The Chinese Model of Development and the Higher Education Policy

Abstract

The Chinese government has been investing hugely in elite university schemes in order to raise some universities and programs to a world-class level. This move has triggered a worldwide competition in efforts to create world-class universities, as well as some discussion over whether or not there is an emerging Chinese model of the university. In this chapter, we attempt to address connections between the “Beijing Consensus” and Chinese higher education, in particular the impacts of social and political change on university operations and the academic profession. The perspectives we draw on are those of social embeddedness and external control of organizations in higher education. We argue that Chinese higher education owes its successful stories (especially the dramatic expansion and massification in the past decade) to some aspects of the “Beijing Consensus,” while at the same time Chinese universities are confronting a crisis, which is due to certain inbuilt constraints of China’s development model.