Economic globalization, politico‐cultural identity and university autonomy: the struggle of Tsinghua University in China

Abstract

A great deal of research has addressed the tension between economic globalization and local cultural identity, and the tension between convergence in global policy objectives and divergence in local practices, but research has not explored the impact of the complex interactions between these tensions on an individual university, especially in relation to university autonomy. This paper attempts to bridge this gap. Based on a case study of Tsinghua University in China, this paper explores the university's role in three interrelated processes: the incorporation of international experience into higher education, in order to respond to economic globalization; the reinforcement of political education, as a means of preserving the state‐prescribed cultural identity; and the quest for autonomy, to facilitate the university's move towards world‐class status. Tensions raised by the interaction of these processes will also be discussed. This paper concludes by applying the concept of ‘glocalization’—i.e., ‘thinking and acting both globally and locally’—as a means of understanding the complex interrelations of global, national, and local factors that inform the translation of global imperatives into local realities in the context of Tsinghua.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the writer's Ph.D. thesis, submitted to The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Education in December 2003. She expresses her gratitude to Dr Wing‐Wah Law for his helpful comments and advice on earlier drafts of this article. She also thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments. However, the writer alone is responsible for any mistakes in it.

Notes

1. The ‘Boxer Indemnity’ was the indemnity that the Qing Government of China was forced to pay to the US as compensation for lives lost in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In December 1908, as a result of negotiations between the Qing and US Governments, the US decided to refund the Boxer Indemnity (valued at US$10,785,286 plus interest) to China. The US Government required that the Qing Government use the refunded Boxer Indemnity to establish educational institutes and to send students to study in America, stipulating that there was to be ‘no alternative use [of the funds] except for education’ (Compilation Group of Tsinghua History, 1981, p. 4). As a result, the Qing Government decided to donate one of the royal gardens, Tsinghua Garden, and set up the Tsinghua Imperial College, a preparatory school to train candidates selected to be sent to the US. See, for further information, US Congress (1908) and Compilation Group of Tsinghua History (1981).