SCI Index-China
CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
6.1 E DUCATION R EFORMS .1 The case of Taiwan
6.1.2 The case of China
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the Plan was formulated on a very rough base that it was without expert group discussions before its initiation…in general, the educational policies[reform] in Taiwan are usually being made without detailed discussions among different groups’ (Interview EDD2).
The above findings imply that the society of Taiwan has been influenced by globalisation and yet the society also confronts with its local political challenge. The international education reforms seemingly being carried out by the government sector was top-down financially, but at the same time greatly influenced by either experts in the education council committee and other social forces. This is in congruent with many other studies that globalisation must be measured against local values and context (Arnove and Torres 1999; Yang79 2002).
6.1.2The case of China
In the political system of China, the Party state has always been the initiator for policies. The Party leaders’ talk is an important aspect to examine Mainland China’s policy formation. Take Project 985 for example, it started basically from a talk made by the Party Leader Jiang Zemin ( 江 澤 民 ) on the 100 Anniversary of Peking University on the 4th of May in 1998. Jiang made it clear that ‘in order to embark on modernisation; our country needs to have a certain amount of top universities’.80 What follows is a series of projects and proposals which emphasise on HE’s internationalisation in China. In the projects/plans of Action Plan of Education Promotion for 21st Century (面向 21 世紀教育振興行動計劃), 2003-2007 Boosting Education Action Plan (2003—2007 年教育振興行動計劃) and the latest National Outline for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development 2010-2020(國家中長期教育改革和發展規劃綱要 2010—2020 年), all of these projects have repeated the importance of Project 211 and Project 985, which have been the policy instrument of China’s HEIs’ internationalisation described in Chapter 5.
From the 1950s through the early 1980s, HEIs in China receive their fund exclusively from a central government appropriation according to a unitary state budgetary plan. The amount of funds for each was determined by an ‘incremental approach’, which was based on what the institutions had received in the previous year
79 See Rui Yang’s book: The third delight: The internationalisation of higher education in China (2002).
80 Project 985 on Wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/985%E5%B7%A5%E7%A8%8B
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(Hayhoe and Zha 2006). Institutions have no freedom to decide how to spend their budget (Min and Chen 1994). Since the economic reforms in the 1980s, local authorities have been allowed to retain much of their income and decide their own spending plans, which include deciding local HEIs’ developmental plan (Wang81 2007). Project 211 expressed exactly the state’s intention to identify and give special financial support to the 100 best universities by the 21st century with the cooperation between central and local governments. What is worthy to note is that the selection of these institutions was done by the government, in accordance with its planning priorities and with the expectation that they would perform as leading institutions within the overall system (Hayhoe and Zha 2006). The Project 985 is another resolution carried out by the state of China that the number of institutions being selected in the Project is even smaller. The state centralises its investment to it the carefully selected 39 universities. As is reported that in the latest phase of Project 985, the central government allocated RMB 26.49 billion while all the joined local governments agree to invested RMB 18.633 billion, which in total amount for more than RMB 45 billion.82 This implies that both Project 211 and Project 985 are a part of China’s higher education reform with an aim of improving the quality of HEIs and to tip-top the very best universities in China.
Higher education reforms in China in recent years also include ‘empowering more’
and to ‘listening more’. The rigidity of centralized model faced several severe challenges in the 1990s. A new wave of governmental restructuring aimed to develop power to localities started to emerge. The Outline for Educational reform and Development in China83 (1993) proposed that HEIs be managed at two levels-national and provincial-but with the main responsibility being at the provincial level (Zhou 2001). On the Council Meeting of the Council meeting on the Work Report of National Outline for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development 2010-2020 in 2011, Minister of MOE, Yuan Gui Ren (袁貴仁) noted that it is the
81See 王瑞琦（2007），百年來中國現代高等教育：國家、學術、市場之三角演變，國立政治大
學中國大陸研究中心出版。
82在創建世界一流大學進程中實現共贏：新一輪“985 工程”高校部省重點共建綜述」 《中國
教育》報 2012-12-29.
http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s7044/201212/146303.html
83The Chinese name is:中國教育改革和發展綱要
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government’s job to improve its management towards its HEIs, and he states that China needs to ‘complete democratic mechanism’. Yuan (2011) said: 84
The government must change its function by completing the democratic mechanism. It must elaborate the function of National Education Council, Higher Education Examination Committee as well as Higher Education Fund Allocation Council. It must ‘listen’ to the public opinions and include the expert’s advises, making risk evaluation as well as legalised deliberation.
From the above discussions, it seems that the state of China puts the idea of HE internationalisation in its reform agenda. From the discussions shown in this study, the reform takes place in a massive scope. On the one hand, the state has responded to neoliberalism brought by globalisation; on the other hand, the state still maintains its steering direction with clear policy instructions.
6.2EDUCATION PRACTICES 6.2.1 The case of Taiwan
With regards to the education practices, it can be reviewed by two aspects. One is the actually policy making and educational management from the central government, e.g. MOE. The other is to look at how the HEIs in Taiwan carry out the internationalisation implementation at the education reality front. Other than Plan to Develop First-class Universities and Top-level Research Centres, the Executive Yuan and MOE also establish several inter-sectorial Councils, such as Council of General Education, Council of Higher Education Macro Planning, and Programme for Promoting Academic Excellence of Universities on University Merging to help improve Taiwan’s HEIs’ global competitiveness. The MOE allows for Taiwan’s HEIs to have the flexibility in key university developmental plan and urges those select HEIs to establish its performance targets future evaluation.85
In responding to the state’s education policies, those selected HEIs have made the following changes to pursue internationalisation. For instance, there has been a growth of international student intake throughout the years and also an increase of
84袁貴仁, 《國務院關於實施《國家中長期教育改革和發展規劃綱要（2010—2020 年）》工作情
況的報告, 2011,12. 28.
85 In responding to Control Yuan’s Rectification Report, the MOE elaborates that in the second phase of Plan to March Towards Top Universities, the MOE has clarified the definition of ‘what it is to be top world research centres’ and it would urge those selected universities to build its performance targets.
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English-taught programmes and courses. There has been special allowance for local students/scholars to participate in overseas short-term programmes funded by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)86, carried out by the universities.
National Yang Ming University and National Tsing Hua University have collaborated to establish ‘Biotechnology Medical Centre’. Yuan Ze University created several English taught Masters programmes and recruit prestigious internationally-known scholar to be its Chair Professor or Guest Scholar. Soochow University aims to attract more international students to enhance the international cultural exchange among students. Chinese Culture University wishes to promote its long lasting studies on Sinology.
With regards to the relationships between the HEIs and the governmental sectors, evidence show repeatedly that Taiwan’s central government intends to decentralise its authority and empower HEIs. As one of the interviewee states:
‘I think our university has less influences from the MOE. Instead, I think the MOE sometimes plead for to do some particular internationalisation work because we are a prestigious worldwide university with so many colleges. So it is not hard for us to do it’ (Interview EDS02).
Although the above finding suggests that the MOE has become less authoritarian than before, some of the findings in this study imply differently.
‘MOE is very demanding, still, in many aspects. For instance, the MOE persuade us to host foreign guests sent by the MOE, making us believe that these guests will help with university credit and future academic cooperation in the future. However, I think some of the guests are not really interested in our university and our university do not have the appropriate people to host these foreign guests. My job is to deal with the administration job, however, we need people from the research front to be really in connection with those foreign scholars. Yet in my experiences, I think the MOE sometimes just wanted to finish their job and got credits for its own and not really in consideration of what our university needs’ (Interview EDS01).
Interviewee EDD01 having 6 years experiences as the Head of International Office also suggests similar statement:
86 ) Previously, it is known as National Science Council (NSC).
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‘In my experiences of dealing with the MOE, I think that they still give us the feeling that they are the ‘boss’. For instance, sometimes they would just give us an official order demanding us to follow the instructions given by them with no negotiations in the first place. To note that these orders are usually given without discussing with people who really work at the front line first…of course, in the end, they had to negotiate with us because some of the ‘jobs’ were just impossible to do, but I had the feeling that they still do it again and again without floor discussions whatsoever before they give out their orders’ (Interview EDD01).
Assertion made by Interviewee EDD02 also support EDD01’s statement as follows:
‘In the beginning of the Plan, the MOE demanded us to take the international students whom they selected for us, which made us with no choice! Later on, the intake of international students became more standardised and we can choose the international students that we really want…I think the whole internationalisation thing in Taiwan will be like a firework show. After the block funding is fininished, our progress will only improve little or even fall back’ (Interview EDD02).
What is more interesting is that in actual educational practice arena, some of the HEIs are ‘feeling lost’ by being given more autonomy and flexibility. As one of the interviewees who works at MOE points out from an insider’s point of view:
‘The MOE has become a platform. We offer a forum for university to openly discuss and operate. We now offer only the major policy direction, and we let the universities run following their own development steps. But interestingly, some of the universities (especially private ones) would ring us and ask the MOE to give them clearer instructions for them to follow suit’ (Interview CS02).
In the practices of higher education in Taiwan, the state of Taiwan is apparently on the spectrum of moving from being authoritarian to being more power-decentralised.
For instance, the MOE intends to allow the public universities to be self-governed (大 學自治), and in fact, many of the administrative post are now taken by professors in the universities. This does imply that the state’s is loosening the rules on university control. However, the state government is still in control the Department of Audition and Department of Personnel in public universities, which hinder the HEIs (especially the public ones) from truly self-governing. In the practice of internationalisation policies, at the HEI’s front, universities in Taiwan has academic freedom (including curriculum design, research topics selection), and yet the management of university
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finance and personnel is still in control of the central government under the Executive Yuan. To draw conclusion of the practices of internationalisation of Taiwan’s HIEs, two points can be shared herewith: a) the education practices vary among different HEIs. b) the HEIs are given a certain scope of academic freedom and yet it is still bound by the state when it comes to finance and personnel in practice.
6.2.2 The case of China
It always is a difficult part to understand China’s HE practices because a) it is composed of 23 provinces and each of them has different characteristics in carrying out HE policy plan; b) some of the research area are not easy to have access to and the environment around may not be very open to academic researches. In R. Yang’ (2002) study, he investigated on internationalisation of the three prestigious universities’ in Guangzhou city and concludes that although the three universities share similar ideas, values on the issue of internationalisation of HE, the mind-set of people working in the university on what internationalisation is and how internationalisation should be placed in the university context still brings about different outcomes in actual practices of internationalisation. Yang summaries that ‘the Chinese experience shows that approaches and strategies differ according to particular settings and circumstances, as well as profiles of individual institutions’ (Yang 2002, p.175).
The interviews carried out in this study also yield similar results as Yang’s study.
In addition, the interviews shed light on understanding whether China’s higher education practices can reflect on the state’s capacity and autonomy in responding to globalisation and bring about the state’s particular ideas on internationalisation. As discussed in chapter 5, the Chinese, mainly the state, see the current emphasis on internationalisation as a strategy to develop China’s higher education. One of the interviewees, who is a foreign labourer in China’s university states that he can strongly feel the strategies of internationalisation in his university:
‘I was recruited to work in this university about 4 years ago. By then, they recruit 20 of us—the ‘returned overseas Chinese PhD’ (海歸派)—in one time with a goal that we must publish articles on the prestigious international journals. Since our President is also a returnee, he has clear ideas on what internationalisation is and how to do it and I can tell you that this varies among different universities even this international city, Shanghai’ (Interview EDD06).
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This disparity is also supported by interviewee EP01 who says:
‘If you want to know the higher education policy direction in China, you can refer to the recently announced Outline for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development 2010-2020. We follow to what the Party state decides on the education priorities but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have any flexibility to carry things out following our own approaches’ (Interview EP01).
There has been evidence showing that universities in China put efforts in becoming world-class universities are a strong response to national priorities. Using the cases of Tsinghua and Peking universities, Li and Chen (2011) indicate that these two world-known universities highlight the importance of internationalising their curriculum;
make efforts in recruiting overseas scholar fellowships and outstanding scholars; they also build international networks and joint-degree programmes and keep improving in World University Ranking.87 The efforts made by these two distinguished universities can also be regarded as the policy implementation of Project 985, which clearly instructs Tsinghua University and Peking University to be ‘world-class’ universities (Introduction of Project 985, MOE). Song and Liao88 (2004) opine that the reason why Tsinghua University and Peking University can be the only two selected key universities to become China’s target university to become world-class universities is because of their undisputable academic and political status. On the one hand, both Tsinghua University and Peking University have had enough repute world-wide and such arrangement from the state does not seem impossible for them to follow suit. On the other hand, both universities cannot have their own preference on internationalisation without the financial support from the government and in a way it makes them more dependent on the government with the increase of central government budget year by year. 89
Moreover, scholars from mainland China have argued mainly that the internationalisation of Chinese universities not only extends over a broad range of multidisciplinary activities and programmes, but such broad range of activities also include similarities and disparities combining to contribute to the peculiarity of
87 The Top University Ranking made by QS is extracted in this study in Appendix III, also on p.123.
88 宋維強、廖媛紅（2004）。大學競爭的政治分析：以「985 工程」為例，高等教育研究，
25(6)，頁 25-30。
89 Both in the Phase One and Phase Two of Project 985, Tsinghua University and Peking University receive RMB 1.8 billion block-funding respectively from the central government. In the Phase Three of Project 985, in block-funding increased to RBM 4 billion respectively.
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China’s practice, a unique pattern of China’s response to globalisation (R. Yang 2002, Li and Chen 2011). The Chinese institutions’ approach to be international embeds similar models as many other world known HEIs. Chinese HEIs are aware the importance of the provision of universal activities because internationalisation is an interactive response to globalisation. Not only that, as Li and Chen put, ‘the internationalisation of Chinese universities has a very strong image-building element and is associated with the building of world-class university’ (Li and Chen 2011, p.
253), which can be supported by China’s attempt of increase its soft-power by the establishment of Confucius Institute worldwide (Starr 2009).
In the aspect of education practice, it is suggested that China’s state power has not decreased in the process of globalisation. The state makes long-term internationalisation policies and demands its HEIs to implement these policies at the institution level. The detailed practice of internationalisation among universities differ from one to another; however, these practices all indicate that the universities have had the preference to follow the state’s policy instruction and these practices are a part of Chinese image-building－an image more with the Chinese characteristics and less with Western ideology.
6.3INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
In order to map out the international academic achievement, one must seek for the answer of what a world-class university truly means. The few scholars, who attempt to define it, have identified some features by deductively researching on those top universities in the world. Those researches suggest that highly qualified faculty,
In order to map out the international academic achievement, one must seek for the answer of what a world-class university truly means. The few scholars, who attempt to define it, have identified some features by deductively researching on those top universities in the world. Those researches suggest that highly qualified faculty,