Control and Context

The issue opens with an essay by Gerard Postiglione, “Expanding higher education: China's precarious balance.” This contribution offers a panoramic account of higher education developments in the reform era. The paper examines the implications of elitist policy initiatives, such as the 211, 985 and “double top” (or “double first-class,” shuangyiliu 双一流) university projects, which intended to make some of China's leading universities internationally more competitive. The development programme over the past two decades has involved universities being generously supported by the government (especially, in STEM disciplines in a few flagship institutions), but also held back by such problems as an over-rigid state bureaucracy and the pervasive influence of a personal ties culture. So, while China's higher education system has impressively expanded the student population, there remain significant difficulties in the areas of university governance, academic culture and assessment of quality, and a disjuncture between subjects taught within university and the needs of the employment market. Even though leaders have understood that enhancing economic competitiveness will require the development of more creative and independent thinking on the part of academics, the system has tried to accomplish this without the kind of institutional autonomy found in competitor systems in North America and Europe. A further complication is that reform efforts have become hamstrung by a felt need to deal with the problem of graduate unemployment. Authorities have generally characterized the primary goal of higher education as support for sustainable economic growth and moving China to a high-income economy within a diversifying labour market. There has been some progress in promoting commercial innovation. Government has encouraged universities to support and engage leading companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and TJI. These tech leaders have been remarkably successful in expanding their role in the Chinese economy. This achievement reflects in substantial part the Chinese party-state's excellence initiatives in higher education, which have made science-based innovation a dominant policy in constructing internationally competitive universities.

Despite the enormous changes taking place in the development of higher education institutions since the late 1990s, as well as the radical changes introduced in the early 1950sFootnote ¹⁵ and then subsequently in Maoist policies,Footnote ¹⁶ it is possible to see significant continuities across the 1949 demarcation. Understanding of some of these continuities, especially in the case of mainland China, is facilitated by our second essay, “Meritocracy and the making of the Chinese academe, 1912–1952,” which Bamboo Yunzhu Ren, Chen Liang and James Z. Lee contribute to this special issue. Their paper explores changes taking place in higher education in the Republican period, and the relevance of these changes for understanding the situation in China today as well as China's place in the global transformation from an industrial to a knowledge and skill economy. Important dimensions of the contemporary scene date back to the Republican period reforms and earlier, especially the adaptation of the imperial tradition of meritocratic recruitment – both in university admissions and in post-graduation employment. The reliance on meritocratic selection by objective tests mitigated much of the impact of advantages of nationality, politics and property. In some ways, the Republican experience was a precursor to later global trends because of its emphasis on meritocratic selection. One broad change resulting from the Republican initiatives was the shift in student recruitment, primarily from male children in a national, rural population of landed gentry to the children – daughters as well as sons – of urban merchants and industrialists resident in the developing economic centres such as the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions. Although progress was made in achieving greater diversity, reducing the impact of nationality, gender, wealth, location and work, social and spatial inequalities nevertheless remained. Moreover, a gendered employment market as well as more generally the Republican state's search for “wealth and power” encouraged a concentration, especially in the leading universities, of male students in STEM subjects.

Several contributors give particular attention to the manner in which “autonomy” and its counterpart, “control,” are manifested within institutions of higher education and examine various political, economic and social dimensions of higher education through general accounts and sometimes also case studies. Areas touched on by contributors include political penetration and the role of the political authorities, governance, finance and personnel management. They discuss the relationship between higher education and elite formation as well as pressures arising from the quest for global standing, commercialization, a search for social justice and inclusiveness, and interrelationships between these factors. Other authors look more closely at policies and practices which impact ethnic minorities.

Of course, the relationship of universities and other institutions of higher education to political authority varies within Greater China from direct and centralized control (on the mainland), to arms-length control through a UK-like University Grants Committee in Hong Kong, to a shifting pattern in Taiwan. With political democratization, the Taiwanese state relaxed the KMT system of rigid control over the higher education system and pursued a process of limited decentralization of higher educational institutions. In Greater China, political authority is exercised to varying degrees through, for example, the appointment of key leaders of universities, the reservation of key positions for Party members in the case of the mainland, the appointment of members of university boards of trustees and councils, funding, and the influence of the state on how funding decisions are made, and so on. Within universities, we find variation in the exercise of political authority on the basis of regime type (mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) and also discipline, especially STEM versus the social sciences and humanities.

These structures and processes of control do not exist in isolation but are also subject increasingly to pressures for change from widening environmental factors, including the commercialization of education, demographic shifts and globalizing forces. Another pressure for change, as we have noted, is the drive in nearly all systems to establish a select few universities as contenders for the global status of a “world-leading” university. Mainland China, despite current policies that amount to anti-foreignism in nearly all aspects of social life except the economy, is at the forefront of this drive. More generally, the differing systems increasingly compete with and within each other for students and do so not only for financial but also for political and ideological reasons. And they do this with Japan, Singapore and the West also offering alternative and prestigious opportunities.

Terry Bodenhorn's article, “Management and ‘administerization’ in China's higher education system: a view from the trenches,” fills an important gap in our understanding of the internal structure, operations and processes of control in universities and higher education institutions in mainland China. Hitherto, there has been only limited exploration of the nature of the relationship between institutional autonomy and university internal management structures and practices. The article, which to a significant extent is based upon important personal experience together with analysis of relevant Chinese-language discourse, examines in addition the relationship between mid-level academic administrators such as deans on the one hand and university-level administrators and administrative units on the other, and shows the ways in which the former are controlled by the Party and university authorities. This control places significant limitations on the ability of faculties, schools and so on, and their staff, to achieve important academic goals and maintain high academic standards. His analysis demonstrates an important problem – mid-level administrators bear heavy responsibilities but lack the necessary authority and opportunities for participating in relevant policy and decision-making processes, even when the outcomes of such processes have a direct relevance and impact on their work. Another serious complication is the dual administrative structure, which serves as a tool of the party-state for controlling the higher education system but which also reflects a deep-seated authoritarian management style typical of both traditional Chinese bureaucratic conduct and CCP dominance of the system.

The essay draws very effectively on the critical discourse within the Chinese educational community on the processes of “administerization” and “de-administerization.” Policies and practices of “administerization,” broadly speaking, involve tight party-state control over the academic activities and the administration of universities, whereas “de-administerization” seeks to reduce the scope of Party authority and instead aims to empower experts and to recognize the importance of professional academic values.Footnote ¹⁷ The emphasis upon the authority of leaders, given the sometimes whimsical manner in which leaders construct policy and make decisions, creates problems of sustaining initiatives and complicates university decision making and implementation processes.

The contribution by Jun Li explores what he sees as a distinctively Chinese alternative approach to the issue of “autonomy.” His paper offers a view very different from that laid out by Bodenhorn. Specifically, the essay characterizes “self-mastery” (zizhu 自主), a principle given particular emphasis in the work of Ruth Hayhoe,Footnote ¹⁸ as significantly different in a number of respects from the notion of “autonomy” as found in higher education institutions in the Western world. Li argues that “self-mastery” is an important feature of the “Chinese University 3.0.” This emerging Chinese higher education model began to take shape in the 1990s and has four key dimensions: self-mastery, intellectual freedom, a humanist mission and institutional diversity. These characteristics, which owe much to the Confucian “Doctrine of the Mean,” help to shape the “Chinese University 3.0” in ways significantly different from universities found in many other parts of the world. The essay points to a number of recent policy and legislative documents – including, for example, the 2015 revised Higher Education Law – to show how these values infuse official policies. The Higher Education Law portrays self-mastery as a fundamental governing model for higher education institutions. This model empowers university leaders, within overall CCP control, in such areas as governance, human resources, finance, curriculum and programme design, research and international collaboration. In Li's view, self-mastery has been a highly significant factor in the remarkable growth of the university sector in China over the past two decades or so. Applied to Chinese universities, therefore, the concept of self-mastery enables university presidents, administrators, faculty and other personnel to enjoy a degree of “procedural autonomy” within which they exercise powers sufficient to deliver day-to-day administration as well as to promote innovative learning, teaching and service initiatives, despite (or in collaboration with) the controlling CCP.

The Party's continuing dominance is, however, also reflected in various ways in the spatial arrangements of universities and other institutions of higher education. In his contribution entitled “Whither the global in Chinese higher education? The production of space in China’s ‘new era’ universities,” James I. McDougall assumes the role of cartographer, mapping and analysing the construction of physical and symbolic space within mainland Chinese universities and the organizational hierarchy which permeates such spacing. The essay examines how spatial mapping of the campus and the diagrammatic mapping of university hierarchies reveal a strong penetration of Party and state in university work. Perhaps the most obvious spatial example of developments in the past few years has been a “territorial” growth of higher education, in particular with the creation of university cities, often created in the “safe locations” of the outer boundaries of large urban areas, in order to assist in accommodating the rapidly expanding student population. McDougall notes how higher education reforms have in comparative terms been an impressive achievement, providing quality education at a relatively low cost, and are driven by progressive policy goals. Safe locations also offer effective coordination between central educational powers and local authorities. But at the same time, this expansion also reflects a Leninist press of domination from the centre and provokes various forms of local resistance – spatially expressed, for example, in the manner in which students and others choose to use campus space for such purposes as improper bike riding, aggressive use of motor scooters, sprawling kiosks for student associations, clandestine romantic meetings, and so on. Moreover, in order to lay claims to traditional Chinese culture and thereby to buttress national identity, there is a self-orientalizing use of geomantic values (fengshui 风水) and Daoist symbols. In the “new era,” some of the local, unofficial, expressions have become controlled more tightly by university authorities. Indeed, these authorities have been quite aggressive in their approach to campus spatial arrangements, embedding them with ideological statements and representations of the “new era” such as the importance of core socialist values. Looked at closely, the campus may be seen to be alive with hegemonic and counter hegemonic symbols and practices.

In 2015, higher educational reforms were intensified by the introduction of the “double top” university plan.Footnote ¹⁹ This is a party-state strategy conceived to develop comprehensively a group of elite Chinese universities and individual university departments into world class universities and disciplines by the end of 2050. This is the third and latest of the major initiatives in higher education intended to enhance significantly the standards of mainland PRC universities (following on from the now withdrawn 211 and 985 projects, introduced in 1995 and 1998, respectively). The “double top” (top subjects, top universities) programme reflects the broad agenda in Xi Jinping's drive for national rejuvenation and an integrated education-politics philosophy. In the new initiative, a small number of leading institutions are expected to be pioneers in the leadership's drive to secure world ranking for China's universities. The “double top” initiative strengthens party-state control of the university system and undercuts the aspirations and self-interested conduct of individual academics that might bring “decay” to the overall system. At the same time, the system in several important ways maintains control – for example, by careful supervision of academic grant funding, promotions and competitive ranking processes.

Hong Kong certainly provides such competition. John P. Burns’ paper, “The state and higher education in Hong Kong,” explores the issue of how this city is able, relative to its size, to create so many high-quality universities. Adopting a path dependency approach, Burns identifies critical turning points in the evolution of local universities since 1911. In the aftermath of the Second World War, colonial officials re-focused higher education towards the local populace and away from its earlier imperial pretensions, while Hong Kong's changing place in the global economy pressed the local state to expand university places, emphasize research and to introduce managerialism in an environment of relative autonomy. Since 1997, when China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the relationship between the state and the universities has been increasingly contested. The central government has sought universities in Hong Kong that contribute to China's national development project but which do not destabilize society either locally or on the mainland. The local government has, to a varying extent, aligned itself with this project while, with some variation, attempting to keep the universities relatively free of state control. Political conflict in Hong Kong, however, has spilled over into university governance.

Issues of Equality and Justice

As we have stressed, two crucial strategic aims in the party-state's development of higher education in recent years have been the creation of “world-ranking” universities through such schemes as the 985 and 211 projects and “double top” programme on the one hand, and the extension by “massification” of higher education to a much greater number of students on the other. Although concentrated investment in elite institutions prompted by the first aim has intensified differences in the status of universities, it is also the case that students from a wide range of social backgrounds have been able to benefit from the greater access to higher education created by the second aim – the massification policies pursued over the past two decades. In order to assist in particular students from poorer families, various grants and subsidies have been made available to such students (and therefore, in effect, to their families). However, a number of papers on this issue demonstrate that massification and associated changes have not necessarily promoted greater social justice in the sense of equality of opportunity, fairness and equitable resource allocation. The paper by Ren, Liang and Lee, noted above, points to the robust efforts made in Republican times and more recently to promote a fairer and more meritocratic approach, which would in turn promote a greater degree of equality and social justice. The different contributions by Qiang Zha, Michael Palmer and Ling Zhou also look at several social justice issues in some detail.

Qiang Zha's article, “Equality and equity in Chinese higher education in the post-massification era: an analysis based on Chinese scholarly literature,” explores the evidence to be found in mainland Chinese domestic discourses on issues in the development of higher education following the introduction of the policy of massification in the late 1990s. This major policy change might be thought of as aimed at enhancing possibilities of greater equality and equity (in the sense of procedural fairness in the system). However, the paper indicates that progress has been slow. Domestic debate tends to focus on four main issues: massification, the costs and financing of higher education, access to higher education, and issues of social stratification and mobility. Their relative importance has changed over time, and the concern with equality issues is seeming to fade. As we have seen, a particular problem is that since the late 1990s, policies have sought not only to expand student numbers but also to focus investment on elite institutions. This investment has, however, contributed significantly to growing inequality, as wealthier families from more affluent areas have been more able to secure places at elite universities. Increases in tuition and fees, too, have meant that students entering non-elite (mainly local) universities have tended to pay relatively more but to receive comparatively poor-quality education. Reflecting these difficulties, the domestic discourse has shifted its predominant focus from issues of equality (especially that of access) to those of equity (understood as providing students with an education appropriate to their individual needs and learning abilities in order that they be successful). Continuing problems of resource inequality between schools in rural and urban areas, lack of balance in quota arrangements between rural areas and cities and corruption in admissions processes have resulted in ever-decreasing possibilities of social mobility through higher education for rural students. It is not at all clear that efforts to improve the position of rural students would in fact have a significantly beneficial impact.

Michael Palmer's paper, “Lowering the bar? Students with disabilities in PRC higher education,” also explores issues of equality, focusing in particular on the situation and treatment of persons with disability in mainland China's higher education system. Palmer specifically points to provisions in the 2015 revised Higher Education Law which provide that citizens – including persons with disabilities – enjoy the right to receive higher education. However, the extent to which the law and social practice enable students with disability to secure their educational rights and interests is limited, even though the Higher Education Law specifically enjoins Chinese higher education institutions to accept students with disabilities who apply for places if such applicants meet the relevant admission requirements. There are various ways by which the institutions circumvent this requirement in their admission standards and processes, which characterize students with disabilities in an exclusionary rather than inclusive manner, putting them in a “box” which separates them from ordinary students. Meaningful proposals for reform, based in part upon the results of empirical research, do exist. However, the political culture of mainland Chinese university campuses and general social attitudes to disability are likely to undermine any attempt to implement such proposals successfully.

Ling Zhou's article, entitled “Access to justice in higher education: the student as consumer in China,” examines the shifting policies of expanding and privatizing higher education and the relationship between the development of private higher education and the need to regard students more as consumers in the changing Chinese context. Her analysis examines, first, the legal and policy framework by means of which private higher education institutions gradually emerged from the mid-1990s onwards, and then it identifies some of the problems that have arisen with the expansion of private higher education. These include the difficulties that students as consumers of this private education face, especially when trying to make complaints and to assert their rights. With the aid of the analysis of several cases, Zhou is able to show that a continuing problem is a reluctance to create meaningful avenues for access to justice for the student as a consumer, with cases being dealt with either in terms of contract law or through administrative processes consistent with China's general inclination to paternalistic governance. This puts students at risk: if they receive substandard higher education in profit-making private institutions, they may well fail to obtain adequate compensation for the inferior treatment they have received. Alternative avenues such as an ombudsperson for higher education are considered to be too independent, although a better system might emerge in the long run from the introduction on a wider scale of the student charter system that is beginning to gain a foothold, especially in the private sector. Zhou argues that the welfare of students, in particular their ability to access educational justice, may well be improved more promptly and effectively if China's Law on the Protection of Consumers’ Rights and Interests (2013, revised) is made applicable to higher education cases in which the student is the aggrieved party.

The ability of lawyers to deliver justice depends in part on their principled standards of legal practice. In their essay, “Legal professionalism and the ethical challenge for legal education: insights from a comparative study of future lawyers in Greater China,” Richard Wu, Carlos Lo and Ning Liu examine the education of lawyers and the issues of the ethical practice of law across constituent parts of Greater China (but not Macau). They look at ideals of legal professionalism in the Greater China region on the basis of a survey of the career orientations and values of law students in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei. One major conclusion of their comparative analysis is that there is a need for greater attention to legal ethics in legal education as part of the efforts to enhance the development of legal professionalism. Their findings also suggest that the differing legal education systems in the studied region impact on the values of law students – future legal professionals – and also their future career orientations. As a result, differences are detected between students in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Mainland students are relatively more focused on pursuing financial rewards while Hong Kong students are relatively inclined to give attention to issues of legal ethics. Taiwanese law students are also more inclined to observe ethical rules than are their mainland Chinese counterparts, which is perhaps attributable to the more democratic context in which the Taipei students are educated and expect to practise law. The authors conclude, however, that in all three jurisdictions there are ever-increasing financial pressures from the commercial world and that much greater attention to legal ethics is needed in legal education if legal professionalism is to take root in the Greater China region.

Minority Higher Education

Mainland China has pursued education policies that include substantial support for the perceived educational needs of ethnic minorities since liberation in late 1949. Support has included special provision for institutions of higher learning as well as secondary and primary schools and, since the 1980s, additional funding and resources from central and provincial governments and other supportive measures. Nevertheless, as the contribution from Miaoyan Yang and James Leibold demonstrates, minority higher education faces a number of stresses and strains.

Yang and Leibold's article, “Building a ‘double first-class university’ on China's Qing-Zang Plateau: opportunities, strategies and challenges,” explores efforts by university leaders in the Tibet Autonomous Region to take advantage of possible new opportunities introduced by the “double top” programme for university development. These possibilities are enhanced by a degree of additional space that the “double top” system provides local institutions in responding to opportunities in higher education in China. Looking in particular at the case of “Highland University” in Lhasa, which, in the eyes of a number of its own students is a second-rate university which only attained its 211 status because of ethnic minority preferential policies, the authors show the difficulties faced by higher education institutions in Tibet. Local efforts to secure the possible benefits offered by the new system have proceeded along two main lines. First, Tibet's sensitive geopolitical situation as a “national security buffer zone” is emphasized, as is the felt need to maintain stability (weiwen 维稳) in the Qing-Zang Plateau and to place Party work high on the list of administrative priorities at “Highland University.” Second, the party-state's policies supportive of ethnic minorities are invoked, and academic specialities that can be justified as appropriate for Tibet (and which bring comparative advantage) such as ecology, ethnology and Chinese language and literature (including Tibetan) are emphasized within the university's curricula. Both state and local authorities promote Highland University as the centre for international Tibetan studies and construct a narrative about the importance of Tibet and Tibetan culture. Partnering with elite inland and coastal universities is also pursued. But significant difficulties remain, including an inability to recruit high quality staff (especially given the low local salaries), policies that undermine international collaboration (so that, for example, academic staff who write about Tibetan issues find it politically risky to publish in international journals), and an emphasis on political correctness in staff development that makes it difficult for some of the more talented faculty members to progress in their careers.

Reflections

In her reflections on the articles in this special issue, Ruth Hayhoe suggests that the higher education issues revealed can be usefully seen in terms of three broad areas of difficulty: the links between the state and higher education (traditionally very strong in Chinese political culture), the emerging legal framework of higher education (how the higher education regulatory context and institutions fit into ideals of the rule of law, and how theory and practice diverge) and accountable governance (inevitably problematic in an authoritarian regime). She also reminds us that the theory and practice of higher education reform in the mainland and in other parts of Greater China cannot be ignored, given China's growing global significance. Professor Hayhoe further suggests that despite the many difficulties in the contemporary scene identified in the essays and elsewhere, China's experience might yet be important – building in part on European university traditions, in particular the French école normale – to further develop the Chinese shifan daxue 师范大学 (normal university), with its emphasis on moral formation, inter-disciplinarity and teaching over research. Integrated more firmly into global educational development, this Chinese higher education institution has the potential to provide an education for students that better promotes the ideal of the responsible citizen.

It is clear that significant changes have taken place over the past two decades, contributing in many ways to success in China's developmental project. From imperial times through to the present, great value has been placed on education in China, including its universities. Despite this cultural strength and the significant reforms and improvements in higher education over the past two decades, the party-state has not been able to address successfully a number of issues, including those in university governance, social justice and ethnic minority higher education. The party-state has itself moved away from an emphasis on equality of opportunity to the strengthening of key universities and subjects. In addition to this policy factor, there are wider social economic and cultural factors contributing to growing inequalities The Chinese government is also concerned with ideological factors and the felt need to maintain citizen support of the state in the interests of political stability and social harmony while also securing economic growth.