Innovation and control: universities, the knowledge economy and the authoritarian state in China

Abstract

Like many other education systems in the world, Chinese education has undergone various reforms in order to adapt to the challenges that are perceived to emanate from the knowledge economy. Central to this transformation is the concept of 'innovation', which is to guide the country on its path from a production economy to a knowledge economy. Chinese policymakers have been targeting the higher education sector both as a motor for innovation and as a realm to be innovated, and have invested heavily in the sector's internationalization, above all in the form of international collaboration and student mobility, affecting higher education and academia worldwide. However, a number of structural and political constraints delimit the directions that innovation can take, both within Chinese education in general and within Chinese higher education. The article takes stock of these constraints and assesses the potential for innovation in Chinese higher education in terms of the underlying school system, exam and recruitment policies, the (re-)organization of universities, as well as the universities' and science system's performance according to indicators of innovation. The article then identifies four 'Chinese innovation dilemmas', that is, educational policies and developments that are to spur innovation but run counter to existing structures and practices of educational, social, and political governance: ideological control versus creativity; state planning versus grassroots innovation; old-boy networks versus anti-corruption; and exambased student recruitment versus flexible recruitment.

Schoolteachers and the Nordic Model

“…Even though the increased interest in the Nordic countries is considerable, Figure 4.2 tells us nothing about how Nordic references fare compared to Chinese publications on education in general, and publications on non-Nordic countries in particular. The late 1990s and 2000s have witnessed not only a greater interest in international issues, but a significant rise in the total number of publications, due to the adjustment of Chinese universities to international standards (such as measurement of output in terms of publications; see Schulte, 2019b). Weighted against this general increase in publications, no relative increase in publications relating to the Nordic region can be observed, even if all Nordic references are totalled (Sweden, 'Nordic countries', Finland, Denmark, Norway; indicated as 'Nordic+' in Figure 4.3).…”

Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Big Data

“…The existence of so-called "ecosystems of surveillance" is one aspect in which authoritarian and democratic political systems do fundamentally differ. Although surveillance does also exist in democracies, 15 researchers in authoritarian systems face, on average, more surveillance both in their daily lives, and in their activity as researchers (Schulte 2019;Jiang 2020;Strittmatter 2020;Perry 2020;Xu 2021). The importance of surveillance in authoritarian states can be explained by the informational dilemma of the authoritarian government.…”

Progress towards a World-Class Research University status: The case of Nanjing Agricultural University

“…Internationalization is a way of developing world-class universities, whereby multifaceted and multidimensional processes of integrating international, intercultural, and global content and dimensions into higher education research are encouraged (Ota, 2018;Schulte, 2019). International collaboration allows scientists and researchers from different countries to work together with leading experts elsewhere for the production of higher quality research (Veugelers, 2017).…”

“…This rise is not an accident but a result of long-sustained strategies to develop China"s research infrastructure (Veugelers & Baltensperger, 2019). Between 2000 and 2015, China more than doubled its national expenditures on research and development from 0.9% of its GDP to 2.1%, thus almost reaching the OECD average of 2.4% (Schulte, 2019).…”