Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Attributed to Henry KissingerWhat makes a university is not its imposing premises, but its first-rate scholars.
Mei Yiqi 梅贻琦 (president of Tsinghua University, 1931–1948)Belief is inedible, hence insignificant. Democracy is inedible, hence insignificant. Freedom is inedible, hence insignificant. Principle is inedible, hence insignificant. For the Chinese, nothing is significant unless it is edible. We believe in the life principle of pigs, thus we are faced with the same destiny as them – we will be eaten by others sooner or later.
Wang Shuo 王朔China has only one university, namely the University of the Ministry of Education.
An anonymous scholarAccording to a PhD candidate at a university in Beijing, her advisor, a nationally acclaimed scholar, often says, “Academia is like jianghu 江湖” (xueshu ru jianghu 学术如江湖). Jianghu, literally meaning rivers and lakes, often refers to a world of outlaws as portrayed in martial arts novels and movies set in the pre-socialist, imperial period. An accompanying popular saying explains, “While being situated in ‘rivers and lakes,’ one has little choice but to succumb to its protocols” (renzai jianghu shenbu youji 人在江湖, 身不由己). Having obtained my PhD in the US, when I was a faculty member at a major research university in western China I was constantly reminded by colleagues and others that I was too “innocent” and “Westernized” to comprehend the hideousness of the “rivers and lakes” of Chinese academia. My colleagues were referring to Chinese academia's omnipresent negative practices, including onerous academic regulations, plagiarism, corruption, nepotism, bureaucracy and poor efficiency, to name but a few.Footnote 1
By the time of my departure for an overseas faculty position after working at the Chinese university for nearly five years, I was still frequently seen as an “outsider” with a limited understanding of both “how deep the water is” (shui you duoshen 水有多深) and the proper protocols (guiju 规矩). Mining my own experiences as well as intensive interviews and media reports, in this article I aim to unearth the distinctive protocols of the Chinese academic world in order to shed new light on the “deep water” in which it is anchored. I conclude by briefly discussing the implications of the different depths and types of “deep water” for Chinese academia's future prospects. To provoke further thought, I then ask whether Western and other academic worlds also have “deep waters” of their own.
Although the notion of jianghu is an extreme or hyperbolic version of “deep water” and academic protocol, it does spotlight a strong sense of helplessness and powerlessness within both academic and social environments in China and among the majority of scholars I interviewed. This situation implies that intellectuals in China are trapped in “deep water,” both willingly and unwillingly.Footnote 2 The “deep water” is the complex reality of everyday living when it becomes enmeshed in the consequences and backlashes of recent socio-political changes in China. My interviewees were inclined to use the tizhi 体制 (literally, structure or system) to address the “deep water” in Chinese academia and simultaneously justify the status quo. The tizhi is usually described as an overpowering political structure and social system that prevails over, and even stifles, people's creativity and personal desires. The impacts of the tizhi on higher education and academic practices have been explored thoroughly in academic publications.Footnote 3 The tizhi has also been heavily criticized by many of these same authors and “public intellectuals” (gonggong zhishifenzi 公共知识分子) in blogs and reviews.Footnote 4
Some of these works argue that higher education is gravely “sick” because of the almost irreparable flaws in its tizhi.Footnote 5 Notably, some scholars go so far as to claim that Chinese higher education is a failure in that it has achieved little other than to turn students into profiteers and corrupt officials.Footnote 6 At the same time, the role of academic institutes and intellectuals within the tizhi, as well as their transforming relations with the party-state, has become an important research topic on its own.Footnote 7
The scope of this body of work shows that a focus on tizhi, as it is revealed in education and in the broader socio-political structure, is instrumental in helping to explain many unique practices and subsequent outcomes in Chinese academia. For instance, the de facto non-fulfilment of a much publicized higher education reform pioneered by Zhu Qingshi 朱清时 has been widely perceived as the Ministry of Education's revenge for his “radical” reform agendas.Footnote 8 However, I argue that we should be wary of taking a reductive view of the “deep water” and attributing it simply to the tizhi. In so doing, we run the risk of taking both individual aspirations and various institutes’ initiatives for granted. Therefore, I suggest applying the notion of the field, as proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, to investigate the implications of the tizhi for these aspirations and initiatives. Notably, Bourdieu has examined the field and power dynamics in French and Western academic worlds.Footnote 9
Bourdieu conceptualizes the field as more than a context, milieu or social background. Such categories limit the concept's utility and breadth in identifying ongoing processes in various fields. Here, individuals’ actions and aspirations, including the strategies people employ, are situated in a set of objective social relations. They are so situated in a way that omnipresent and diffused power emanating from social institutions, political apparatuses and dominant discourses seeps through habitus or dispositions and informs everyday practices and actions.Footnote 10
This perspective is in line with both Gramscian and Foucauldian notions of power and hegemony.Footnote 11 However, it goes further by pronouncing social actors as agents of power and social relations (rather than as doomed victims). Moreover, Bourdieu develops concepts of symbolic, social and cultural capitals to diversify and convolute forms of power grounded beyond their material foundations in economy and politics.Footnote 12 Bourdieu contends that different capitals, and thus different forms of power, are transferrable or convertible to each other.Footnote 13 For instance, those with cultural capital (like an academic degree) may enhance their capability to win symbolic, political and economic power. In one way, this suggests that those disadvantaged in various power relations (such as people of lower socio-economic positions or other kinds of subalterns) may potentially transform their unfavourable status. However, the mechanism of the field simultaneously serves to maintain the structured relations through inculcated dispositions.
As Bourdieu demonstrates in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, these dispositions are a set of established codes that define people's tastes and desires.Footnote 14 They are also the means and access to various kinds of capital and power. Social relations and political structures are governed by the subtle and often subconscious and unconscious mechanisms of everyday power, or by doxa (the unspoken rules that are embodied, assumed, and unanimous, and thus beyond reflective judgment). In other words, the strategies, initiatives or even desires of individual agents are not entirely conscious and premeditated. They can be dictated by unexposed dispositions or habitus.
Chinese academia, like academia everywhere, is neither an isolated form of field nor a field based exclusively in academia. The academic world is not a social vacuum insulated from hierarchic social relations and overwhelming party-state effects. It is therefore of essential significance to locate various scholars and their institutes both in the multiple fields across which they are situated and concurrently where they play a role specific to a particular field. This is in line with Bourdieu's reasoning. Despite the fact that the intellectual or educational fields, that of cultural production and other fields have their respective operating mechanisms, their autonomy, as well as the internal apparatus of positioning among agents, is relative and circumstantial. Thus, they are subject to the external influences of the larger society.Footnote 15
In highlighting the academic field first and foremost as a social field, I use the plural form “fields.” By so delineating the intricate terrain of Chinese academia, I mean to demonstrate that academic practices in China are intrinsically the social practices of the broader Chinese society, which are primarily political. To be specific, these practices not only carry strong imprints of the operating structure of Chinese academia but also are subject to the party-state agenda and subsequent political restructuring.
Next, I explain the implications of my positioning in the inquiry as both an insider and outsider (an informant and ethnographer) and, above all, as a third-eye spectator. Then, I employ a historical lens to look at the entanglement of social and academic practices since the late Qing period before unwrapping the various fields in which the present-day academic practices are situated.
Insider from the Outside and Outsider from the Inside
This article is based on my own experiences, my reflections on academic practices and the underlying political and cultural systems in China. It is also informed by my observations of the actions of scholars and others and interviews with some of them regarding their relevant experiences. Thus, I not only situate myself as a researcher or observer, I am also part of the field and story, like every other individual I have interviewed and interacted with. Hence, my investigation is caught between and across an insider's and an outsider's perspectives of academic practices and the realities of everyday living in China.
First, I am an outsider in terms of my alleged Westernized ways of doing things. I earned my PhD, and conducted postdoctoral research, in the US. I also worked as a fellow at a European research institute for nearly one year. As a result, I have been exposed to a diverse range of ideas and theories in the West. I have been greatly influenced by Western scholarship and the informal style of interpersonal relationships among colleagues. My students, friends and others in China even referred to me as the “American professor” or “foreigner.” For instance, my dean in China urged me to “become re-Sinicized” (zai Zhonguohua 再中国化). He suggested that I should behave like other colleagues. My style of working and interacting was often considered to be “un-Chinese” and thus unsuitable for Chinese academia. I am now teaching outside of China and writing this article at my new institute. Here, I feel at home with the Western-style scholarship and rather simple guanxi 关系 (personal connections). This all allows me to see China and the academic practices there as foreign and peculiar, and provides me with the distance to see more dispassionately.
Although I am considered to be an outsider in Chinese academia, I am also an insider owing to my upbringing and experiences in China. I have been part of the great changes of the last several decades. They have affected every aspect of life in China, including the sphere of higher education. I went to college several years after the 1989 student movement. By that time, courses on Maoist Marxism, Party history and socialism had come to occupy an important place in college curricula throughout the country. During my early career and graduate school years in China, I was heavily exposed to the regular power-contesting practices and internal politics (hierarchy, bureaucracy, factionalism, etc.) at academic institutes. Following my return to China after completing my PhD in the US, my daily immersion in the routines and workings of academic institutes gave me an intimate knowledge of how the system operates. I also gained an understanding of the constraints the tizhi placed on academic activities.
As a result, I can see both sides. I have a relatively balanced outsider–insider perspective. As an outsider, practices in Chinese academic institutes appear odd to me in many ways. Numerous puzzles I have faced motivate me to try to comprehend the mechanisms of academic practices in China. Simultaneously, they derive from my own profound experiences as an insider. For instance, why do so many colleagues and students appear indifferent to widespread plagiarism on campus? Why is the factionalism in Chinese academic institutes so widespread and so different from that in the overseas institutes where I have studied or worked? Why are the various reforms in higher education and amplified anti-corruption campaigns seemingly so ineffective at freeing the academic system in China from the existing “deep water?” Why do so many scholars constantly blame others for contaminating the academic environment while few acknowledge their own role in this state of being? Above all, I am eager to know how the increasing international recognition of Chinese academic excellence accords with its omnipresent negative practices. In all, I am interested in exploring how such “unreasonable” acts become reasonable in China's particular political and social contexts. By shifting between my outsider and insider perspectives and examining the dialogue that evolves between them (my third-eye perspective), I am able to adopt both a critical and empathetic view of the academic landscape of China.
My third-eye perspective is also informed by the vast array of experiences and opinions of many other actors in Chinese academia. I have interviewed more than 60 people in total, among them researchers, university teachers and administrative staff, undergraduate and graduate students, government employees, and others from all walks of life. I have also had numerous conversations with both domestic and international scholars regarding the practices and perceptions of universities, intellectuals and professors in China.
Additionally, news items, reports and blogs, which I have gathered over the last three years, also constitute a significant data source for this article. “Public intellectuals,” university teachers and many others have taken advantage of different social media to express their opinions on many topics including the school education agenda, the role and image of intellectuals and teachers, plagiarism and academic ethics. In effect, these reports and comments provide documentation of recent events and practices in the academic world. They also help reveal the official discourse and popular opinions on these happenings. These sources thus provide another level of insider–outsider shifting, or a third-eye perspective, which I address.
Academic Practices with a Historical Lens
In this section, I discuss how Chinese academia (higher education in particular) has been situated in socio-political transformations since the late Qing period, with a focus on how intellectuals position themselves in historical vicissitudes. I divide the whole duration (from the late Qing to the present era) roughly into four major periods in order to draw a historical trajectory of the evolvement of academic practices and engagement of academic and social (political) practices. These periods are as follows: the late Qing to 1948; 1949–1976; 1977–1988; and 1989–present.
The Late Qing to 1948
This period is characterized by an overall leaning among the majority of intellectuals towards learning from the West and the predominance of Western learning (xixue 西学) and concepts in the newly established modern universities. The two opium wars in the mid-19th century and the increasing encroachment of foreign powers upon Chinese territory and sovereignty were instrumental in fuelling nationwide anxiety about the likely “vanishing of the country and extinction of the (Chinese) race” (wangguo miezhong 亡国灭种). Chinese intellectuals were forced to look again at the previously assumed “inferior” Western political and cultural systems. There was an irreversible move towards emulating the West and establishing Western-style universities in spite of internal disputes regarding the relationship between Chinese classics (Confucianism) and Western learning.Footnote 16 Vanguards of the New Culture movement (mid-1910s to mid-1920s), such as Chen Duxiu 陈独秀, Hu Shih 胡适 and Lu Xun 鲁迅 and their followers, promoted the value of such notions as “Mr Science” (sai xiansheng 赛先生) and “Mr Democracy” (de xiansheng 德先生) in challenging feudal despotism and its philosophical foundation – Confucianism – and in opposing superstitious (non-scientific) beliefs and practices.
During this time, the notions of academic freedom and the separation of academic practices from politics began to gain credence. According to prominent advocates such as Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (president of Peking University, 1916–1927) and Hu Shih (literature and language reformer; president of Peking University, 1946–1948), academic freedom meant that academic institutes and research should not serve as political instruments for the government and politicians. However, in order to enforce its party's ideology, the Republican government tightened its control over academic practices and institutional administration, especially after the Second World War. In line with his overall agenda of consolidating his power and winning the war against the communists, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 attempted to eliminate “radical” ideas, especially communist and leftist thought, from campuses. This policy met with strong resentment from university teachers and students, and petitions and protests became a common occurrence. However, there was no effective overall control over academic affairs until after the Communist Party gained power in 1949.
1949–1976
Many intellectuals who remained on the mainland after 1949 did so because they were attracted to the communist ideals about an independent China and the promises of a national revival. However, they themselves would soon become the targets of consecutive campaigns, notably the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957–1959) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). These campaigns attacked “reactionaries” and “rightists” who had “bourgeois” outlooks resulting from Western influences. Universities ceased to function normally during the Cultural Revolution, and many professors (and intellectuals in general) were publicly humiliated, verbally and physically abused, or were sent to prisons, labour camps or the countryside for “re-education.”
1977–1988
This period is often considered as a “honeymoon” or “golden time” for intellectuals as the Party-led denunciation of the Cultural Revolution and subsequent reforms created more space for freedom of expression. On the whole, the new Chinese leadership, headed by Deng Xiaoping 邓小平, hoped to enlist the full support of intellectuals to launch the country's modernization and economic reforms, and thus the party-state tended not to interfere excessively with academic activities or dismiss the differing opinions of academia (and beyond). As a result, academia and the broader society were imbued with an optimistic outlook for a more prosperous, liberal and democratic China. However, this has changed since 1989.
1989–present
This period is marked by the Party's increasing control over academic institutes, the expansion and “commodification” of university education, and the dramatic decline in intellectual elitism. Party hard-liners blamed the 1989 student movement on “bourgeois liberalization” (zichan jieji ziyouhua 资产阶级自由化). They called for perpetual struggle on ideological fronts against the “corrupt” Western ideas of capitalistic individualism, anarchy, democracy, freedom and human rights. Intellectuals and students were believed to be the most susceptible to Western values. As a consequence, academic institutes, and especially universities, were urged to reinvigorate themselves with “correct” Maoist-socialist values. This substantially undermined the intellectual idealism and social activism that was beginning to blossom in the previous period.
Moreover, intellectuals were further marginalized in the growing “consumer culture” that was sweeping the country following Deng's introduction of the market economy in 1992. In 1994, a large-scale debate emerged regarding the significance of the “humanistic spirit” (renwen jingshen 人文精神) within academia. The discourse centred on how intellectuals should position themselves in a new environment in which the previously almost sacred “humanistic spirits” that had been championed by intellectuals appeared to give way to the “secularized” material values of the broader society.Footnote 17 Nonetheless, this effort would do nothing to reverse the marginalization of intellectuals; in fact, the present leadership has gone even further to reinforce the Party line in academic activities and university administration, making universities de facto quasi-Party-state agencies. At the same time, the continuing “commodification” of universities (extensive expansion, tuition increases and market-oriented curricula) has contributed to the erosion of a sense of elitism among the intellectuals.
In sum, the different roles intellectuals play in different eras are determined by the socio-political contexts of the time. Therefore, it is not difficult to comprehend why, in the late Qing and Republican era, intellectuals would become a headspring of “enlightenment” (Mr Science and Mr Democracy) for students and the general public and why the currently asserted secularism and commercialism as well as the Party ideology play a significant role in today's academic practices. This is a further illustration of my earlier point – the academic field, first and foremost, is a social field, and also, above all, it is political.
Four Fields At Work: Contemporary Academic Practices with Chinese Characteristics
“Chinese characteristics” (Zhongguo tese 中国特色) is the term official reports and news media commonly use to identify “indigenous,” as opposed to “Western,” practices and mechanisms of Chinese laws, communism, democracy, market economy, and so on. Likewise, the notion of Chinese characteristics resounds in the state-orchestrated guidelines for academic practices in China. Set against its standard official use, I use the term here to diagnose and pinpoint the “deep water” and the four fields in which these practices are situated. These fields are ideological, quasi-official, fame–profit and guanxi fields. In spite of the fact that the fields, especially the last three, overlap with one another to varying degrees, I argue that they stand as relatively distinctive fields in their own right.
The ideological field
To reassert the doctrine of undisputable party-state rule, the present leadership has re-emphasized the importance of ideological correctness in academic activities. The so-called “responsibility system of the president under the leadership of the Party committee” (dangwei lingdao xia de xiaozhang fuzezhi 党委领导下的校长负责制) has been strengthened to ensure that this principle will not be compromised by toxic Western values seeping into campuses through teachings, research and readings. The university's president is entrusted with the management of executive affairs on the campus; however, the Party secretary is supposed to oversee the daily routine and all activities (including teaching and research) to ensure they are following the socialist path, which means that the Party secretary has the capacity to encroach on the president's domain of the ambiguously defined “executive affairs.” As a result, academic integrity is in constant danger of being secondary to “political correctness.”
University teachers are also subject to more strict surveillance as the party-state is becoming less tolerant of “disagreeable” views expressed in classrooms and writings. Such views include the promotion of Western values and critiques of the party-state. The university Party secretary is responsible for deterring such behaviour and for instilling the “correct” thought in the minds of teachers and students. Western values, however, are broadly and ambiguously defined so that Western theories and academic practices can easily be labelled as “unfit” or even subversive. I attended the keynote speech at the 2011 annual meeting of China's Sociological Association. The association's ex-president, Zheng Hangsheng 郑杭生, sharply criticized those returnees who were educated in the West for implanting Western notions, notably civil society, in Chinese soil to distort Chinese realities.Footnote 18 As one of the best-known mouthpieces of the party-state line in sociology, his critiques chime with the idea that the Party has an indisputable role in defining “good” and “bad” social sciences and humanities in China.
All research projects and publications in the social sciences and humanities must “stick to the correct orientation” (jianchi zhengque daoxiang 坚持正确导向). An example is the National Social Science Foundation Research Grant, one of the most prestigious academic grants in China. Its “guiding thought” (zhidao sixiang 指导思想) for applications in 2016 was “to hold aloft the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics … to carry out the spirit of key speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping thoroughly … and to advance philosophy and social sciences in serving the overall state of affairs of Party and state efforts and in serving the great prosperity of the substantial development of socialist culture.” Put simply, political correctness is the unbending prerequisite for all research projects. For each discipline or research category, a number of key topics have been introduced as guidelines. Examples include the methodology of General Party Secretary Xi Jinping's governance (in philosophy); building the discourse of political science with Chinese characteristics (in politics); the core values of socialism and legal culture construction (in law); the sociological theory of Marxism (in sociology); the historical perspective of materialism and social formation in Chinese history (in Chinese history); and atheist thought and theory and their propaganda (in religious studies).
Most of the scholars I interviewed complained about the “too practical,” highly structured, and overly ideological orientations of the guidelines. For instance, a lecturer in Sichuan mocked the situation by saying, “In the whole world only our ‘Heavenly Dynasty’ would impose a guideline for research like this. We are told that ‘you can pretty much do whatever you want, but I am sorry that I cannot give you the money if you are not obedient’.” Since promotions, salaries and benefits at universities depend more than ever on being awarded a high-level, prestigious grant, many scholars feel forced to research officially sanctioned topics to improve their prospects in the competition for funding.
While it is true that Chinese academia as a whole is subject to the influence of Party ideology, such impacts are more evident in the social sciences and humanities since these disciplines are defined in the official discourse to be fundamentally about “world outlooks” (shijieguan 世界观) and “methodology” (fangfalun 方法论) and so are “ideological” in nature. As such, the guiding rule of “sticking to the correct orientation” affects these disciplines in particular. This partially explains why, under such circumstances, China achieves more accomplishments in the scientific and non-“ideological” fields in comparison.
The quasi-“official field”
The “official field” is a translation of the Chinese term, guanchang 官场. It usually refers to officialdom or the domain of government officials or bureaucrats. This domain is governed by a set of laws, such as hierarchy, bureaucracy and nepotism.Footnote 19 An equivalent to this term is yamen 衙门, which refers to an office of officials during the Chinese empire. All my interviewees agree that Chinese universities function like an “official field” or yamen in that academic activities and the daily routines of universities are constrained by heavy bureaucracy. An essential component and characteristic of the “official field” is a “bureaucrat's hierarchic mentality” (guanbenwei sixiang 官本位思想). This term is frequently used in China to reference the value placed on becoming an official and acquiring privilege and also the condescending attitude of those officials who view themselves as superior. Since its other dimensions overlap heavily with the fame–profit field and guanxi field, I will not incorporate them in this section.
The “bureaucrat's hierarchic mentality” is not exclusive to officials. Administrative staff in state agencies and other organizations are often said to hold similar attitudes owing to the working environment and bureaucratic structure. The majority of my informants attributed the pervasiveness of such a mentality within Chinese universities to the fact that the administrative or executive units have grown rather big and powerful. In my Chinese university, over half of the employees worked in various administrative departments. This is also largely true of all other universities including top schools such as Peking, Tsinghua and Fudan. Although the role of administrators is essentially to facilitate teaching and research, they monitor and orchestrate academic activities at the same time. They often have the final say on personnel matters and the distribution of resources. The status quo partially explains the prevalence of this bureaucratic, hierarchic mentality within universities. Several anecdotes illustrate this situation.
On one occasion, during a long conversation, a junior faculty member in north-western China related his own, almost painful, experiences with the administration at his university. He explained to me:
I am so afraid to interact with administrative staff that my feet almost start trembling when I approach the university administrative building. Normally, we go there for two things: the “teachers’ resource unit” [in charge of faculty promotion and regulation] and the financial department for reimbursement. Once, I entered the teachers’ resource unit and an officer yelled at me, “Get out. Have you not seen that I am preoccupied?” I was then asked to wait outside the door, and I waited for a long time but the door stayed shut, so I had to leave … To go to the financial department is another headache for me. I don't know exactly how to paste receipts correctly, or [how to] provide the “appropriate” ones, thus the staff there grow very impatient with me.
When I expressed surprise at what I heard, he added, “Of course, you are different. You are a professor. The administrative staff look up to you. As a lecturer, I am nobody here. Even the department secretary can shout at me, too.” His reply speaks exactly to the predominance of the hierarchy often associated with the “official field.”
From my interviews, a pattern emerged in that faculty members in eastern and southern China generally felt that they received better treatment from their executive staff. Even they complained, though, about the pervasive bureaucracy in their institutes. University students also made similar remarks to me about the poor attitudes of executive staff. One common notable aspect of the hierarchic mentality of bureaucrats that was identified by most of the teachers and students in interviews was the low efficiency and overcomplicated procedures of the administrative system. A teacher in north-western China recounted his own experience of requesting official approval to participate in a conference abroad, funding for which was provided by the organizer. He had to obtain around eight official stamps for this “politically insensitive” conference in 2014. According to him, since no particular executive unit or even his own department was ready to assume responsibility for any possible consequences, each forced him to get an extra stamp from another unit in order to avoid sole blame if anything unforeseeable occurred.
When I interviewed executive staff at various universities, however, I found that they saw things from a different angle. Some told me that they were so exhausted by the endless administrative work (meetings, paperwork and other daily chores) that they were not always courteous towards teachers and students. Many of them also complained that their work was often dismissed by teachers and students as “useless” and “bureaucratic.” One director of the youth league at a college in Sichuan lamented, “Who wants to do this kind of work? But, what choice do we have? We will be ‘finished’ if we do not follow the system.”
The executive staff's perspectives hence show that they are equally constrained by the structure of the quasi-“official field.” In this way, both administrative and academic staff at universities are actually victims of this kind of “official field,” and their dissatisfaction and mutual distrust are thus largely defined by the university structure as a quasi-“official field.”
Fame–profit field
The Chinese term, “fame–profit field” (mingli chang 名利场), speaks well by and of itself. It points to the craving for esteem, monetary rewards and other benefits. This field often goes hand in hand with the “official field.” Caught up in the fame–profit field, some scholars are inclined to see their research and teaching as a means to an end. The goal is to become “big and successful” in the same way that various Chinese academic institutes pursue their “growing big” agenda. “To build first-class universities and disciplines” has recently become the highly publicized agenda for the major research universities in China, but many of my interviewees disapproved of this agenda. For instance, a department deputy chair in, arguably, the most prestigious university in the country went so far as to say,
Now XX University [where he teaches] asserts that it is a top university in the world already. What an irony! While I was a visiting scholar in Europe years ago, I was so surprised to discover that even a small institute there has much higher research standards and more devoted researchers than our university … In my view, XX University and other elite universities in China are seeking a higher ranking and bigger name rather than [aiming for] solid research.
In order to elevate their ranking and name, research universities push their faculty members and research staff to publish in top journals, especially international ones, and to secure big grants. My informants in these universities, however, revealed that this pressure leads to plagiarism as researchers have difficulty in fulfilling the designated quota within a short time span. Many informants were genuinely concerned that academic quality and integrity are seriously compromised as a consequence.
While attending an annual conference of a certain thriving discipline in 2015, I became acquainted with one of its main organizers. She told me that key posts in her organization and many other academic associations in China are reserved for top officials from universities. Such posts are given to established scholars as well. There are also a number of additional titles, including standing council member and regular council member, for other ranks of university officials and scholars. These posts involve varying levels of competition, depending on the degree of prestige they carry.
According to the organizer, during the re-election of members for the association's new term (which happened the day before the annual meeting), university officials and scholars from all over China came in groups to pit themselves against each other for key titles at the association. The possession of such symbolic capital could potentially be rewarded with commensurate economic returns and political capital, including promotions to higher academic and official posts and subsequent monetary gains. Likewise, those with formidable political capital (for example, high-level officials in major universities) vie for such titles, too, since such a title will enhance their standing in the academic world and in their own institutes.
The organizer confided that she had seen too much of this jockeying for position in almost all of the conferences she had organized or attended in China (since returning there with an overseas PhD degree nearly a decade ago). Furthermore, she was willing to expose the whole “dirty business” taking place at this particular annual meeting to me because she was “too sick” of the hypocrisy in the fame–profit field of the academic world in China. Several other participants also made similar or even much more scathing comments. For example, one participant from an east China university told me, “I never expected that this conference would be that bad, despite all the rumours I heard. It was a gathering of a motley crew … The only thing that matters to them is the scramble for fame and profit … It is totally a waste of time for me. I will never attend it in the future.”
An even more elaborate example of this fame–profit-seeking mentality is the controversial academician (yuanshi 院士) selection system. There have been numerous official and unofficial reports about bribery, nepotism and plagiarism among incumbent academicians and candidates in the last several years. The title of academician represents the most prestigious honorary rank for the country's top scientists. However, this title is often more than honorary. Different provinces and institutes tend to reward their respective academicians with sometimes huge financial returns and other benefits on a regular basis. Thus, becoming an academician is the height of ambition for many scientists. As a consequence, many will use all means available, even illegal ones, to achieve this goal. For instance, the state media, including the influential China Central Television and China Daily, reported in 2013 that Zhang Shuguang 张曙光 (a chief engineer and top official at the Ministry of Railways) confessed in court that he had used bribes to lobby for the title of academician.Footnote 20
Guanxi field
Guanxi refers to personal connections or ways of interacting with others. Guanxi is more than a cultural practice. As demonstrated by both Mayfair Yang and Yunxiang Yan, the immense hierarchy and power imbalance in China has led to its citizens having to cultivate the necessary skills to make the best use of guanxi in order to progress.Footnote 21 In a subtle reminder of my lack of understanding of this skill, the head of a division (and also a professor in my Chinese university) told me to “remember that nothing cannot be ‘squared away’ (gaoding 搞定) in China.” In other words, everything could be accomplished through the guanxi channel. Obviously, universities and the academic world as a whole are trapped in this guanxi field. Here, I focus on nepotism and factionalism, two of the most commonly identified means of guanxi-building in academia.
My informants frequently drew my attention to the phenomena of “big boss” (dalao 大佬) and “seizing the mountaintop” (zhan shantou 占山头). “Big bosses” refers to the acknowledged authorities and prominent figures in their respective fields who have abundant academic and other resources at their disposal. “Big bosses” are in a position to protect those under their wings. They can offer members of their inner circle easy access to available resources and benefits. In that sense, each “big boss” occupies a “mountaintop,” a position that demands loyalty, awe or even fear from his or her affiliates, admirers and others. In order to secure their “mountaintops,” “big bosses” build alliances with each other or wage wars against their opponents, if necessary.
From my own understanding and interviews, it appears this “big boss” phenomenon has only recently become prominent in academia. With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the party-state allocates billions of dollars for education and research each year. The “big bosses,” or more specifically the designated chairs and key members of various grant committees, wield a degree of influence or even have the final say over the distribution of many of these grants. One informant referred to this process as “melon cutting” (fenzang 分赃), translated as the distribution of spoils in English. “Big bosses” collude with each other to apportion the grants to their close associates or acquaintances. Below are a few illustrative examples of “big bosses” and their ways of “seizing mountaintop.”
According to Shi Aidong 施爱东, a scholar based in China's Academy of Social Sciences, there exists a unique phenomenon of “ancestor worship” in the field of folklore.Footnote 22 Shi explains that this manifests as the idolization of the late prominent leader of the field, Zhong Jingwen 钟敬文. Zhong is revered like a god by his students and other close associates to such an extent that some folklore research centres hold special events to commemorate him. Followers of Zhong offer incense and bow to his portrait on his birthday and “death day.” Through such events, an insider–outsider boundary is reinforced. Those external “predators” are excluded from the academic and other resources that Zhong symbolizes and which his academic “descendants” have seized tightly for themselves. Actually, this is not a unique case in China. My interviews and observations revealed that different forms and levels of cliques or “academic communities” bound with exclusive interests are commonly found in all academic institutes in China. What, though, does this mean for those who do not enjoy the support of a “big boss” or a “mountain top” position?
It appears that many scholars or regional academic institutes are proficient in finding ways to climb up the academic ladder. For instance, I was once persuaded by an editor of an academic journal to become a postdoctoral fellow with Zheng Hangsheng, a “big boss” in sociology. He used a Chinese proverb – “a big tree offers easy shade” (dashu dixia haochengliang 大树底下好乘凉) – to make his point. According to him, without a big tree like Zheng, I would remain a nobody in academia, no matter how diligent and intelligent I was. To offer another example of this logic, a province in western China set up a large-scale project to help boost the development of the region's higher education, research and economy. The project offers honorary positions to some of the most prestigious scholars in the country. Those who have been hired for the top-ranking positions receive 40,000 yuan in yearly stipends in addition to 10,000–20,000 yuan of research funding annually. According to my knowledgeable informant, this is a skilful camouflage of what is really going on. Those occupying the top-ranking positions are all “big bosses” in their respective fields. They hold key positions in top academic institutes and on national grant committees. “Big bosses” reward their host institutes and directors with huge grants as a reciprocal gesture. This case also provides a vivid illustration of the operation of the fame–profit field.
Conclusion and Further Thoughts
The four fields outlined above each have their own respective set of practices and rules despite their congruencies and convergences. Scholars and institutes are often forced to mobilize their available capital to position themselves and stake their claims within each particular field. What has been revealed about these fields brings into focus the rational and deliberate actions of intellectuals and institutes to make the best of existing conditions. However, many intellectuals’ desires and practices as well as the protocols in these fields are simultaneously culturally embedded and structurally assumed. Thus, even if they do not constitute habitus or doxa in a strict sense, they are largely taken for granted and often go unquestioned.
To take my own experience as an example, the chair of my department in China often swore at faculty members, including myself, but I did not feel insulted until I became re-immersed in American academia as a research fellow. Actually, I was quite shocked to realize that I had been “re-Sinicized” to the extent that I took my superiors’ curses and arrogance as accepted and “normal” behaviour in China. Thus, my own experience typifies how many scholars in China accept these practices as a given. Concurrently, I am able to problematize these practices in this article, because, for me, they no longer present themselves as normative. I attribute this view to my acquired third-eye perspective, which has derived from rigorous reflections on my insider–outsider positioning in relation to Chinese academia. Obviously, this kind of perspective would not have been possible if I had not acquired my “outsider” status (as a result of the opportunity to return to a Western-style academic environment). This example speaks precisely and literally to the structured and almost unconscious feelings and desires revealed in Bourdieu's notion of field.
In such a field, or in these fields, nearly all of my informants and many other scholars feel they are trapped in the “deep water” and hardly able to climb out. I have been told repeatedly that people are left with few options but to yield to the protocols of the “rivers and lakes” of Chinese academia. The tizhi is a commonly used excuse for negative practices in China. It is also used to rationalize scholars’ own (mis)conduct.Footnote 23 For instance, most of my interviewees pointed the finger at the Ministry of Education. They argue that the inflexible tizhi of this ministry would crush any university officials’ and scholars’ innovative initiatives to reform, or potentially challenge, the absolute authority. However, I should point out that the ministry is also immersed in “deep water.” The ministry itself is constrained by the party-state tizhi and Chinese socio-political realities. Regardless of anyone's position, it is too hard, if not impossible, for any university or individual to push for any “radical” reform.
Peking University has been regarded as the flagship of modern Chinese intellectual activism since the New Culture movement. That is why it has received the most trenchant of criticisms within China, among all universities, for its lack of commitment to innovation and reform. The university has also been criticized for its “degeneration” into an institution obsessed with money, fame and “political stability.” That is an assessment I hear frequently from its own faculty and students and from others.
Such a pessimistic view seems to echo the intransigence and domination of the tizhi. It also appears to justify the inaction of individual actors who are within the system. As I have been arguing, however, the notion of field enables us to see more nuanced dimensions of the “deep water” of Chinese academia. A field-oriented perspective can highlight the rigidity of structure and omnipresence of power; however, it does not dismiss possible changes owing to social transformation as well as individual actors’ initiatives.
First, the academic field is considered to be a social field above all because of its openness to the influences and changes of the broader society, and this entails dissimilar academic practices in line with discrete social environments. Hence, we may find that universities within China have a certain degree of variation regarding their curricula, research agendas, academic settings and administrative efficiencies. As noted above, my informants and many others claim that the academic environments in the east and south are more flexible and “democratic.” These regions happen to be the most economically developed regions in China. They are also regarded as being more liberally governed. However, even many universities in western China have a more open and dynamic atmosphere than the one in which I worked previously. As a matter of fact, many of my former colleagues at my old university assert that its academic environment has become more “liberal” and “open” in the past decade, for instance by increasing its international academic exchanges. This suggests that the depth and types of “deep water” in which different universities and scholars find themselves vary considerably. At the same time, it also shows that positive changes are likely to occur in certain academic institutes.
Even more importantly, it appears that these positive changes are being introduced through internally generated initiatives. The last few years have witnessed a surge in works, blogs and reports exposing negative academic practices (some of which I have cited here). An increasing number of self-critiques and public denunciations as well as initiatives for improvement have also emerged within Chinese academia. My interviewees also pointed to similar measures. Such moves open the door to a gradual transformation of the Chinese higher education and academic system.
Finally, I hope to provoke further reflection. If Chinese academia is anchored in “deep water,” does this indicate that Western and other academic worlds are free from “deep water” of their own? The dynamics between culture and power (as analysed by Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu, among others) have demonstrated the “universal” embedding of contemporary academic institutes in intricate power relations and modern discourses.Footnote 24 More importantly, educational institutes are all designed to cultivate the dispositions and skills of their members to keep the social motors running. Therefore, institutionalization, hierarchization, homogenization (for example, the standardization of curricula, etc.) and specialization become inevitable processes and agendas in fulfilling this “universal” goal of perpetuation.Footnote 25 If so, China is not an exception. On the other hand, the four fields illustrating academic practices with Chinese characteristics should be understood in their own particular context of knowledge production and political structure as well as in their context of different discourses revolving around the rise of China.Footnote 26 Therefore, the Chinese case is an alternative to the Western (and other) practices. In a nutshell, I call for a relatively balanced perspective for a better understanding of Chinese academic ecology.
Acknowledgement
This study was funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Start-Up Grant at the National University of Singapore (NUS), which I gratefully acknowledge. I would like to take the opportunity to sincerely thank my colleagues at the department of sociology and the audience at my talk at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, for their invaluable feedback. I also thank Robert Weller, Charles Lindholm, Hans Steinmüller, Kenneth Dean and Xiaohong Xu for either their moral support or constructive criticism. I am most grateful to my informants and interviewees, who were willing to share their experiences and reflections. Finally, this article is dedicated to my mother, who passed away during its writing. In her simple philosophy, knowledge is power but conscience makes us human. I know she would be proud of me for standing up for what I believe in.
Biographical note
Tenzin Jinba is an assistant professor at the department of sociology, National University of Singapore. His research interests include memory and history, intellectual practices, gender politics, borders and margins, state–society relations, China, Tibet and the Himalayas.
