China is an important player in global university ranking exercise. Nevertheless, existing studies have not adequately explored how the legitimacy of adopting university ranking outcomes has been chronologically established on Chinese soil. This paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap drawing on interviews with 37 stakeholders between 2003-2021…

This book explores the reforms sweeping China's educational sector. Traditionally dominated by rote learning, China's educational system has increasingly been criticized by the rising middle class for failing to foster creativity, for arbitrary placement of students, and for fostering regional inequities. Reforms to make Chinese education…

China has undergone unprecedented changes since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. Policy experimentation (PE) has been key in generating and catalysing reforms in the process. This study proposes a conceptual framework to describe the different pathways of PE-enabled reforms. Comparing two empirically informed case studies, this study…

Set against broader theoretical debates regarding the role of the developmental state in driving social and economic developments in Asia, particularly in higher education and research, the present article critically examines the synergies between government, enterprise and universities in China, in promoting innovation-centric entrepreneurship.…

This article is a condensed translation from Chinese of the original PhD thesis by Dr Mo Jingqi and illustrates how international accreditation was introduced in China during a time of rapid government structural change. The article is valuable from three perspectives: first, it provides a rare insight into the means for introducing change in the…

Using documentary data, we investigate the evolution of legal education in China from 1949 to 2012. During this period, legal education evolved from an illegitimate practice to a legitimate practice over three distinct periods of nullification, reconstruction, and rationalization. Textual data suggest that the legitimization of legal education has…

In 1932, with the help of the League of Nations, the Chinese government sent an educational mission consisting of five scholars to Europe, in order to investigate education in different countries as reference points for ongoing Chinese educational reform. This article argues that educators in the mission used foreign examples to support their…

This article explores the trajectory of educational changes in China over the past three decades in the context of globalization and social and economic transformation. It addresses three research questions: what educational changes occurred in China, why some educational policies worked well but others failed, how the political dynamics of…

Researchers in China have keenly explored how lifelong education and lifelong learning, as imports from "the West," may become localized in China, although a small chorus has also tried to revitalize Confucianism to bear on the field. This paper adds to this domain of discussion with a critical discourse analysis of Chinese lifelong…

This article examines how non-governmental organizations create resources and spaces for girls and women's education and empowerment in China, India and Pakistan--in the context of global expectations and local state relations as well as cultural norms. We examine the dynamics that foster female empowerment associated with educational attainment.…

This study explores how the government of mainland China values Chinese nationalism as a component of its historical memory and traces its relationship with music education from the twentieth century to the global age within broader social contexts. In a rapidly commercializing and modernizing China, nationalism remains the main driving force…

This study provides an examination into the formulation and construction of information and communication technology policy in China. It traces the rise of information technology and the "informatization" drive in China's political rhetoric, and identifies the changes and trajectory of information and communication technology in China's…

Huang Zongxi was an influential seventeenth century Chinese political and social theorist who is considered by many to be the inspiration and founding father of democracy and human rights in China. This article examines the many similarities in thought and social influence between Huang and his contemporary, the English philosopher John Locke.…

In the last few decades, in the wake of three major crises in political faith and the overall instability that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution, the post-Mao Chinese government has sought to improve the lives of its citizens and to restore political legitimacy through rapid economic growth that has focused almost exclusively on GDP.…

China has the largest aging population in the world today. Despite the Chinese tradition of filial piety, economic, social, cultural, and familial changes have made it increasingly difficult for older Chinese to receive support from adult children. To ensure parental support, the Family Support Agreement (FSA) emerged from a local community in the…