Emulating or integrating? Modern transformations of Chinese higher education

Abstract

Western models of the university have fundamentally shaped Chinese universities over the twentieth century. Since the nineteenth century, bringing together aspects of the Chinese and Western philosophical heritages in higher education has turned out to be an arduous task. The striking differences between the two value systems have led to cultural tensions. Chinese universities have not figured out how to wed the standard norms of Western higher education with their traditions. The Western concept of a university has been taken only for its practicality. Chinese higher learning traditions have had strong impact on contemporary higher education development. While China’s history of the educational institutions called university today is long and their changes have been drastic, the transformation of China’s higher education has been surprisingly little documented in the English literature. Without a good grasp of the nature of Chinese traditional higher education and institutions, it is almost impossible to truly understand modern Chinese higher education. Tracing the historical roots of Chinese higher education, this article examines how traditional Chinese higher education and its institutions have been transformed under the influence of their Western counterparts. It attempts to capture the interactions between indigenous Chinese and imported Western traditions in higher education.