The cultural mission of China’s elite universities: examples from Peking and Tsinghua

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, China, as a latecomer to modernization, has prioritized Western learning. The first modern university was created in China in 1895 to serve such a purpose with little linkage to China’s rich indigenous cultural traditions. Modelled on European and North American experiences and operating in a Confucian socio-cultural context, Chinese universities have long been struggling with their cultural identity. In line with recent development, China’s higher education has made impressive progress, and cultural experiment has been placed increasingly highly on the agenda. With an understanding of Chinese and Western knowledges by the elites, China’s very best universities have the promise to integrate both traditions in their day-to-day operation. Such a bi-culturality, or even multi-culturality, is in stark contrast to the still largely mono-cultural university operation environment in the West. The integration would open spaces for Chinese universities to explore an alternative to Western models that have dominated world’s higher education since Western industrialization. Based on fieldwork at Peking and Tsinghua Universities in Beijing, this article reports some findings from a three-year project supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. It attempts to suggest a different angle to observe China’s experience in higher education. It argues that cultural experiment would enable top Chinese universities to bring back their cultural traditions to integrate with Western values, and thus contribute to inter-civilizational dialogue.