Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?

William C. Kirby

Chapter | The China Questions | 2018

Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?

Abstract

Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.

In only a few decades, the most populous country on Earth has moved from relative isolation to center stage. Thirty-six of the world’s leading China experts—all affiliates of the renowned Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University—answer key questions about where this new superpower is headed and what makes its people and their leaders tick. They distill a lifetime of cutting-edge scholarship into short, accessible essays about Chinese identity, culture, environment, society, history, or policy.

Can China’s economic growth continue apace? Can China embrace the sacrifices required for a clean environment? Will Taiwan reunite with the mainland? How do the Chinese people understand their position in today’s global marketplace? How do historical setbacks and traditional values inform China’s domestic and foreign policy? Some of the essays address issues of importance to China internally, revolving around the Communist Party’s legitimacy, the end of the one-child policy, and ethnic tensions. Others focus on China’s relationship with other nations, particularly the United States. If America pulls back from its Asian commitments, how will China assert its growing strength in the Pacific region?

China has already captured the world’s attention. The China Questions takes us behind media images and popular perceptions to provide insight on fundamental issues.

Keywords: history; Asia; China; education; higher education; emerging country; international relations; Society; students; globalization; Education; Higher Education; Globalization; International Relations; History; Society; Education Industry; Asia; China; United States;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Kirby, William C. "Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?" Chap. 27 in The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power, edited by Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi, 219–230. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.

The rapid growth in quantity and quality of universities in China since 1978 is the most recent evolution in a long history of higher education. From as early as the Tang Dynasty, academies existed to prepare scholars for the civil service examination, but by the Republican period, higher learning was dominated by a host of well-regarded, cosmopolitan, comprehensive universities. In 1952, these institutions were reorganized according to the Soviet model and remained highly specialized until the resurgence of comprehensive institutions after 1978. This background note describes this history and then elaborates on the system of higher education since 2000, focusing on university governance, funding, faculty policy, admissions systems, and internationalization. It concludes by looking at the tightening of ideological control in universities since 2012 and reflects on the potential for China to establish "world-class" universities.

Tsinghua University is one of the most prominent universities in China, and, increasingly, in the world. Its evolution to this position reflects the major developments in Chinese history—outward looking internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, creative survival in the 1940s, Sovietization in the 1950s and 1960s, chaos in the 1970s, rebuilding in the 1980s, and, since the 1990s, a laser focus on becoming one of the best higher education institutions in the world. This case study traces this institutional history and then examines Tsinghua University's recent attempts at reform in faculty governance, curriculum, and funding as it seeks "world-class" status.

Recent geopolitical events, such as Brexit and the retreat from multilateral trade and cooperation by the USA, have created waves of uncertainty, especially in the field of higher education, regarding international cooperation. Meanwhile, China is publicly seeking to take the lead in globalisation, developing its higher education and research systems at speed and actively seeking to cooperate with academic partners along the New Silk Roads in order to attract talent (back). But under which conditions, whose definitions, and based on what values? And what, if any, difference will the “New Silk Road” make in the global educational landscape?

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Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?

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