Mapping Soft Power of Chinese Higher Education

Abstract

In the past two decades, the trend of internationalization of higher education has been rapidly developed in contemporary China. Moreover, the Chinese government is seeking to keep in pace with the trend of internationalization to address both national and international challenges (Ayoubi and Massoud 2007). The trend of internationalization of Chinese higher education is deeply rooted in the integrated process of transformation of higher education worldwide. The acceleration of internationalization of higher education has been on the agenda at national, regional, and international dimensions (Rui 2014). Since the 1970s, the ultimate goal of the internationalization of higher education in China is to fulfill “Four Modernizations” (of industry, agriculture, defense, science and technology) in Chinese higher education system. Based on this purpose, the internationalization of higher education has been undertaken by the means of sending Chinese students and faculty abroad for international study and research, combining an international orientation into university teaching and learning, and offering transnational projects in consistent with foreign institutional partnerships with Chinese universities (Rui 2014). From a comparative and international perspective, Chinese higher education has obtained diverse advantages by implementing a series of education politics for advocating internationalization of Chinese higher education contextually. Hence, the major purpose of this research involves in mapping the internationalization of higher education in terms of constructing soft power conversion model of higher education (HE) from an international political science perspective. In addition, framing soft power conversion model of HE is implicitly consistent with the internationalization of higher education worldwide. In other words, the process of internationalization of higher education also stimulates constructing soft power of HEs. Moreover, this research also brings a specific initial lens to examine the internationalization of higher education in Chinese higher education context from international political science perspective. Specifically, in this study, this article is divided into three major sections: in the first section, Nye’s theory of soft power has been introduced and elaborated by several steps; then, in the second section, as a main part of this article, conceptualizing soft power conversion model of HE is constituted for explicit pathway and implicit process separately. In the explicit pathway of soft power conversion model of HE, political attractiveness, educational resources, and educational outcomes of internalization of higher education have been investigated and elaborated; in the implicit process of framing soft power conversion model of HE, cultivating and advocating global competency is considered as an essential pathway to enhance soft power of HE worldwide. In the last section, educational policy recommendations and remarks have been illustrated in accordance with constructing soft power conversion model of HE in Chinese higher education context.