ABSTRACT
The history of higher education in China over the past 100 years has been characterized by a series of radical, often contradictory adjustments to political, economic, social, ideological, and technological movements. These movements or influences vary greatly in size, significance, effect, and duration; but when taken together, they comprise an unusually complex and dynamic picture of forces at work in modern China. The nation has been subjected, often through its own choosing, to a bewildering array of foreign ideas, affecting not only higher education but all aspects of Chinese life. The challenge has always been to seek out the best and to seek out those innovations in harmony with Chinese values while rejecting those which are at variance with Chinese thinking or current policies.
