The Chinese Century? The Challenges of Higher Education

Daedalus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 143 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Kirby

One can find in any airport kiosk books that proclaim ours to be “the Chinese century.” We have titles such as “The Dragon Awakes,” “China's Rise,” “The Rise of China,” and “China's Ascent,” to name but a few. But to rise is not necessarily to lead. What constitutes leadership? In higher education, China is building the fastest growing system–in quality as well as in quantity–in the world. The foremost global powers of the past four centuries all offered models in the realms of culture, ideas, and education. This may be said of seventeenth-century France under Louis XIV; of the Qing during the Qianlong reign of the eighteenth century; of Britain and Germany in the nineteenth century; and of the United States in the twentieth. China now aspires to educate global elites. For the twenty-first century, then, are Chinese universities poised for global leadership?

2017 ◽  
pp. 10-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marijk Van der Wende

Globalization has strongly influenced higher education during the last decades. As in many other sectors, this has generated contradictory outcomes. Higher education has opened up to the world and become more engaged at the global level. But how will this process continue with the current backlash against globalization in Europe and the United States, and what will be the impact of other major geopolitical trends such as the rise of China?


2017 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Marijk Van der Wende

Globalization has strongly influenced higher education during the last decades. As in many other sectors, this has generated contradictory outcomes. Higher education has opened up to the world and become more engaged at the global level. But how will this process continue with the current backlash against globalization in Europe and the United States, and what will be the impact of other major geopolitical trends such as the rise of China?


Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
AISDL

“China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world” - Napoleon Bonaparte. The rise of China is a phenomenon in the 21st century. The rise of China is one of the most significant contributions to the restructuring of the world order as well as the Asian Pacific order. Although the United States remains one of the most powerful countries in the world, its regional and global hegemony has been considerably challenged by China. This paper contains three main objectives: (1) to present an overview on the miraculous growth of Chinese economy; (2) to identify the challenges from China’s rise posing on the regional and international system; and (3) to make an analysis on the case of the South China Sea disputes in order to clarify the reaction of the system towards the China’s rise.


Author(s):  
Clint Randles

The proliferation of the use of new media and creativities are expanding the ways that humans engage creatively with music in the twenty-first century. As teachers and researchers, our methods of assessing these creativities need to expand as well. In this chapter the author points to some of the ways that music education has traditionally conceived of both creativity and the measurement of compositional activity in the classroom. However, it should be clear that formative, summative, feedback, diagnostic, and evaluative assessment are all necessary and vital to understanding and justifying the place of composition learning in music education, and that we as a profession have not done an adequate job of it in the past. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Finland, and Australia, have done a better job of creating curricular space for composition than the United States. The rest of the world can learn from these successes.


Author(s):  
Diana L. Eck ◽  
Brendan Randall

The United States is among the most religiously diverse countries in the world. Although such diversity is not a new phenomenon, its degree and visibility have increased dramatically in the past fifty years, reigniting the debate over a fundamental civic question: What is the common identity that binds us together? How we respond to religious diversity in the context of education has enormous implications for our democratic society. To the extent that previous frameworks such as exclusion or assimilation ever were desirable or effective, they no longer are. Increased religious diversity is an established fact and growing trend. The United States needs a more inclusive and robust civic framework for religious diversity in the twenty-first century—pluralism—and this framework should be an essential component of civic education.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Weixing CHEN

The rise of China has shaken, to some extent, the pillars sustaining the US dominance in the world. Facing structural challenges from China, the United States has responded on three levels: political, strategic and policy. The Donald Trump administration has adopted a hard-line approach while attempting to engage China at the structural level. The China–US relationship is entering uncertain times, and the reconstruction of the relationship could take a decade.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasser Al-Tamimi

China is currently considered to be the world's largest purchasing power economy, and is the second after the United States by market value. It is expected to become the largest by the end of the next decade. Previous data have shown that the concept of ‘core interests’ from the Chinese point of view may be included with the development of China's economic and military capabilities. This concept will certainly expand as China grows into a superpower to cover many parts of the world. With China increasingly dependent on energy imports, the Middle East and Africa and the Maritime Silk Road are expected to become a vital priority for the emerging nation in future. In the light of this strategic background, this paper attempts to define the concept of ‘core interests’ from the Chinese point of view and to monitor the most important stages of its application within Beijing's external trends, highlighting the issues of Chinese policy, especially in East Asia. In the context of expanding China's global interests, this paper argues that China's influence in the Middle East will increase, and may be followed by an increased political and military presence, highlighting evidence and a number of trends that support this view.


Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig

This chapter analyzes the rise of China and the threat it poses to the United States and its allies. Some argue that we must begin to come to grips with what life will be like “when China rules the world.” Others maintain that the rise of China and decline of the United States could result in World War III. Fortunately, these predictions are much too dire. This chapter argues that a China led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is unlikely become the world’s leading state. Its autocratic model is not well suited to building a world-beating, innovation economy, to winning friends and allies around the world; or to constructing a lethal military force with global power-projection capabilities. China has a storied past, and it will likely always remain a great power, but it is unlikely to overtake the United States as the world’s leading state any time soon.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Callahan

This article examines how recent books by academics and public intellectuals are reshaping the discourse of the rise of China. While earlier trends argued that China was being socialized into the norms of international society, many texts now proclaim that due to its unique civilization, China will follow its own path to modernity. Such books thus look to the past—China's imperial history—for clues to not only China's future, but also the world's future. This discourse, which could be called “Sino-speak,” presents an essentialized Chinese civilization that is culturally determined to rule Asia, if not the world. The article notes that nuanced readings of China's historical relations with its East Asian neighbors provide a critical entry into a more sophisticated analysis of popular declarations of “Chinese exceptionalism.” But it concludes that this critical analysis is largely overwhelmed by the wave of Sino-speak.


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