Disciplinary Power Matters: Rethinking Governmentality and Policy Enactment Studies in China

ABSTRACT

Besides Foucault’s own focus on liberal contexts, the relatively limited application of his thoughts in illiberal countries may also result from the misunderstanding of power. The traditional juridico-discursive model interprets power as a possession wielded by one group over others, merely functioning as something forbidden. Thus, policy analysts risk falling into the trap of ‘naive optimism or pessimism’ – by overemphasizing either the secondary adjustment or strict sovereign control. Returning to Foucault’s observation of the ‘sovereignty–discipline–government society’ triangle, this study examines how discipline establishes the linkage between sovereign will and self-government in both (neo)liberal and illiberal nations, aiming to: first, theoretically clarify how modern forms of power in different political systems overlap and co-operate with each other, thus justifying the expansion of Foucault’s ideas into illiberal contexts; second, demonstrate the interpenetration of agency and constraints through empirical exploration of Chinese transnational higher education policy enactment, and by so doing to avoid the centralization circle or policy experimentation hypothesis framework; third, highlight the importance of discipline in realizing the ‘tricky combination’ of totalization and individualization through producing capable subjects for authoritarian objective in modern societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Discipline
• Foucault
• power
• governmentality
• policy enactment

Introduction

The traditional juridico-discursive model underpinning Marxist and (neo)liberal theories (Sawicki 1991) often reduces power to domination, taking it as a struggle between authority and individuals (Wright 2012) or a possession held by one group over others (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983): power is believed to function in a thoroughly negative manner by producing nothing but ‘limit and lack’, operating ‘according to the simple and endlessly reproduced mechanisms of law, taboo, and censorship’ (Foucault 1981, 82–84), and commanding complete obedience. This interpretation of power and freedom, agency and constraint as they are playing a ‘zero-sum’ game (Ball 2006, 48) has caused severe theoretical puzzles, such as ‘naive optimism and pessimism’ in policy analysis. Specifically, believing that power could be devolved into lower levels, scholars tend to either exclusively concentrate on the ‘secondary adjustments’ which obscure the discursive limitations for policy enactment or overemphasize the powerlessness of policy practitioners (ibid, 19). Such analysis prevails both in authoritarian¹ and (neo)liberal contexts.

In illiberal nations, such as China, policy studies have been framed in the endless circle of centralization–decentralization–recentralization or the policy experimentation hypothesis.² However, these conceptualizations have caused more confusion than clarity. For instance, when trying to explicate China’s economic miracle (Blanchard and Shleifer 2001), scholars from the decentralization perspective emphasize that the increasing autonomy granted to the local governments buffers the incursion from central authority, stimulates experimentation, mutual learning, and adaptation at the sub-national level, and facilitates economic development (Montinola, Qian, and Weingast 1995; Cai and Treisman 2006). The active involvement of local officials during the reform era in establishing infrastructures, supporting businesses, and introducing foreign investments (Qian and Roland 1998; Li and Zhou 2005) warrants crediting them as the ‘helping hands’ (Jin, Qian, and Weingast 2005). In contrast, the advocates of centralization highlight the function of strict control in directing innovation and creativity and reward the economic growth to the superior status of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over sub-national authorities (Edin 2003; Landry 2008).

Here, the theoretical exploration and empirical data on Chinese policy enactment studies present considerable gaps: if power could be divided into lower levels, according to the budget-maximizing bureaucracy model, sub-national officials have no incentives to increase efficiency and promote innovation because they are not driven by the market logic – their income, prestige, and position have weak links with profit-making activities (Niskanen 1971). In this sense, local officials’ rent-seeking behavior characterized by ‘grabbing hands’ common in other transitional nations, sounds more reasonable (Tsui and Wang 2004). Alternatively, if power could be taken back by deciding the duration and extent to which local officials could hold power, these officials should mechanically implement national policies sticking to the central requirements (Li 1998). However, in reality, Chinese sub-national authorities have long been observed to block the upward flow of information and cushion themselves from the effects of central commands even during the so-called re-centralization period (Kennedy and Chen 2018; Han 2019; Tian and Tsai 2020). As per a well-known saying among the Chinese local officials, ‘they (the center) have their policies, and we have our countermeasures’. Localities have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to ‘frustrate the policies of the upper-level authorities’ (Lieberthal and Lampton 1992, 11). Despite their merits for highlighting either the local creativity or the national plan during the policy enactment process, these two branches of scholarship have been invariably trapped by the meaningless binary of agency and constraints (Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006).

The same mistake as freeing agency from power relationships also happens in studies on (neo)liberal contexts. Specifically, the maxim of liberal nations as avoiding ‘govern[ing] too much’ (Foucault 1997, 74), illustrated by phrases such as ‘giving power back to teachers’ (Conservative Party 2008) or ‘devolved environment’ (OECD 1995, 74), does not preclude the existence of authoritarian control (Hindess 2001; Dean 2002). Instead, liberal governmentality functions to re-position, rather than abandon the tenet of sovereignty. Attempting to discipline citizens according to new objectives (Tikly 2003), liberalism develops the ‘elements constitutive of individuals’ lives in such a way that their development also fosters the strength of the state’ (Foucault 2000, 322). Further, neoliberalism, the latest incarnation of liberal thought, is more tactical in shaping manipulatable citizens who can be governed from a distance (Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). Under the guise of emancipating individuals from rigid state control, the empowerment fantasy conceals people’s subordination to neoliberal logic, drawing them to ‘the exact opposite of the fantasmatic picture it projects’ (Wright 2012, 292). While ‘the end goals of freedom, choice, consumer sovereignty, competition and individual initiative’ are decided by the state all along (Olssen 2003, 200), (neo)liberal nations has in fact entailed ‘the establishment of limitations, controls, forms of coercion, and obligations’ (Foucault 2008, 64).

It is against such misinterpretation that Foucault’s concept of power becomes crucial in analyzing ‘the changing relationships between constraint and agency and their interpenetration’ (Ball 2006, 48; original emphasis). From his prism, power³ is neither solely prohibitive nor does it stand over or against freedom (Ball 2012, 30). ‘Power relations are possible only insofar as the subjects are free. If one of them were completely at the other’s disposal and became his thing, an object on which he could wreak boundless and limitless violence, there would not be any relations of power’ (Foucault 1997, 292). In this sense, state power does not act as a limitation and neither do individuals act freely because of state’s relinquishing of control (Wright 2012). Compared to simple repression, power now is much more creative and productive: ‘lot of the time it “makes us up” rather than grinds us down’ (Ball 2012, 30). Foucault thus coined the term ‘governmentality’, to critique the common conception of power, and analyze the strategies/techniques/procedures through which power guides and controls people’s conduct (Foucault 1997, 88) in more invisible and strategic ways.

Specifically, the concept of governmentality describes ‘the encounter between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self’ (Foucault 1997, 225), covering both the macro- and micro-level of government: the political rationality of the state (such as authoritarianism and (neo)liberalism) and the construction of its subjects (Olssen 2003, 29). Or in other words, this term concerns how the nation with different governing rationality politically co-ordinates and wields various forms of power to conduct the individuals’ conduct: shaping their behaviors, desires and aspirations (Gordon 1991, 2). This is the axiomatic basis for Ball’s significant contribution to policy studies: his conceptualization of policy as both text and discourse. According to Ball (2006, 2015), policy discourse produces what can be said and thought, setting constraints for the interpretation and translation of policy document when it is read as a text. In this sense, policy practitioners’ ‘freedom’ in taking up various subject positions constructed by discourses is not only confined by but also ends up intensifying the existing power relationships (Perryman et al. 2017).

While the different rationalities of government result in the shift of power in dominance in different political systems, there is no linear shift of dominant power from sovereignty to discipline and to government (‘not the institution “government” … but the activity that consists in governing human behavior in the framework of, and by means of, state institutions’, Foucault 1997, 74) but a triangle of ‘sovereignty–discipline–government’ in modern society (Foucault 2000, 219). Seen from this prism, the difference between authoritarian and (neo)liberal rationality actually stems from ‘different elements of sovereignty’ and the ways in which these governments accentuate and articulate them (Dean 2010, 173), rather than whether freedom exists/power devolution happens/self-government appears.

Echoing Dean’s (2010) appeal ‘to open up the extensive discussion of authoritarian and non-liberal governmentality’ (170), this study expands the application of Foucault’s thoughts to analyze transnational higher education (TNHE) policy enactment in authoritarian China by highlighting the crucial role of disciplinary power in linking the sovereign will to individuals’ self-government. Specifically, it begins with a theoretical clarification of how power – of the sovereign, discipline, and government – overlap and collaborate with each other in both liberal and illiberal contexts, to warrant the introduction of Foucault’s work to authoritarian contexts. Subsequently, an empirical analysis illustrates how Chinese policy practitioners (local officials as meso-level actors; Han 2019) demonstrate their agency in strategically enacting national documents within the politically discursive confinements, to avoid the centralization circle and the policy experimentation hypothesis. The paper ends with a theoretical reflection regarding the dangers of contrasting power and freedom, agency and constraint, without considering how they are ‘implicit in’ (Ball 2006, 44) each other, and the importance of disciplinary power in realizing the government of ‘each and all’ (Dean 2010, 28) in modern societies through cultivating capable individuals for authoritarian ends.

Rethinking (Neo)liberalism and authoritarianism from the prism of Foucault

Foucault adopts a distinctive route in analyzing (neo)liberalism from the perspective of governmental reasoning. Rather than ‘a theory or an ideology’ (Foucault 1997, 73–74), he considered it as a particular and rationally reflective manner to make the activities of government both thinkable and practicable. Specifically, while sovereignty rules through laws and taboos to realize its circular ends as ‘internal to itself’ (Foucault 1991, 95), the 18^th century European states became increasingly earthly, following invisible natural norms to guarantee national security and stabilizing the link between the rulers and the ruled for legitimacy (Foucault 1991). Catering to a gradually individualized and fragmented world, these states re-conceptualized political responsibility, ruled through innovative technologies consistent with the logic of new sciences such as political economy, and managed populations according to their internal regularities and features. Breaking with the regulative principle of ‘hold[ing] out’ (Foucault 2000, 316) – reinforcing the power of the prince using his own strategies (Gillies 2008) – liberalism rationalizes itself in following the rule of economy maximum (Foucault 1997).

It is always easier to comprehend power as exercises through coercive and constraining than consent; consider its function as imposition or exploitation rather than the penetration of individuals’ consciousness (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 66). Theoretical misinterpretations therefore become inevitable sometimes. This may partially explain why liberty in classical liberalism is prone to be overstated, as a criticism of and strict antonym to authoritarian rule. In liberal thought, the concept of society as a natural order questions the state’s ability to act as it desires (Gordon 1991, 15). For instance, to criticize the excessive government in the name of individual rights and liberties, Mill (1998) argues the only purpose for power to exercise over any member of a civilized community, if against his own will, is to prevent him from harming others. Similar to the theory of invisible hand (Smith 2000), such claims stem from the belief that individuals’ pursuit of their own ends can naturally lead to the harmony and prosperity of the whole society (Hobbes 1992). The state cannot override individuals’ right of rational-free conduct without destroying the basis of the benefits it seeks to provide (Burchell 1991).

The aforementioned issues constitute the “liberal fictions of postulated metaphysical substances … associated with the pre-social conception of the individual’ (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 32). While Foucault does not envisage an all-encompassing state in subsuming the sphere of civil society (in fact, he clearly mentions the obvious distinction between state and society in Foucault 1997, 74–75), he does not imply liberalism to mean governing less. Rather, Foucault states that disciplinary techniques such as examinations, exercises, practices, punishments, and rewards, enable power to reach ‘the very grain of individuals’ (Foucault 1980, 39), thereby solving the ‘essential incompatibility between the non-totalizable multiplicity of economic subjects of interest and the totalizing unity of the juridical sovereign’ (Foucault 2008, 282). Through inscribing new lines of hierarchy, authority, obligation, and exception within the seemingly inclusive societies (Dean 2007), liberalism represents the re-inscription of rule in a more cautious, delicate, economic, and modest manner (Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996; Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004).

The shift in governmental rationality from classical liberalism to neoliberalism⁴ alerts the ‘possibilities of slothful indolence’ and market failures, which necessitate ‘new forms of vigilance, surveillance, performance appraisal and control’ (Olssen 2003, 200). Such a transition is achieved by extending market rationality to the social sphere. Specifically, in the name of freedom and liberty, neoliberalism establishes certain values and presuppositions by which the states aim to conduct the conduct of the governed (Rose 1999). The individual’s position as a subject has changed from ‘homo economicus’ – who behave out of self-interest by being relatively detached from the state (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 137) to the ‘manipulatable man’ – who are willing to take full responsibilities for themselves (Olssen 2003, 200). Individuals are taught that freedom is derived from skills, talents, and capacities (Gordon 1991) and can only be gained by becoming entrepreneurs themselves. This is the artificial form of freedom (Burchell 1996) acting in a coercive manner, through which the neoliberal rationality works in ‘multiple, diffusive, facilitative and empowering’, but simultaneously ‘disciplinary, stringent and punitive’ ways (Dean 2010, 200).

Thus, either in classical liberal and neoliberal societies, the concept of freedom has less to do with emancipation but only appears as an artifact (Hayek 1979) – the ‘virtuous, disciplined, and responsible autonomy’ (Dean 2010, 182). Accompanying this transformation of state control from ‘explicitly overt forms or “oppression”’ to ‘more covert forms’ through imbuing individuals’ own desires for active self-regulation and development (Webb 2011, 738), is the shift of power in dominance from sovereignty to discipline and government. However, Foucault has cautioned ‘what occurred was not a replacement but, rather, a shift of accent and the appearance of new objectives, and hence of new problems and new techniques’ (Foucault 1997, 67); no ‘replacement of a society of sovereignty by a disciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a disciplinary society by a society of government. In reality, one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government’ society (Foucault 2000, 219). Government, as the ‘contact point, where the individuals driven by others are tied to the way they conduct themselves … [and] where the techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion’ (Foucault and Blasius 1993, 203), stresses the authoritarian element ‘in [neo-]liberal forms of rule’ (Dean 2010, 173): the population is re-conceptualized as ‘independent of … [but under] the intervention of government’ (Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006, 87).

Such overlapping and collaboration among various forms of power have also been witnessed in authoritarian nations. In some sense, China’s 1978 economic reform shares similarities with Foucault’s observation about the transition from ‘republican’ to ‘individualist’ nations in 18^th century Europe: ‘on the one hand, the states exercise power through the totalizing legal-political forms of its unity, and on the other, its exercise of an individualizing form of power through a “pastoral” government concerned with the concrete lives and conduct of individuals’ (Foucault 1988, 67). China’s changing focus from the repressive features to the productive aspects of power (Webb 2011, 738) could be best illustrated by its national policies. As the ‘direct, naked expression of state rationality’ (Doherty 2007, 199), policy documents clearly reveal China’s ambition in producing ‘proactive and creative’ policy practitioners (State Council 2016). Specifically in TNHE regulations, local officials are required to ‘settle the unanticipated problems, improve the relative regulations … promote the competitiveness of the Chinese higher education system through the development of TNHE’ (Ministry of Education (MOE), 2006).

It deserves re-emphasis again here that while Chinese local officials face a field of possible ‘ways of behaving, several reactions, and diverse comportments’ for accelerating regional development,⁵ such ‘possibility of recalcitrance’ (Foucault 1983, 221) should not be equated to decentralization.⁶ In other words, policy actors’ discretion to adopt local, situation-specific practices for innovation and creativity (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012) is not in a trade-off with the constraints they face as policy subjects. China’s intent to take over the ‘total administration of life’ and ‘enforce the common obligations of citizenship … replicate the conditions of obligation that already exist in society’ (Dean 2002, 42, 39), is clear in its repeated emphasis on ‘increasing the sensibility of politics to protect Chinese education sovereignty’ (MOE 2006) and ‘consolidating Party building in transnational education’ (MOE 2018).

Authoritarianism is featured by its more intensive and generalized use of sovereign instruments (Dean 2010, 266). Specifically in China, its political systems do not distinguish between politicians and career civil servants: the Chinese politicians are not elected (Li and Gore 2018) but are appointed by higher authorities. Diamond (2002) calls such systems as ‘closed political regimes’ (26) in which all positions of political influence are controlled by the ruling party. To ensure the CCP’s ruling status (Dickson, Shen, and Yan 2017) during policy enactment, the state entails the membership of the Party as the necessary premise for the selection of policy practitioners. Dickson (2014) thus states, ‘the CCP wants any position of authority to be held by people it trusts and over whom it has some degree of scrutiny and control’ (51).⁷

This ultimate political power render scholars to label Chinese people’s autonomous options as ‘micro-freedoms’ (Ong and Zhang 2008, 11). In this sense, while (neo)liberal and illiberal nations observe the similar deployment of persistent sovereign will, they vary in the accents and objectives (Foucault 1997, 67). Discipline, as the channel to both ‘increases the forces of the body [productive] … and diminishes these same forces [repressive]’ (Foucault 1985, 138), becomes crucial during this process. It is through the ‘disciplinary technology of individual dressage’ (Stoler 1995, 82) that authoritarian will successfully penetrate into the self auto-control. Specifically, by differentiation, categorization, exclusion and hierarchization/identification, disciplinary power places the managed population under normalization and surveillance (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004). While the individuals have been broken down ‘into components such that they can be seen … and modified’ (Foucault 2009, 56), disciplinary institutions such as hospitals, schools, prisons, and universities further impose ‘a morality that will prevail from within upon those who were strangers to it in a universal form’ (Foucault 2001, 246), exerting power over and through individuals’ bodies, capacities and minds (Foucault 1985). The status of the state as the ‘contractor, performance monitor, benchmarker and target-setter’ (Ball and Junemann 2012, 133) during this disciplinary process ensures the realization of its sovereign control, although in more invisible ways.

Disciplinary power matters: techniques, criteria, and objectives in the context of China

The key element of contemporary government is the ‘emergence of a range of rationalities and techniques that seek to govern without governing society, to govern through regulated choices made by discrete and autonomous actors’ (Rose 1996, 328). While permitting individuals the opportunity for self-administration (Schee 2009), the ‘possible field of action’ is structured by the state (Foucault 1983, 221). As Dean cautions, the study of governmentality should pay due attention to the re-inscription of sovereign power into self-government (Dean 2010, 29) through various disciplinary mechanisms. One notable instance is how the disciplinary technology – performativity, employed both by (neo)liberal and illiberal states to re-code exploitation and domination in modern society (Lemke 2002).

Ball (2003) defines performativity as a new mode of regulation that employs ‘judgements, comparisons, and displays as a means of incentive, control, attrition, and change based on rewards and sanctions (both material and symbolic)’ to make individuals/organizations calculable (Ball 2012). By reducing complicated social processes into numerical categories, it introduces data monitoring systems as a new ‘form of indirect steering’ that replaces the traditional ‘invention and prescription’ (Ball 2006, 71). It engineers individuals’ souls and problematizes the self-discipline of those who are not ‘governable, industrious, and responsible’ (Kipnis 2008, 279), inducing people to organize themselves according to the pre-set targets, indicators, and criteria (Ball 2003). Through such technology, sovereign power conceals its authoritarian control and domination in the guise of shaping individuals’ conduct without ‘shattering their formally autonomous character’ (Miller and Rose 2008, 39).

Neoliberal discipline: extending market logic to all spheres

‘[By] making the market, competition … [as] the formative power of society’ (Foucault 2008, 148), (neo)liberalism moulds the ‘totality of human behavior’ (Tikly 2003, 163) with the ‘rule of maximum economy’ (Foucault 1997, 74). In so doing, its disciplinary systems have been outsourced to “systems of enterprise’ (Ball 2012, 136) to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness. The inscription of ‘activism and responsibility’ (Rose and Novas 2004, 402–403) into people’s mind shapes them to become capable, adaptable, and ‘responsible for what they do and for what happens to them’ (Foucault 1997, 67).

The extension of the market rationale to areas that are not ‘exclusively or … primarily economic’ (Foucault 1997, 79) also happens in China. The changing subject position from ‘passive object of administrative intervention’ (Sigley 2009, 538) to self-regulated citizen featured by responsibility, creativity and enterprising spirit (Jeffreys and Sigley 2011; Hoffman 2014) has been achieved by China’s application of neoliberal tactics and strategies over simple imposed laws (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 25). Or more precisely, against the backdrop of globalization, the expansion of neoliberal hegemony worldwide (Wright 2012) and the unleashing of governmentality on an international scale (Gupta 1998) benefit China in borrowing neoliberal techniques and standards to cultivate the desirable subjects (Palmer and Winiger 2019).

Specifically for this study, the state initiates the inter-governmental competition (Zhou 2007) to save itself from day-to-day evaluation of results (Heberer and Trappel 2013) and create the ‘social fabric’ to produce capable policy practitioners with the ‘form of the enterprise’ (Foucault 2008, 148). This political contest encourages competition among sub-national officials at similar levels to adopt the best possible strategies to meet the pre-setting standards. Objectifying ‘those who are subjected’ and keeping them in their subjection through the principle of compulsory visibility (Foucault 1985, 187), such contest functions to match local officials’ capability with their positions (Nathan 2003; Li and Gore 2018), and is thus credited for sharing certain features of meritocratic administrative system⁸ (Young 1958; Matei and Popa 2010), as a good example to demonstrate the imposed relation of docility-productivity by discipline (Foucault 1985, 137) in illiberal contexts.

This changing focus from exerting law or regulation over people’s bodies for obedience to developing individuals’ capacity for auto-control (Edwards 2002; Ball 2012) has further intensified the existing power relationships in China. Specifically, while encouraged to demonstrate great efficiency, creativity and responsibility as policy entrepreneurs⁹ (Teets 2015; Hammond 2013) during the enactment process (Lü and Landry 2014; Jia, Kudamatsu, and Seim 2015; Ratigan 2017; Tian and Tsai 2020), the local officials’ agentic responses have been strictly confined by (Linda and Painter 2016; Han 2019 regarding education; He 2018 regarding health care; Shin 2017 regarding environment protection; Ratigan 2017 regarding welfare reform, to name only a few), and consolidate the discursive possibilities. As studies in political science find, the production of enterprising individuals or the improvement of living standards are more a method than the objective of the Chinese government: when the CCP’s ideological commitment to orthodox socialism (Guo 2009) or its circular authoritarian ends is unable to ensure its ruling legitimacy, national prosperity and strength have been adopted as tools for generating/maintaining popular support (Nathan 2003). For instance, arguing that ‘to protect the CCP’s authority and enforcing the CCP’s rules are the basis for national interests’ (The CCP Central Committee 2016), the CCP has actively promoted political education in China (Kipnis 2011) to orient its population toward certain truths and ends (Ball 2012, 138). Individuals are cultivated to take pride in recent national accomplishments, and attribute them to the ruling party (Kennedy 2009). Seen from this prism, the improvement in authoritarian subjects’ capacity for action is clearly subordinate (and contribute) to the expectation of obedience (Dean 2010, 266) in authoritarian China.

Authoritarian objective: political obedience

China’s (re-)inscription of sovereign power (Dean 2010, 29) is based on its control over the personnel system, which sets the foundation for intergovernmental competition¹⁰ by determining local officials’ ‘appointment, promotion, and demotion (or more severe punishments, such as imprisonment for serious violations of the rules)’ (Xu 2011, 1093), and tightly connects the privilege and status with political positions. The obstacles local officials encounter when seeking careers outside the political system (Li and Zhou 2005) make them competitive to achieve career advancement, or at least prevent the loss of current status (Li and Gore 2018). In other words, this nomenklatura-style system ensures the creative, enterprising and responsible subjects to be produced not only for efficiency and competitiveness improvement but to obey every whim and dictate of the sovereign (Kipnis 2011, 291).

Specifically, Chinese local officials face a large spectrum of indicators for evaluating their performance, which can be classified into three categories (similar to the classification in neoliberal societies such as ‘mandated’, ‘strongly recommended’ and ‘merely suggested’, Wallace 1991): ‘hard’ – which must be fulfilled; ‘soft’ – which should be considered when resources are available; and ‘periodical priority tasks’ – which the nature of hard and soft tasks could be changed in a given period (Ong 2012). Unlike the relatively consistent matching between its disciplinary standards with political objectives (Dean 2010, 258–259) in neoliberal rationality, the performance indicators in China are ‘vague, one-sided, inconsistent’,¹¹ and ever-changing: the CCP could always add new indicators, cancel existing ones, or change the weight assigned to each index (Heberer and Trappel 2013, 1056). Political loyalty and conformity to the ruling Party thus appear as the most crucial criteria¹² in Chinese local officials’ performance evaluation, and the disobedience at the sub-national level can only occur when some negative outcomes in certain policy fields may not affect the possibility of local officials’ opportunity for future promotion (Heberer and Trappel 2013).

Disciplinary system shapes, sculpts, mobilizes and works ‘through the choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles’ of individuals (Dean 2010, 20), positioning them in such a manner that they are ‘subject by and subject to discursive relations’ (Youdell 2006, 42). Whenever a task has been labelled as hard, the local officials have little possibility of countering the central government’s ideas (Jian and Mols 2019) but to fulfill the requirement somehow. Zhou (2001) thus argues that the absolute loyalty to CCP has always been ‘the single most important criteria, often at the expense of competence and efficiency’ (1038). In this way, China enables itself to conduct unlimited regulation (Tikly 2003) and intrude into every aspect of individual life (Lim 2016).

This is against such a background that the term academic freedom requires re-articulation. As MacIntyre (1981) cautions, efficiency is far from a politically neutral concept but is ‘inseparable from a mode of existence in which the contrivance of means is in central part the manipulation of human beings into compliant patterns of behavior’ (71), so does the concept of freedom. While the Vice Chancellor of New York University, Shanghai states that ‘[this] flagship branch campus in Shanghai would have to be closed if principles of academic freedom are not honored’ (Sharma 2015), the policy practitioners also have to ensure TNHE ‘composes itself as one part of the Chinese education system’ (State Council 2003). Here, academic autonomy is presented simultaneously within the ‘silent, absent force of coercion under the guise of accountability’ (Hatcher 2012, 30) and as a discursive-shaping loyalty to the CCP (MOE 2018). The following section empirically demonstrates how Chinese local officials responsible for supervising and regulating TNHE in their jurisdictions, creatively re-contextualize national policies (Braun, Maguire, and Ball 2010) to balance the multiple demands (Ball 1997) – the neoliberal criteria and political objective.

Enacting transnational higher education policies in China

Since the early 1990s, TNHE – defined as ‘all types of higher education study where the learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based’ (UNESCO and Council of Europe 2001) – offers students the opportunities to pursue international education without leaving home. In China, the number of TNHE activities increases rapidly from 2 in 1995 (Huang 2010) to 1,314 in 2021 (MOE 2021a). The Chinese government has offered multifarious explanations for its enthusiasm for introducing TNHE: curbing the brain drain (China is the top-source country with 1,061,511 mobile students in 2019, UNESCO 2021; ranked 32 out of 63 countries in the brain drain index; IMD 2019), improving the competitiveness of the Chinese HE system (MOE 2006), and promoting education quality (MOE 2010). However, to protect educational sovereignty (MOE 2006), the state labels TNHE as Sino-foreign cooperation, thereby confining the cooperation between overseas educational providers and Chinese partners. In other words, unlike in other parts of the world, Chinese policies prevent foreign universities from establishing ‘branch campus’ (Huang 2007, 428), but make transnational cooperated institutions as the ‘independent universities’ based in China.

China formulates three forms of Sino-foreign cooperation concerning education: programs, secondary/subordinate colleges, and universities. Of these, this study specifically focuses on the third form, as the legal status of cooperation universities offers the maximum possible protection against the influence of Chinese partner universities and thus represents a better example for investigating local policy enactment.¹³ The data reported here are mainly drawn from in-depth interviews conducted from 2014 to 2020. Respondents were first recruited from a personal network, after which more interviewees were included through a snowball strategy. In total, one MOE official, eight officials from three provincial education departments, 19 administrative/academic staff (presidents and deans), and 27 student representatives from three selected Sino-foreign cooperation universities¹⁴ participated in the interviews. Consent was obtained via email or orally before the face-to-face or telephonic interviews, which lasted 40–60 minutes each. Most respondents were re-contacted three or four times, especially when new national policy issues promulgated that required examination. Data from interviews were supplemented by documents including policy texts, official websites of the central and local governments, media articles, university enrollment guides, and websites of both foreign and Chinese partners. The analysis concentrates on the deviation between central demands and local enactment, as ‘the “place” where power is enacted and … where it is resisted’ (Mills 2003, 35).

Satisfying students’ expectation

The classification of HE as ‘an international service industry to be regulated through the marketplace and through international trade agreements’ by various organizations, including the General Agreement on Trade in Services, the European Union, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative (Bassett 2006, 4) reflects a shift in TNHE’s rationale from aid to trade (Smart and Ang 1993). In the emerging global education industry (Mazzarol and Soutar 2002), developed countries become the sellers, whereas the developing nations appear as buying partners (Altbach and Knight 2007), such as China. Although the Chinese government claims TNHE should serve public welfare (State Council 2003), it permits profit-making from such activities (MOE 2004). This has caused the formation of a quasi-market with Chinese characteristics in which the market and local governments¹⁵ collaborate to provide TNHE, while its distribution and governance are largely based on market principles.¹⁶

The market feature of TNHE, considering Ball’s statement that to pursue any level of market-defined relevance (Falk 1999), the individuals must become ‘self-maximizing productive’ units (Ball 2012, 141), is obvious, especially when the students express that they take the expensive tuition fee (up to 50 times of Chinese public universities’ charge) as investments toward their future postgraduate studies or to gain the expected rewards from the labor market. Considering the positional advantages offered by Sino-foreign cooperation universities mainly come from the elite degrees granted by the foreign partners (Marginson 2006), students inevitably prefer the original transplantation of educational resources, including the quality assurance mechanisms. An interviewee states:

From my personal experience, my university’s education quality complies with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. After communicating with international students, I know that the teaching content and examination requirements are the same as those of other European countries. The parent university randomly selects examination papers to double check [the difficulty level and rating criteria], so the professors must ensure the quality.

(Student B7 2016)

The students’ confidence in the imported educational resources is rooted in the salience of market discipline, which creates the awareness of global competition and constrains every participant to comply with international standards (Hoogvelt 1997). ‘As a top-tier university, the foreign partner cherishes its prestige and will deliver quality education in our campus’ (Student A4 2016). Thus, the operation of Sino-foreign cooperation universities is considered more transparent than other Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs). As another student poignantly argues, ‘there is no personal relationship here to help you get better scores in the examinations … Even if you approached the professors in private, they would only answer your questions. The common situation in other Chinese universities, such as teachers pointing out the key information in test papers, has and will never happen(ed) in my university’ (Student C2 2016).

Such positive attitude toward foreign collaborators’ quality assurance are held not only by students but also by administrative/academic staff, most of whom consider the Chinese supervision or evaluation as yielding disappointing results and failing to improve either teaching or research quality. Faculty members state that they are forced to be involved in numerous political activities with little contribution to the students’ competitive advantage improvement. For instance, the recent Subject Evaluation Plan (MOE 2021b) places the innovation and effectiveness of delivering political education as the primary evaluation standard, which has been quantified as the number of Party meetings, political activities, and publications.

Additionally, administrative/academic staff argue that Chinese universities always fabricate data and materials for inspection (Dean of Faculty from University C 2014) and believe that evading national quality evaluation could save time and energy for them to focus on teaching and research. Such a response may explain why the Plan for TNHE Evaluation (MOE 2009), which attempts to subsume Sino-foreign cooperation universities into the national assessment system, has never been taken seriously in the sampled universities. One respondent clearly stated, ‘we have no information about this evaluation. There are no documents that provide us with a national evaluation framework. Quality assurance adheres to the requirements of our overseas parent university’ (Faculty Dean from University C 2014). This is the situation that some policy texts are “never ever read first hand’ (Ball 2006, 45).

The condition ‘that NYU would be NYU’ as stated by Professor Lehman (Sharma 2015) relies heavily on the sub-national officials’ belief in the market mechanism. As stated by an interviewee, local governments end up acting as protectors of ‘academic freedom’, at least in a limited sense: ‘we believe the cooperation universities are obliged to perform better, because their daily operations, and even survival mainly depend on tuition fees, the number of students they could attract. Thus, although the MOE requires Sino-foreign cooperation universities to take the national evaluation, in our province, they need not do so if they apply for permission’ (Deputy Director from X Provincial Government 2015, 2017).

A similar situation occurs in the adoption of official teaching languages in Sino-foreign cooperation universities. While the central government demands all TNHE activities to employ Mandarin as the main teaching language (State Council 2003), this stipulation has never been implemented: all the reports, enrollment guides, and universities’ official websites highlight that English is the major or even sole teaching language. The students state that the English environment and its advantages in improving their competence are the essential motivation for them to choose TNHE, and the foreign faculty members candidly express that they have never been told or required to follow this ‘impractical’ policy (Academic staff A3 2017). While MOE commands the courses introduced and delivered by foreign academic staff to occupy no less than one-third of the entire curriculum (MOE 2006), the internal conflict within the policies is lucid: if the central government’s objective for promoting TNHE is to import high-quality educational resources and satisfy the increasing demand of Chinese citizens, the original teaching materials and the prestigious faculty should be the highlight of such cooperation. It is irrational to require the faculty, especially those from overseas, to teach in Mandarin when using English materials. And if, the students’ tuition fees are financially crucial for TNHE’s survival, offering lectures in English is pivotal in meeting the customers’ expectation. Consequently, local officials demonstrate clear resistance during policy enactment. For instance, Jiangsu province, the pioneer in introducing and supporting TNHE, released the Advice on Promoting TNHE in 2008, publicly permitting all courses, except some special ones such as Chinese culture, to adopt English as the official teaching language (Department of Education in Jiangsu 2008).

Again, such local resistance does not support the traditional decentralization or policy experimentation hypotheses. As Foucault clearly states, ‘resistance is never in a position of exteriority to power’ (1981, 12). The seemingly ‘autonomous’ enactment ‘involves less a retreat from governmental “intervention” than a re-inscription of the techniques and forms of expertise required for the exercise of government’ (Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996, 14). The local officials’ strategic choice of fulfilling certain evaluation indicators and neglecting others serves not only to satisfy the requirements of student customers and foreign partners but also, and most importantly, to maximize their future returns in meeting the central requirements such as promoting TNHE for China’s benefit. Far from genuine innovative management (Hartley 2007), their enactment of national policies could be at best described as ‘creative compliance’ (Elliott 2001, 202), as the following part concerning political loyalty further illustrates.

Keeping political obedience

As sites for operationalizing disciplinary power, all Chinese educational institutions are required to offer ‘political education courses’ including the ‘Introduction to the Principle of Marxism’, the ‘Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Important Thoughts of Three Representatives’, the ‘Ideological and Moral Culture and Legal Basis’, and ‘The Outline of Modern Chinese History’. Sino-foreign cooperation universities are no exception in this regard (State Council 2003). Expressing the aversion to these compulsory courses, one interviewee clearly states that ‘the numerous political courses explained why I did not consider studying in Chinese universities’ (Student B4 2016). Other students share the same perspective, taking the different course-delivery methods in Sino-foreign cooperation universities as another motivating factor for choosing TNHE. A respondent from University A notes:

We also have to take the political courses. However, our university combined their content to develop a new course, which aimed to offer us a broader scope … The professor taught the Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping thoughts from a more critical perspective … we could compare Chinese political system with systems worldwide. I believe that such an approach would help us become “world citizens”.

(Student B1 2016)

The administrative staff confirms that the university could modify the content of these compulsory courses. The local governments responsible for inspection do not demand strict adherence to the central requirements as long as the courses exist in the syllabus. An interviewee from University A states:

We have our own ways of teaching this kind of courses, providing students a comprehensive introduction of Chinese political, economic, and social contexts. We take this approach as a practical way of inspiring students to think critically and evaluate modern Chinese history and politics.

(President from University A 2014)

This relatively loose regulation presents an intriguing example to demonstrate how resistance, like power, is ‘manifold and operates at a multiplicity of points in different forms’ (Ball 2012, 32). However, when the central government updates its evaluation indicators of local officials (The Party Branch of MOE 2017), to include the efficiency of supervision over the political education course delivery, the situation appears to have changed. One interviewee from University A states: ‘the University revises the syllabus of political education and will gradually increase its credits, and adjust the content to follow other Chinese HEIs’ (Academic staff A2 2020).

As the ultimate end of Chinese state power, political loyalty represents a persistent ‘discursive intervention’ (Yeatman 1990, 160) on local policy enactment, regardless of whether clear requirement exists. This is the situation that disciplinary system not only divides the individual from others but also operates internally within himself. The ‘process objectivizes him’ (Foucault 1983, 208) makes individuals internalize discourses and practices guiding their self-management (Courtois 2020). For instance, in the selected universities, although China implements strict Internet control, interviewees state that they could enjoy virtual private networks (VPNs) to access global websites. Students are excited with the possibility of circumventing Internet restrictions, stating that ‘when I received the offer, the account and password of the VPN were listed … I felt that I was different from my counterparts in other universities since I could now gain access to any resource’ (Student A2 2016). However, one respondent from University C offers an interesting case of VPN usage. When there was an international conference held in the city (where her university was located), there were some difficulties with the VPN connection. ‘It was only possible for us to use VPN on the computers, but not on other mobile devices’ (Student C4 2016). Other interviewees share the relatively similar experience by stating: ‘every time when international activities were held in the locales, the VPN would be cut off … in the name of national safety’ (Students B4, 2016). The proffering and cutting off of VPN services all occurred silently, while all the respondents consider these to be reasonable activities.

The CCP’s ‘knowledge of the [individuals’] conscience and an ability to direct it’ (Foucault 1983, 214) persuade individuals to discipline themselves (Webb 2011, 738) as illustrated by another example of ‘expunging’ the textbooks. An International Relations student from University B says:

We were forced to change the textbooks once, possibly because my major is relatively sensitive … The government conducted a random check and found some “forbidden” content in the original textbooks. We had to use other editions to continue our studies.

(Student B3, 2016)

Another respondent from University A shares similar experiences. When the foreign partner university sent the textbooks to China, the Chinese customs officers tore off some of the pages (Student A3, 2016). Without any clear-cut directives, the local officials demonstrate political sensitivity as in ‘the domain of subconscious knowledge’ (Foucault 1974, 25). Such ‘disciplined self-management’ (Ozga 2009, 152) is achieved by applying the ‘anatomo-politics’ (Ball 2012, 45) – the disciplinary power (Foucault 2009, 56), rather than merely ‘imposing laws on men’ (Foucault 1991, 94). The policy practitioners have been integrated by the performance evaluation within power structures in compliance with domination (Tobias 2005; Perryman et al. 2017). Their creativity and innovation during the policy enactment process, thus, far from escaping the central control or satisfying local needs (Guo 2009; Ratigan 2017; Han 2019), actually intensify the existing power relationships. As studies in political science indicate, the strategic enactment of state policies within specific contexts (Ball et al. 2011a) has always been considered as a key factor for sustaining China’s authoritarian rule (Nathan 2003; Tian and Tsai 2020)

Conclusion and discussion: towards a more comprehensive analytical framework of policy analysis in China

… [N]owadays, the struggle against the forms of subjection … is becoming more and more important, even though the struggles against forms of domination and exploitation have not disappeared. Quite the contrary.

(Foucault 1983, 213)

While liberalism emerges from the reconstruction of the states conforming with the ‘laws’ of political economy to reconcile market freedoms with ‘the unlimited exercise of political sovereignty’ (Burchell 1996, 21), in neoliberal states, individuals are obliged to be free when the creation of freedom becomes the most essential governing strategy in modern societies (Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). Such persistent deployment of sovereign/authoritarian power in (neo)liberal countries (Hindess 2001; Dean 2002), and the neosocialist process of cultivating the entrepreneurial and responsible self (Kipnis 2011; Hansen 2015) in authoritarian states demonstrate ‘the continuities between authoritarian and liberal governmentality’, cautioning the danger of not questioning ‘the self-understanding of liberalism as a limited government … safeguarding the rights of the political and juridical subject’ (Dean 2010, 171), and the trap of centralization circle or policy experimentation hypothesis (Shin 2017; He 2018) confronted scholars who are interested in China studies. The theoretical clarification and empirical data analysis reported here represent the humble effort to illustrate that, although with variation in sovereign ends, the (neo)liberal and illiberal nations similarly wield disciplinary power to establish the ‘desirable and the undesirable’ (Britzman 2000, 36) goals, toward which the individuals subjugate themselves as out of free will (Althusser 1977).

Embracing ambitious ends as cultivating ‘autonomous entrepreneur[s] responsible ontologically for their own selves … progress and position’ (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 169) to push national strength and wealth, and taking the ‘total administration of life’ (Dean 2002, 42) to produce nationalistic subjects who will obey the whims and dictates of a sovereign (Kipnis 2011, 291), China has developed a sophisticated disciplinary system to evaluate local officials’ performance. Policy practitioners have been classified for ‘detailed control and regular intervention (of differentiation, correction, punishment, elimination)’ (Foucault 1985, 160), and fabricated into the social order (Foucault 1991, 217) through the ‘disciplinary machineries of discourse’ (MacLure 2003, 176). During the process of ‘political double bind’ in catching people in the grid of totalization and individualization (Foucault 1983, 216), discipline shapes the capable subjects with skills and abilities required by the authoritarian will. In this sense, any agentic responses made by the ‘docile … [and] productive’ (Foucault 1991, 134) subjects toward discursive constraints, have ended up enforcing and intensifying the existing power relations and thus perpetuate the existing forms of exploitation and domination.

Acknowledgement

I hope to thank Professor Sonia Exley very much for the revision opportunity, and the three anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments and instructions not only significantly improve this article, but also direct my further exploration of Foucault’s thoughts. I have learned so much during the revision process and really hope to express my deep gratitude again here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors have no funding to report.

Notes on contributors

Xiao Han

Dr. Xiao HAN currently is a Beiyang Associate Professor at the School of Education, Tianjin University, China. Her research interests include critical policy analysis; international/transnational education; Foucault/Bourdieu studies.

Notes

1. Following Dean (2010), in this article the author does not distinguish between authoritarian and non-liberal rationalities.

2. Some scholars employ policy experimentation hypothesis to explain why local innovation exists under strict central control in China (Heilmann 2008, 2009; Heilmann, Shih, and Hofem 2013). It was also the conceptual foundation of the author’s doctoral dissertation in explicating Chinese TNHE policy enactment. According to Heilmann, policy experimentation in China appears as ‘an oscillating multilevel interaction rather than as a dichotomized process of centralization vs. decentralization’ (2008, 12) or as an ‘experimentation under the shadow of hierarchy’ (Heilmann, Shih, and Hofem 2013, 896). However, his argument fails to establish a solid theoretical framework for further exploration but is more of a case-by-case illustration, especially when he states that during policy experimentation ‘some stages are decentralized … whereas others are centralized’ (ibid, 899). He (2018) argues that simply focusing on the dynamics of central agenda-setting and/or in local experiments neglects the intergovernmental interactions which exert profound influence on local policy enactment/change. Shin (2017) also argues policy experimentation as ‘neither central nor local’. The interpenetration of central control and local agency (Ball et al. 2011b, 612) has been further illustrated by the discursively constructed limitation on local officials’ scope for creativity and innovation during the enactment process (see Zhu 2014; Teets 2015; Li and Painter 2016; Han 2019): although sometimes clear instructions do not exist, policy practitioners ‘autonomously’ conform with the political order (Han 2020). In addition, most of the time, the non-discursive aspects eliminate the probability of disseminating policy experimentation nationwide, especially in contexts of high economic inequality (see the special issue of The China Quarterly 2017, vol 231).

3. Power relations here mainly refer to the state power for two reasons: first, this study’s focus is the national policy documents; second, the state appears ‘not simply [as] one of the forms or specific situations of the exercise of power – even if it is the most important – but that in a certain way all other forms of power relation must refer to it. But this is not because they are derived from it; it is rather because power relations have come more and more under state control’ (Foucault 1983, 224). Therefore, when discussing sovereign power, the disciplinary system, and governmentalized conduct, this study particularly emphasizes the control of the state, or the criteria determined by the state.

4. While realizing liberalism represents ‘a socially and historically variable set of discourses, the interpretation of which has been altered and reshaped’ (Olssen, Codd, and O’Neill 2004, 74), and neoliberalism illustrates the ‘malleable technology’ (Ong 2006) with ‘transformative and adaptive capacity’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, 380), this study’s focus resides on the shared features of the two theoretical branches: 1) the disciplinary criteria of maximum economy in liberalism; and, 2) the belief in market economics as the approach to address ‘the totality of human behavior’ (Tikly 2003, 164) in neoliberalism.

5. China has six administrative levels: central, provincial, prefecture, county, township, and village. This study mainly focuses on the provincial or municipal governments (with relatively equal political statues), as officials at these levels take key responsibilities in policy enactment – for instance, issuing detailed strategies as ‘interpretations of interpretations’ of national policies at the local level (Rizvi and Kemmis 1987; cited from Ball 2006, 45).

6. Scholars in political Science also argue that the ‘political decentralization’ has never been realized in China because its sub-national governments fail to meet either dimension: ‘first, … the right to make certain policy decisions not subject to being overruled by higher levels. Second, … sub-national officials are chosen by local residents rather than by higher officials’ (Cai and Treisman 2006, 508). Thus, China’s situation inclines more toward de-concentration or delegation (Karlsen 2000).

7. In addition, the party secretary always takes the top position at each political level, reflecting the dual presence of CCP and government organs at Chinese political hierarchy (Li and Zhou 2005).

8. While other factors such as personal relationship also influences local officials’ career development, political scientists have reached a consensus on the fact that meritocracy is an essential component of Chinese political performance evaluation (Guo 2009; Heberer and Trappel 2013, to name only a few).

9. ‘Policy entrepreneur’ here is defined by ‘their willingness to invest their resources-time, energy, reputation, and sometimes money – in the hope of future return[s]. That return might come to them in the form of policies of which they approve, satisfaction from participation, or even personal aggrandizement in the form of job security or career promotion’ (Kingdon 1995, 122–123).

10. The realization of such a contest also relies on the ‘self-sufficient’ nature of Chinese regions at equal political levels, leading toward a relatively weak inter-regional dependence (Qian and Xu 1993).

11. Besides the empirical data presented in this study, Tian and Tsai (2020) also emphasize the impossibility of balancing environmental protection and short-term economic growth.

12. Besides uncritically following the hard target such as birth control, local officials could also show their loyalty to the CCP by taking training courses in the extensive national network of Party schools or actively joining political activities (Dickson 2014).

13. Unlike Sino-foreign programs and secondary colleges that are set to affiliate with their Chinese parent universities, most Sino-foreign cooperation universities are located separately from both their Chinese and overseas partners.

14. To cover a relative comprehensive sample of Sino-foreign cooperation university types, three universities were selected according to their international partners and operation periods. However, this study does not provide any further information about the selected universities to protect them from the risk of identification, as China has a relatively small number of Sino-foreign cooperation universities (13 in total till date).

15. The funding for establishing Sino-foreign cooperation universities mainly comes from the host local governments (Han 2019), whereas most foreign partners use their international brand as intangible asset investments.

16. The definition of quasi-market is modified from Jonathan (1997).