ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 identifies how China’s higher education paradigm affects both the international higher education community and China’s go-global strategies. Building on its miraculous economic growth, China has used international higher education to expand its geopolitical and cultural influence even further. It has developed its own paradigm for higher education, which has three features. First, universities serve to increase China’s international geopolitical influence by educating students from less-developed countries and the former socialist bloc. Second, the state-university relationship follows a patron-client pattern, which is maintained by control-incentive cycle. Third, university curricula follow the ‘red and expert’ (hong yu zhuan) education formula – i.e., higher education should produce technical professionals (experts) who identify politically with socialist China (red; Meisner, 1977). Three examples are selected to spotlight the patterns of and reasons for this evolution: China’s rise as a new, study-abroad destination; the worldwide expansion of Confucius Institutes; and the transition of Hong Kong’s higher education policy from its British legacy to conformity with PRC education formula, in keeping with the former colony’s return to Chinese sovereignty.
