on Marginson’s (2021) four heuristic narratives explaining science and knowledge as a global space of activity and perception: as a globally bound and collaborative network; as a global intellectual arena/market of competing institutions (for the prestige of “World-Class Universities”); as a centre-periphery hierarchy in which the Euro-American countries dominate and form a global centre; and as an arms race between competing national governments. An analytical lens is thus developed on such a basis, and applied to data collected from relevant databases and literature in order to reimagine China-US university relations in the different models. Finally, this study maintains that the universities on both sides are indebted to sustaining and nourishing this global higher education ecosystem together, particularly in an Anthropocene epoch.

Author

• Qiang Zha, York University