International Higher Education, Spring 2002

China’s Plan to Promote Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Rui Yang and King Hau Au Yeung
Rui Yang is a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia. Address: Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009. E-mail: <ryang@ecel.uwa.edu.au>. King Hau Au Yeung is a doctoral student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Address: Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territory, Hong Kong. E-mail: <auyeung@cuhk.edu.hk>.


With the exponential growth of Internet use in China and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, many signs indicate that China’s open door policy is only going to continue. Chinese universities are thus further confronted with an international context. Within this context, one urgent task is to improve the level of internationalization in the humanities and social sciences. Due to the varied ideologies, paradigms, and discourses inherent in these fields, and the high dependency on language to convey their meanings, dialogue with the international community is far more limited. This article reviews China’s current initiatives to restructure research strength and infrastructure.

The Goals of the Plan
 In June 1999, the Ministry of Education issued the Plan to Build up Key National Bases for Humanities and Social Sciences Research in Regular Higher Education Institutions. The plan included a selection of about 100 leading research centers in the country, chosen for their relevance to economic and social development and to higher education reform; provision of spadework for future development by reforming the existing administration system—including initiating major projects, allocating funds and grants, and supervision; and improvement of the overall research capacity of these listed centers to cutting-edge level, and thus ensuring a substantial international reputation. These initiatives have been well received nationwide. They are expected to have significant impact on the reform and development in the humanities and social sciences in Chinese universities.

To achieve the aforementioned targets, three stages have been scheduled to implement the plan. Step one (1999–2000) focused exclusively on identifying 103 centers of research excellence. Step two (2001–2005) includes comprehensive policy implementation. This stage aims in particular to ensure that the overall research strength of the selected centers achieves leading level within China by 2005. Those failing to do so will be excluded from the plan, and new centers with recent excellent performance in similar areas will be added. The final stage will start in 2006.

It should be mentioned that while the plan is basically an initiative of the central government, with the ministry playing a major role in administration and finance, it is a “fishing” project (as it is jokingly referred to in Chinese higher education circles): to generate revenue from all possible sources.

Characteristics of the Plan
The plan has been in operation for two years, and has yielded intense competition among universities, which is welcomed by the Chinese government. According to the ministry, such competition helps use financial and human resources at different levels where they are needed most. The 103 listed centers are spread across 40 universities, of which 27 are under the direct administration of the ministry, and 13 are under other ministries and provincial governments. Despite their dissimilar administrative jurisdiction and geographical location, they share a number of features.

Together, these centers have shaped a general disciplinary structure that combines basic theoretical subjects and applied areas, including traditional disciplines and new multidisciplinary studies. The overall proportion of theory-oriented centers is nearly 50 percent, and traditional disciplines comprise a high proportion. For example, the Centers of Ancient Chinese Documents (Peking University), Classical Chinese Literature (Fudan University), History and Theories of History (Beijing Normal University), and Chinese Language History (Zhejiang University) are all ranked at the top of the list.

New multidisciplinary studies centers have also attracted much attention. The Center for China’s Financial and Banking Policy (People’s University), for instance, was included for its effort to combine finance with banking, linking theoretical research to policy studies. Similarly, Chinese Language and Modern Application (East China Normal University) is a center that emphasizes the combination of theoretical linguistic inquiry with current practice. While theoretical inquiries consider potential applications, applied studies are strengthening their conceptual foundations. For example, Nankai University’s Political Economy Center goes far beyond a traditional economics framework by focusing on other more application-oriented issues such as the Internet and economic simulations. The same can be said of the Center for Developmental Psychology at Beijing Normal University.

Themes with theoretical and practical significance for current economic, political, and cultural development have been emphasized. The plan has included the Centers for Socialist Market Economy (Fudan University), State-Ownership Economy (Jilin University), and Social Welfare (Wuhan University). As for the area of law and order, of crucial interest in contemporary China, the plan has selected the Centers for Political Development and Government Administration (Peking University), Social Administration (Zhongshan University), and Criminal and Legal Studies (People’s University). Education and culture are also included in the plan, in an effort to be relevant to the current situation. A number of large research centers have been established as the result of the plan. The most prominent ones include the Centers for the Theories of Deng Xiao-ping (Peking University), Ethics and Morality (People’s University), Rural Education (Northwest Normal University), and University Moral Education (Tsinghua University).

The listed centers are not confined to those with existing records of excellence. Programs that currently lack first-class research achievement but show promise and solid resource infrastructure enjoy special privileges. In this respect, issues relevant to China’s development in the 21st century are especially obvious targets of the plan. The Centers for Rural Development (Central China Normal University), Northwest Historical Environment and Economic and Social Development (Northwest Normal University), China’s Minorities (Central Minority University), International Law (Wuhan University), and World Trade Organization Studies (Foreign Trade University) all fall squarely into this category. Others include the Centers for Media Studies (Beijing Radio University), Chinese Folklore (Sichuan University), and Huizhou Culture Studies (Anhui University).

Conclusion
The plan echoes an international trend in educational restructuring: ongoing devolution in finance and administration with increasing central government influence on curricula. This major initiative to promote research deserves our particular attention as China’s scholars in the humanities and social sciences have achieved far less international visibility than their colleagues in engineering and the natural sciences. The humanities and social sciences, however, serve as a more accurate barometer of the extent of China’s progress in the internationalization of higher education.

Along with other features, the plan stresses China’s practical needs. This would appear to be reasonable in China, where problematic issues demand urgent practical responses and concentration of limited resources is designed to “use the best steel to make the knife’s edge.” However, one thing is certain: the plan will exercise an enormous impact in China on the humanities and social sciences in the years to come.