SCI Index-Taiwan
CHAPTER 5: STATE POLICIES AND STRATEGIES TOWARDS INTERNATIONALISATION IN CHINA
5.1.2 Project 211 and Project 985
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are more than 6.88 million undergraduate students solely and more than two million faculty members solely in HEIs (MOE China 2014). The growth and expansion of Chinese HE cannot be disregarded as it grows along with Chinese economy and society. Currently, China is the world’s second largest economy with its nominal GDP reached $9.182 trillion in 2013 while its population makes up around 19.3% of the world’s population60. Economically, China is gradually taking the lead in the world from the 2000s and therefore, it is a righteous choice for the Chinese government that that other than making economic development, the government also wishes to intensify efforts for its human resources. Min (2004) points out that the Chinese government has endeavoured to upgrade the quality of the leading national universities to world-class status and wishing these national universities to serve as locomotives to help raise the standards of the HE system as a whole. Under this thinking, Project 211 and Project 985 have emerged from the mid-1990s.
5.1.2 Project 211 and Project 985
As described above, the Chinese government implemented a number of projects, such as ‘Project 211’, ‘Project 985’, to enhance its HE quality and to enable its HEIs to engage in the global educational community. Long before the formation of these policies, the Chinese government had attempted to decentralise the central government power by sharing its finance funding with its local governments. When the policies of Project 211 and Project 985 were implemented, not only the local government were required to share the finance loading but also select HEIs were requested to allocate a certain amount of funding to implement these projects. For instance, it was reported that both the central and local government had allocated RMB 18 billion in total to implement the Project 211 in the period of 9th Five-Year Plan. 61 The funding that is allocated to Project 985 is even larger as it covers more HEIs than Project 211. Both projects are in the plan of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan which was announced in 2010 when Project 211 aims to intensify the grounding of the key disciplinary areas; while Project 985 aims to establish advantageous platforms
60Refer to World population statistics, http://www.worldpopulationstatistics.com/population-of-china-2014/.
61 Refer to the news report of’中國政府十五期間將向 211 工程撥款 60 億’，2009, September 17, retrieve from http://www.chinanews.com/2002-09-17/26/223355.html.
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for the disciplinary areas in the world.62 It is thus worthwhile to understand what goals Project 211 and Project 985 have set up for China’s HEIs to become more internationalised and globally competitive.
Project 211 is primarily aimed at strengthening 100 HEIs and key disciplinary areas as a national priority. Project 211 consists of the three major components (Mok and Chan 2008, p. 476):
1. Improving the overall institutional capacity by expanding the number of scholars and teaching with those who have high academic attainments and prestige, as well as enhancing the infrastructure and facilities indispensable for teaching and research.
2. Developing key disciplines which are considered to be necessary to social and economic development, scientific and technological advancement, and national defence.
3. Strengthening the networking of and collaboration between higher education institutions through the development of the Chinese Education and Research Network (CERNET), the Library and Documentation Support System (LDSS) and the Modern Equipment and Facilities Sharing System (MEFSS).
Similar to Project 211, Project 985 was launched and implemented when the State Council approved MOE’s Action Plan of Education Promotion for 21st Century in 1999. This plan, focusing mainly on Peking University and Tsinghua University and several other selected universities, is aimed to build world-class and internationally well-known high quality of research institutions (Yang, Y. 2002). The elements that are encompassed in Project 985 are as follows: Improving innovation in universities, improving teaching team’s quality, strengthening the platform for research and research grounding, improving HEIs’ supportive systems, and strengthening international exchange and cooperation. In the proposal of Project 985 announced by the MOE, the Chinese government has made clear points on the reforms that Project 985 wishes to achieve the following goals:
1. To uplift the quality of human recourses training, including updating concepts, modules and evaluative systems of human resources development.
62 These two initiatives are directly extracted from the 12th Five-Year Plan of National Education development (國家教育事業發展第十二個五年規劃).
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management and creating high quality of teaching teams and supervisory management.3. To improve management skills as well as resources allocation, to complete governance structure and evaluative systems in order to reach the goal of achieving high quality research works.
4. To enhance the autonomy of top universities in the aspect of quality assurance.
To achieve the goal of building world-class universities by fostering university culture with ‘Chinese characteristics’ in order to make HEIs to become the world-class universities.
In the first phase of the Project, the central government invested RMB 131.05 hundred million, while local ones allocated RMB 96.65 hundred million. In the second phase of the Project, the central government invested RMB158.05 hundred million, while local ones allocated RMB 67.78 hundred million. In the third phase of the Project, the central government invested RMB 264.9 hundred million, while local ones allocated RMB 186.33 hundred million.63 The table below shows some examples of how central government and local government divided their funding in the 3rd phase of Project 985 in 2010. 64
Table 5. 1 Central and Local Government Funding Allocation in Project 985 (3rd Phase)
Source: MOE of China, 2014a. (Unit: RMB Hundred Million)
Finance-wise, overall there has been constant input from the Chinese government to guarantee the standardised development of education, in which the priority has been given to HE internationalisation. China’s current higher education expenditure
63 Project 985 Fund Allocation, access at http://weibo.com/1260897165/zbQs6u2BN on 12th Oct, 2014.
64 Refer to Introduction of Project 985 on Wikipedia at http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/985%E5%B7%A5%E7%A8%8B
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accounts for 93% of total expenditure and this is close to the average of 90.9% of total expenditure provided by OECD (OECD 2011). 65
5.1.3 National Outline for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and