There is ample talk these days about the rise of the Chinese state as a new political and economic elite challenging the dominance of US hegemony.
This rise will benefit not only the Chinese politburo and corporations, but also many other institutions in Greater China (regions that share a common linguistic and cultural heritage with China — specifically, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau), and, in particular, the education sector.
While there has been much debate about the supposed “peaceful rise” of the Chinese political economy — both here and abroad — it is rare for this discussion to include the role of educational establishments in the transformation of society. The debate typically centers on GDP, per capita development, anti-government protests and militarization.
However, underlying all these topical issues is the fundamental construction of moral and material mindsets. Higher Education is set to change, and be changed, by the impending socioeconomic, political and cultural transformations taking shape today, and all these changes will place Greater China at center stage in the theater of the educational market.
Chief among the changes set to emerge is the increasing migration of non-Chinese international students from the US, UK, EU, Australia and other regions, who will move eastward to study at Chinese universities. Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Institute for Educational Planning already indicate this trend has begun, and it is expected to grow significantly over the next few decades.
Several factors include: Western students seeking philosophical alternatives to understanding the world; non-Asian students seeking economic advantages in the globalized workforce, where Chinese cultural and linguistic knowledge is seen favorably among employers; rising tuition fees at universities in the West; and a growing disenchantment with Western capitalism, prompting more and more young people from the West to seek different economic solutions.
Universities in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have established numerous agreements over recent years allowing their students to study in other regions of Greater China.
This interconnectedness has created a growing exchange of student opportunities and vibrant networks which could, in the future, produce a coalition of universities to present a powerful Chinese front in global education.
Such a coalition could stimulate the formation of an academic alliance that might challenge the current dominance of Western institutions, particularly the Ivy League in the US, the Russell Group in the UK, the League of European Research Universities across the EU or the Group of Eight in Australia.
China set up its own C9 League in 2009 to emulate and compete with Western institutions. This group of the largest and most rigorous research-intensive universities currently includes Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, Zhejiang, Nanjing, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Xian Jiao Tong, Harbin Institute of Technology, and the University of Science and Technology of China.
The idea of the C9 League is propagated by the government and promoted through international rankings, such as QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education and the Chinese-based Academic Ranking of World Universities.
However, these indices also reveal several other higher education institutions in Greater China — National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, along with Hong Kong University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Chinese University of Hong Kong — already outperform universities in the C9. These universities attract a growing number of international students (including Chinese), and so creating a “C9+3” alliance could really bear fruit.
A C9+3 alliance would provide excellent universities that offer world-class education for students migrating from inside or outside Greater China. It shares similarities with the idea of the Ivy Plus in the US — an expanded Ivy League, which includes four other universities along with the original eight.
For both the Ivy Plus and the C9+3, an alliance creates a larger intellectual community that might promote the twin values of academic excellence and social impact.
Instead of expanding the number of universities within China itself, the C9+3 alliance would recruit diverse resources from regions of Greater China, much as the Ivy Plus has expanded beyond the traditional northeastern states of the US.
To add Taiwan and Hong Kong to the C9+3 would foster diversity, free media, political activism and advanced service industries to add a significant advantage to the Greater China coalition for international and domestic students.
Nonetheless, whether the “+3” should be defined as an addition of the three key regions that include Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, or specific universities within these regions, is still open to debate.
It is also not clear whether institutions in Hong Kong and Taiwan would be interested in joining, or whether the creation of such an alliance would foster further social inequality. In whichever case, Taiwan — as well as Hong Kong and Macau — would benefit from such an alliance as an advanced academic exchange stimulates competitiveness and facilitates a more sustainable relationship with China.
At the moment, several challenges exist to transform the C9+3 idea from merely a form of branding to an actual operating entity. These include identifying what philosophies bind the institutions together, how funding should be distributed and to what extent each region would take to overcome political constraints for allowing cross-strait and international mobility within academic circles.
It should be made clear that C9+3 does not implicate political integration, but ultimately strives to achieve integration of academic resources and soft power within and beyond Greater China. Hopefully, the new “Chinese Twelve” will lead higher education policy and practices in the 21st century.
Cindy Chang is a Taiwanese educator who holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and researches second-language communication strategies and education in East Asia. Kevin Kester is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge and a visiting scholar at Yale University and National Taiwan University.
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