Long Road Ahead: Modernizing Chinese Universities

Abstract

Modern universities are a Western concept. For non-Western societies, indigenizing the Western university model has been an arduous task. This article first analyses China’s long traditions of higher learning. It then illustrates how such markedly different cultural roots have led to continuous conflicts between traditional Chinese and new Western ideas of the university - and of “modernity” itself. It argues that contemporary Chinese universities need to find their Chinese way to balance indigenous and Western ideas of the university.