International Journal of Educational Development 84 (2021) 102426

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International Journal of Educational Development

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One country, two political cultures: What way forward for ☆ Kong’s universities?

Simon Marginson a,b,* a Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom b National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The review essay introduces and discusses Wing-Wah Law’s 2019 book Politics, Managerialism and University University autonomy Governance: Lessons from under ’s rule since 1997, in the context of the position of Hong Kong as a University governance formerly colonised Western enclave within a Sinic political culture, and expands on the associated issues. The University leadership book recounts on one hand the rise of managerialism and performativity in Hong Kong’s high quality univer­ Academic freedom sities, and on the other their enfolding in demands within the Special Autonomous Region for democratic re­ Democratic reform Political freedom forms, tending towards independence from . Issues of corporatism and issues of political stability Decolonisation and control have coincided in disputes over the role and character of the governing councils, over senior ap­ China pointments, and in relation to the freedoms of faculty and student activists. The One Country Two Systems Hong Kong formula, while broadly implemented, is not infinitely elastic and cannot manage a cleavage over national identity and loyalty. The differences between China and Hong Kong are more deep-seated than a tally of dem­ ocratic activism and party-state repression would suggest. They go to the distinction between neo-coloniality and decoloniality and the fundamentals of political culture. The review argues that a wholly Western-style university is no longer fully viable in Hong Kong and ways need to be found to develop a more hybrid approach.

1. Beginnings ranging concessions to different European powers and Japan, and in 1898 Britain took a larger bite of the land and islands surrounding the The first Opium War between Britain and China (1839–1842) was colony, the New Territories, which it said was essential to Hong Kong’s the crucial moment that signalled the incapacity of the Qing dynasty military security. The New Territories were ceded on the basis of a 99- (1644–1912 CE) to defend China in the face of the Euro-American year lease, though at the time the British government did not expect powers and later, Japan. The dynasty’s primary weakness was in that it would ever have to give them back. naval power. On 26 January 1841 British troops occupied the sparsely Beginnings are important. First, the remarkable subsequent devel­ populated island of Hong Kong, which was conceded in perpetuity in the opment of Hong Kong was shaped by colonial identity and forms. the next year. In carving out a solely British enclave Although most of the people doing the actual work were Chinese, the where ships could come and go without regard to the Chinese author­ emerging society in Hong Kong was not part of the political culture of ities, Britain showed that China could be freely subjected to forced China. While Confucian educational precepts prevailed in the home, the commercial concessions and territorial predation at the edges, possibly governmental regime, role of law and public culture were British. Later, even full-blown conquest, opening ’the century of national humiliation’ as Wing-Wah Law notes in Politics, Managerialism and University Gover­ (bai nian guo chi, 百年国耻). In the following the nance: Lessons from Hong Kong under China’s rule since 1997 (p. 77), for Second Opium War (1856–1860), Britain added Kowloon, the part of the forty years Hong Kong functioned as a refuge from China. Large numbers mainland positioned opposite the island, again in perpetuity. After fled to the colony after the People’s Republic of China was founded in China’s defeat in the 1894 95 Sino-Japanese War there were wide 1949, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. Hong Kong is a complex society

☆ Wing-Wah Law, Politics, Managerialism and University Governance: Lessons from Hong Kong under China’s rule since 1997, Springer, Singapore. Book series Governance and Citizenship in Asia, Hardcover €93.59 / £79.99 ebook €74.89 / £63.99, ISBN 978-981-13-7302-2 ebook ISBN 978-981-13-7303-9, https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-13-7303-9. * Corresponding author at: University of Oxford, Department of Education, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PY, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.102426 Received 9 April 2021; Received in revised form 4 May 2021; Accepted 5 May 2021 0738-0593/© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. S. Marginson International Journal of Educational Development 84 (2021) 102426 in cultural terms, rich in hybridity and with different shadings of outlook productive academic cultures, of mixed origins in their personnel but on China and Chinese heritage. Nevertheless, many people in Hong Kong Western in their internal culture and systems - would continue to evolve seem to look towards North America and Europe rather than East Asia, as before, while benefiting from both their global linkages and their and look away from mainland China. There is a prevalent understanding proximity to rising China. of mainland China as an ‘other’ as Law shows (pp. 127, 143), with a For the party-state inside China, for which the virtues of decoloni­ demography that has the potential to overwhelm Hong Kong, and alisation were always self-evident, all mutually beneficial outcomes communism, a continuing stigma, confirmed by the suppression of the were possible, including - provided that key red lines students in Tiananmen square in 1989. China’s achievement in lifting were not crossed. This meant that first, expectations of electoral con­ half a billion people out of poverty since the 1970s and building the testability would remain confinedto Hong Kong SAR and not taken into world’s largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity terms opened many national politics in China; and second, Hong Kong’s colonial loyalty business opportunities in Hong Kong but has had less normative political would be transferred to the motherland. In no sense could Hong Kong resonance there than might be expected. Relatively wealthy Hong Kong continue as a piece of China stolen by the West. These conditions were sees itself as an island economy with its own separate property and informal but fundamental, and in the outcome neither were met (p. prosperity. 163). Second, and regardless of the hold of British culture in Hong Kong, the three successive territorial seizures had been wholly forced on an 3. Two political cultures unwilling China. They were red-letter moments of imperial extraction in the bai nian guo chi from 1841 to 1949. When the world changed in the The roots of the problems in Hong Kong lie not only in beginnings of long wave of decolonisation after World War II, belatedly, at the tail end colonial society but also the differences between the two political cul­ of the process, the UK gave all of Hong Kong back to China – island, tures: the Anglo-Western ideas and practices that influenceHong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories – handing over full sovereignty at the 99- and the Chinese domain. This is often characterised as a standoff be­ year expiry point in 1997. tween market capitalism in Hong Kong and socialism (or is it state- controlled capitalism?) in China, but the differences are more pro­ 2. One country two systems found and long-term than that. In the West, political and legal systems are unitary, though there can The pill was sweetened for the UK and many in Hong Kong by be federalism or devolution within a unitary system. There One Country China’s 1990 Basic Law which created ‘One Country Two Systems’. This Two Systems is unimaginable. As Martin Jacques (2012) notes, China as enabled a future Hong Kong to run on the basis of local governance with a ‘civilisational state’ can do this, but no nation-state can do it. There are advanced autonomy, and British common law, media freedoms and the no cases of a modern European or American nation-state absorbing prospect of universal suffrage (p. 41), for at least the firstfifty years after another state, or part of another state, and then enabling a very different the handover. The draft agreement did not state that China would be legal political system on that part of its territory. The variety within politically absent from Hong Kong, or that Hong Kong would be a largely Western systems is of a different kind. In the Euro-American tradition, independent enclave of British or Western economy, society and polit­ society is ordered by division of powers (state/market/civil society, and ical culture within nominally Chinese borders. It meant that China executive/legislature/judiciary within the state), rather than deep would become a single sovereign nation with two political systems, and devolution within a comprehensive state as in China. In the West, states that in the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (SAR), China’s are partial in their coverage of society and the separated domains such as normal party-state system would be much modified by local practices - law, media, business and non government organisations have an irre­ though as the Chinese government saw it in the 1990s, and still sees it, ducible intrinsic autonomy in relation to the state executive. Even public the nature and scope of those modificationswere and are a policy matter universities, while accountable to government as their funder, also have for it as the sovereign nation to determine. Law notes (p. 73) the frus­ an irreducible existence in their own right. tration in Hong Kong when it was realised that the national and local In contrast, in the Sinic Confucian tradition, society consists not of a authorities saw specific political freedoms as variable rather than ab­ division between autonomous parts, in which the executive state is solute, and open to change if the stability of either Hong Kong SAR or inherently limited, but of relations between xiaowo and dawo: smaller mainland China was in question. Yet this was always inherent in the spheres (the xiaowo of family and kin, institution or region) that are Basic Law. China’s 2014 White Paper on Hong Kong spelled it out nested in the larger sphere, the dawo, of the state or social order (Tu, explicitly, stating that the principle of Two Systems was ‘subordinate to 1985). In this imagining, China’s second political system in Hong Kong, and derived from the principle of One Country’ (p. 83). Regardless of the while autonomous, is a smaller xiaowo nested in the larger dawo of One extent of autonomy in Hong Kong SAR, governance would be double- Country. Further, in China, ancient and modern, all of society lies within coded. the political sphere. For example, full separation between universities Nevertheless, expectations differed, and still differ. For some in the and the state, which in the modern period has become the present West, One Country Two Systems promised a protracted period of neo- party-state, is unimaginable. Likewise, a legal system superior to the colonial influence and enrichment, and a safe haven for forays into party-state is impossible, though there can be variations in local juris­ the China market. In that setting, the more culturally Western was Hong diction. The Sinic state has no limit to its potential to intervene, there is Kong, the better. Likewise, for some in Hong Kong, One Country Two no absolute autonomy, but it fosters local and sectional autonomy to Systems had opened the possibility of quasi-national self-determination varying degrees, in regions and in large institutions such as universities. and an incentive to minimise the larger relationship. In this framework, Devolution is an essential tool in a large diverse country. At the same just how close was One Country Two Systems to national independence time, the centrally controlled form of devolution, in which the centre is was unclear, but there was an incentive to push the envelope. Once the the only constant, is subject to a recurring oscillation between liberali­ simple attraction of independence came into view, the opposite strategy, sation and tighter control. This pattern has been consistent through the which was to leverage Hong Kong’s freedom of action to develop a history of both Imperial and modern China (Marginson and Yang, 2020; larger role inside China, a pathway more difficultto conceive and pursue Yang, 2021). but more realistic and more potentially generative in the longer term, Hence One Country Two Systems is not foreign to Chinese political could be ignored. Meanwhile, for many in the universities inside and culture, which from time to time, since the Song Dynasty at least, has outside Hong Kong, One Country Two Systems suggested that Hong permitted deep devolution and high levels of regional freedom (Block­ Kong’s high quality public universities – which had been nurtured suc­ mans and de Weerdt, 2016); and also uses structures of dual authority, cessfully by the University Grants Commission, with exciting and with local leaders alongside central agents - the dual leadership system

2 S. Marginson International Journal of Educational Development 84 (2021) 102426 in universities is a modern example of such a dual structure. For China between Hong Kong’s population and the national party-state widened One Country Two Systems can work as long as there is stable loyalty to without resolution. First, the large non-violent and successful 2012 the country as a whole and overall central control is maintained. China’s campaign against the introduction of pro-China political education in modern political system combines Imperial statecraft, and selected ideas schools that had been designed to foster the long-term integration of from western governance, with Leninist centralisation of the state ma­ Hong Kong into China. Second, the 2014 Occupy Central campaign, in chine and the distribution of the party-state through the institutional which academics and students had leading roles, and which blocked structure of society. China’s system is not well understood in the West, major roads near the centre of Hong Kong for 79 days (p. 80). The 2014 and is usually discussed in critical terms, with the main focus falling on Occupy Central demonstrators tried to force greater autonomy and the role of the Communist Party of China (CPC) alone. The points of progress Hong Kong towards universal suffrage but in contrast with the similarity between China and the West are side-stepped, because that 2012 campaign they were unsuccessful. disrupts the good/evil polarity, and the continuing importance of Chapter 5 returns to the internal university setting, recounting how traditional statecraft in China is not grasped. Yet key elements in Sinic after a prolonged delay the HKU Council set aside the merit principle in political culture, for example the comprehensive state and its supremacy rejecting the appointment of a liberal scholar, , the Dean over all other elements including the economy, the character and central of Law, to a senior position as Pro Vice-Chancellor. This followed a importance in society of the state bureaucracy, the role of higher edu­ shameful campaign of attacks on Chan in the pro-China segment of the cation in serving the state, and even the idea of the revocable Mandate of media (p. 97). Law shows that in doing so the Council compromised its Heaven, China’s system for regulating popular consent for government, commitment to independent university autonomy, a core element of the all date back to the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 771 BCE). China’s Western model of universityi. Chapter 6 describes the unsuccessful political culture is distinctive, it is fundamentally different to the po­ campaign of staff and students to rid the universities of a British hang­ litical cultures that evolved in the West, and those differences long over, the role of ex-officio chancellor with power to intervene in aca­ predate Lenin and Mao. demic affairs. This also compromised the Western form of university The heterogeneity of the two political cultures is rarely acknowl­ autonomy, the more so as in the post-1997 era the role had been edged, even in Hong Kong, located as it is on the East/West fault line, assumed by nominees of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and containing both elements. Heterogeneous political cultures lead to Chief Executive and had begun to resemble that of the university party differing ways of seeing, different lenses. People mostly use only their secretary in the mainland Chinese university model. Chapters 7–8 dis­ own lens when they look at the rest of the world. They understand other cusses the repressive actions of mainland security in Hong Kong, political cultures in their own terms. When denizens of culture A including kidnapping of critics of China, and downward pressures on respond in ways that are consistent with the normal precepts of culture media and artistic freedom, threatening Hong Kong’s civil society; and A, but unexpected by people in culture B, the latter, whose expectations also the growth of anti-mainland and pro-independence sentiments have been confounded, may see those routine culture A behaviours as among young people and university students, the growing expression of deceptive. Many allegations of bad faith derive from misplaced as­ pro-independence political beliefs on campus and in Hong Kong society, sumptions and expectations. In the last decade in Hong Kong this game and the push-back from China, the Hong Kong government and uni­ logic has often played out. versity leaders. The reader is left with a final sense of situation unresolved. 4. The account As this suggests, there are two different stories running through the book, not the same as each other but intersecting repeatedly: the politics By this long, unusual and perhaps necessary route, the review essay of research universities in an era of competitive managerialism, and the now turns to Wing-Wah Law’s book on the politics of higher education politics of Hong Kong and China. in Hong Kong, Politics, Managerialism and University Governance: Lessons In relation to the first story, Law demonstrates that ‘In Hong Kong, from Hong Kong under China’s rule since 1997 (2019). Beautifully written managerial culture and mechanisms have weakened the foundations of and clearly argued, it is an indispensable account of events, both de­ mutual trust between the public, universities, and academics, and dis­ velopments internal to Hong Kong universities, especially the University torted the priorities of universities’ (p. 189). It is sad to read of the of Hong Kong (HKU), and also ongoing issues in civil society and gov­ University Grants Committee’s slide from consensual planning of a ernment, from the handover in 1997 up to but not including the occu­ collaborative system into induced competition and performativity. Hong pations of the university campuses in late 2019. It also makes a larger Kong’s universities did not need the development of a more managed contribution to the literature on the politics of higher education, and and competitive system to excel in both local and world terms. A strong constitutes fascinating material on the intersection between Sinic and feature of the book is the analysis of the university as a political insti­ Anglo-Western systems in general and in higher education, albeit as tution, which as the author notes has received less discussion than viewed through the lens of only one of the two cultures that have now managerialism (pp. 1–2). Law, citing J.V. Baldridge’s (1971) still useful intersected in the shaping of Hong Kong. pioneering account, argues that ‘internally, universities are political Chapter 1 provides a state of the art review of a primarily Western institutions in which individuals or groups with different interests form literature on university governance and autonomy, politics and mana­ different coalitions and engage in negotiation and competition for power gerialism, introduces higher , and previews the and resources, and in which policies are used to address conflicts with book itself. Chapter 2 documents the ascending struggles between on different groups.’ This means that ‘public university governance’ is ’a one hand the active democratic public in Hong Kong, and on the other political exercise of leadership, contextualized in a changing multilev­ hand the party-state in China, and the local administration in Hong Kong eled (global, national, and local) world.’ The council and university which over time has appeared as more closely aligned to the national leadership must steer between the internal university on one hand, and party-state. Chapter 3 provides a kind of analysis familiar in research on external market and political demands on the other (p. 201). higher education, having been used in many different countries, a crit­ Perhaps Law is overly optimistic in expecting the university council ical description of how Hong Kong’s academic life and university to protect the university community from managerialism and perform­ governance have become increasingly shaped by the coupling of market ativity (p. 203), especially given that external members are often reforms and managerial techniques, positioning university leaders and appointed because they know corporate governance, but he rightly ex­ university councils as agents of corporate reform on individual cam­ pects the council to defend university autonomy and academic freedom, puses. There is a convincing account of the pathologies generated by whether its members are internal or external. That is, he is right about Hong Kong’s recurring Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Chapter 4 this expectation if the Western model of university is the reference point reviews two Hong Kong political movements, in which the distance (pp. 2, 17). Yet it is not so simple in Hong Kong.

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In the Western university, within a polity shaped by the principle of the university is both pathologised and marginalised in his imaginings of division of powers, the fault-line between state and university is a per­ possible university governance. petual zone of tension. On one hand universities are funded by gov­ ernments and shaped by policy and regulation. On the other hand the 5. Double-coding and dilemmas Western model, inherited from the separate legal incorporation of the medieval European university, also embodies the prima facie assump­ It can be argued that an indifference to models other than those of tion (whether recognised in law or not) that the organisational person­ the Euro-American university tradition, except as negative examples, is ality of the university is independent of the state machine. That is, in the a limitation of the book as scholarship, though it is a limitation shared by autonomy of the university, there is an absolute within the relative. In most of the field of higher education studies worldwide. Nevertheless, the outcome this de facto autonomy is routinely breached by govern­ when sitting in Hong Kong with the PRC next door and the large and ment actions - by every tagged funding scheme, performance indicator extraordinarily dynamic city of Shenzhen only a short train ride away, it and free speech edict that comes along. Within Western polities there is is an act of will to sustain the exclusion. If so, this reduction can be no stable consensus on the significance of such breaches. University understood as one way of resolving the underlying uncertainties and autonomy in the West is an issue that is never settled because the dilemmas that now affect universities in Hong Kong, which implement intrinsic tension is hard-wired into the political culture. This is espe­ the Western university model in a political setting that is no longer cially the case in the British polity which shaped neo-colonial Hong exclusively Western. In this strange setting, the guidelines are unclear in Kong. In England social norms of individuality and autonomy are the Western mind, which requires categorical certainties (Hall and strongly developed, while there is also a powerful and centralising state Ames, 1995), and the instinct is to settle the question normatively. The that keeps a close eye on the universities (Shattock and Horvath, 2019). ambiguities of the double-coded SAR, in which the separation between However, Western models are not the only possible models of the the Two Systems is never complete, as it would be in a Western division organisational personality of the university, and of the relation between of labour, arise repeatedly in Hong Kong. For example, when the chair of the university and the state. In China it is different. university council is nominated by the Hong Kong government that China’s universities are specifically nested in the state and pride breaches autonomy in terms of the Western model. But this path to themselves on their direct contribution to the country, which is un­ appointment can be normal in a university in mainland China, where equivocal. This changes the notion of university autonomy, though less governments appoint leaders into differing roles, and a party-secretary so the notion of academic freedom. Institutional autonomy in China is in the council chair position may actually earn the reputation of a de­ relative, without an absolute inside the relative. It an unambiguous gift fender of the autonomy of the institution, as did Min Weifang during his from above and not an intrinsic right exercised from below. In that six years at Peking University (Hayhoe and Zha, 2011, p. 111). respect the university under party-state rule differs little from the Im­ Another and important example of the ambiguities in which Hong perial academies in China. However, Law’s book does not engage much Kong universities are now positioned relates to the role of the university with higher education in the rest of China, the country in which Hong in broad-based democratic discussion. Law notes in the concluding Kong sits, despite the modern achievements of higher education in Chapter 9 about academic freedom and the role of universities as arenas China, as well as its marked differences with the Hong Kong (and for public debate: ancestral British) model of university (Hayhoe et al., 2011). Though Public universities have great responsibility to create and promote a Hong Kong’s universities share the One Country with other Chinese public democratic sphere—both on campus and in society—in which universities, for Law, the normative emphasisfalls on just one of the Two rational and critical discussion is tolerated, appreciated, and pro­ Systems part of the formula. tected. The public sphere is an interface between the state and civil The author does mention PRC China’s university governance and society in which critical public debate over affairs of public interest is mission but it is from a distance and largely as a negative reference conducted through engagement in reasoned discussion, and there­ point, except where China coincides with the Western model (as where fore can become also ‘a sphere of criticism of the public authority’ page 4 refers to the common transition from direct government rule to (Habermas, 1989, pp. 51, 52) (Law, 2019, p. 210) state supervision). Hence on page 11 he cites international literature testifying to the lack of norms, traditions and practices that facilitate In this role the university moves beyond its ongoing functions in innovation, university autonomy and academic freedom in China. On student formation and the creation and dissemination of knowledge, the page 59–60 he refers to an intrinsic tension between party-state re­ heartland of academic freedom in all countries, to embody a larger quirements and university autonomy, critiquing China in terms of a communicative public reflexivity (Calhoun, 1992). Though few uni­ Western understanding of the university-state problem, for example in versities in the world pursue the public sphere role consistently, many relation to the dual system of party and academic leadership. On page have done so episodically. Out of the university as a critical and creative 211 he refers to self-censorship in universities in China (while noting public sphere came the second wave of feminism, environmentalism, the that this can happen also in Hong Kong). Law’s book is not primarily Civil Rights movement in the US and many other influentialcampaigns about PRC university governance or the Chinese model of the university. (Pusser et al., 2011). The role of university public sphere is unstable but However, the One Country Two Systems formula means that inescap­ at best it constitutes a major collective contribution, raising the role of ably, practice in the PRC is relevant to Hong Kong. Not discussing it – higher education beyond the horizon of the nation-state to the trans­ except to point out non-Western features all seen as negative – is formation of the human condition. symptomatic of the prevailing habit in Hong Kong of looking West rather However, and here’s the rub, while the Western university has been than East. influential in the evolution of the modern Sinic university, under both It seems that fundamentally, the mainland is always to be seen as the the Republic in 1911–1949 and post-1990 system development, this site of dangers, continuing the post-1949 pattern in Hong Kong. Not of a particular social role of the Western university, which is arguably a system of universities that is viable, vibrant and different. It is all the major achievement of the Western model – that is, the university as an more curious because Hong Kong universities have many productive independent and critical public sphere – has a weaker potential in Sinic engagements with mainland Chinese higher education, including branch political culture. campuses, inter-university partnerships, extensive students and faculty Distinctive practices of academic freedom as a proactive and mobility between Hong Kong and mainland China, and research col­ responsible role are well developed in China, but it is not the same kind laborations between Hong Kong and the mainland. Hong Kong’s uni­ of academic freedom that is exercised in the West. It emphasises positive versities also compete with those of the mainland. These factors are freedom in Berlin’s (1969) sense, freedom to do, rather than negative largely invisible in Law’s account, while the differing mainland model of

4 S. Marginson International Journal of Educational Development 84 (2021) 102426 freedom, freedom from constraint. Hayhoe puts it as follows: from above. There are many possible variants. However, it is unimag­ inable that China will allow Hong Kong to become an independent The Chinese term for autonomy as ‘self-mastery’ is more often used country. In China the drive to national unity has long been embedded in in discussions about autonomy within China, than the term for au­ the Sinic imaginary. It dates back to the foundational Qin dynasty tonomy as ‘self-governance’ which has the connotation of legal or (221 206 BCE) and earlier. In modern times, the decolonial imperative political independence… Similarly the term ‘academic freedom’, goes to the heart of China’s national identity. Even without the which is used to denote a kind of freedom particularly appropriate to decolonial imperative, nations characteristically fightvery hard to keep the university in the Western context, and which arose from the everyone in, regardless of popular opinion in the territory concerned dominant epistemology of rationality and dualism in a European (consider not just Barcelona but the Confederate states in the US). There context, is not a good fitfor China. On the one hand Chinese scholars is no doubt that the US and Britain are delighted to use Hong Kong as a enjoy a greater degree of ‘intellectual authority’ than is common in stick with which to beat China, and they may give every symbolic the West, due to the history of the civil service examinations and the comfort to the cause of independence, but they are unlikely to invest in close links contemporary universities have major state projects. On forcing China to change course. Meanwhile, the terrible prospect looms the other hand there is a strong tradition of ‘intellectual freedom’ in of a downward spiral into wholesale repression and alienation, a China which is rooted in a epistemology quite different from that of -type logic from which the party-state has no exit. At the least, it European rationalism. It requires that knowledge be demonstrated seems likely that at some point in Hong Kong there will be a head-on first and foremost through action for the public good, also that collision between the Western and Sinic ‘Idea of a University’. The po­ knowledge be seen as holistic and inter-connected, rather than tential for damage to the great Hong Kong universities is very real. The organised into narrowly defined separate disciplines’ (Hayhoe, events of late 2019, when some universities were temporarily unin­ 2011, p. 17). habitable, foreshadowed this prospect. There are precedents in the role of speaking truth to power in China, Law describes the political collision between China’s state and the such as the jianguan under the Tang Emperor Taizong (598–649 CE), democracy movement in Hong Kong, but oddly fails to draw out the who maintained officialsexpected to make free comments and criticisms implication of a likely collision between the Western and the Chinese (Cheng, 2001; Zhao, 2000), though under successive dynasties these models of university in Hong Kong. Perhaps he just hopes the wind will cases were more the exception than the rule. More generally, and more stop blowing, or that somehow Hong Kong will secure independence. It promisingly, academics in China today routinely offer frank advice to appears that his implicit strategy is to safeguard and strengthen the government, inside the party-state and behind closed doors. However, Western university in Hong Kong by weakening the ways in which states the public sphere idea is more far reaching and goes to the larger interfere with their universities, via imposed performance regimes, and question of public democracy. external members of councils, and intervention in the appointment of The university as a public sphere extends beyond academic freedom university officers and chairs of councils. It looks like he wants a more to include fulsome civil and political freedoms, as Law notes (p. 210). absolute autonomy viz a viz government. He also wants a politically China has never consistently maintained that kind of public culture. competent governing body and executive leadership, and a university State supervision was always stronger in Imperial China than in the characterised by reasoned discourse, one that extends democracy in West, and like regional and institutional devolution, public freedoms society, and one sensitive to indigenous needs and cultures. typically oscillated between periods of opening up and periods of It is an admirable ideal, a modern version of the Kantian/Hum­ tightening central control that could last for decades. In party-state boldtian vision of the university that will draw support from all who China this has continued. The 1980s were a period of opening up on share adherence to the liberal Western model. Politics, Managerialism and campus and in society, while the present is a period of tighter control. University Governance will also draw affective sympathy from all people, From time to time, certain universities in China have operated as public throughout the world, who wish Hong Kong’s eight public universities spheres and the origin of political movements, notably Peking Univer­ well. Law’s book is required reading for those who want to understand sity (Hayhoe and Zha, 2011). However, the role has never been legiti­ universities in Hong Kong. Yet there are doubts about its realism. Is it mated in China, and the party-state has recently stepped up its internal viable in decolonised Hong Kong? Arguably, the pure model is controls on mainland campuses, including Peking University. unachievable anywhere, but more so in the absence of either a Western In contrast, in the last decade Hong Kong’s universities have moved civil society (which Hong Kong does currently have) and a Western state rapidly in the opposite direction, helping to broadly politicise Hong (which it does not). Further, is it possible to normalise an essentially Kong society in the process. They have been exemplary mediums of the Euro-American idea of higher education or society, in a multi-polar and public sphere in Habermas’s sense. Law’s book chronicles the bravery of decolonising world (Macaes, 2018; Pieterse, 2018)? Is this vision academic staff and a succession of student leaders in pursuing the meaningfully applied in China, the ‘One Country’ side of the couplet? A democratic public sphere. This has become the medium for the prescription for higher education in Hong Kong is ultimately a pre­ mounting anti-China campaigns, and as Law shows, growing demands scription for China. No one can forecast the future evolution of Chinese for outright independence, undermining One Country integration. Given (or British or any other) society, but it should be obvious by now that that on the mainland the party-state would quickly shut down such China is not going to turn itself into a Western polity. In China, rights large-scale subversive campaigns, the continuation of recurring public exercised from below (political democracy, university autonomy) can activism in Hong Kong’s universities shows that up to early 2021, at only ever be a gift from above. In the West it is a paradox. In Sinic po­ least, Xi Jinping’s government has largely stuck to the Two Systems litical culture it is not. bargain. Nevertheless, there is a limit. The history of the party-state shows that the bottom line is always stability and its own control is 6. Borderlands seen as the guarantor of stability. In casting round for means of containment, such as the facility to arrest activists, the local authorities After two years in China John Dewey returned in 1921 and told his and/or the central government will inevitably moving towards greater American audiences that China could not be understood solely through political repression, and the use of mainland approaches to law within the Euro-American lens. The country needed to be understood in its own the Hong Kong jurisdiction, and these developments in turn will tend to terms. It was not necessary to abandon everything that one already knew heighten active disaffection and intensify the demands for in order to do this (Wang, 2007). There is no record that Dewey was able independence. to persuade anyone who did not themselves go to China of this crucial At any time, the terms of One Country Two Systems can be shifted truth about multiple lenses. But China is reached much more quickly from Hong Kong than from Chicago.

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Yet Hong Kong is also one of the borderlands between two very Acknowledgements different global cultures, Sinic and Anglo-Western, both of which are with us for the duration, and neither of which are reducible to the other. With thanks to Lili Yang, whose doctoral work helped to inform the But the two great cultures might eventually blend, in specific domains review essay, and to Xin Xu for valuable comments. and perhaps more widely. In borderlands multiplicity and tensions abound, vision is confused, deep two-way engagement is possible and References novel ideas, strange combinations and new hybridities can emerge. Taiwan is another borderland, perpetually tussling with identity and Anderson, B., 2016. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. Verso, London. future: it shares the sense of blurring and ambiguity. A third borderland Baldridge, J., 1971. Models of University Governance: Bureaucratic, Collegial, and has opened up in the Nan Hai, the South China Sea, where two different Political. Stanford University, Stanford. laws of the sea and two different sets of historically-based rights of Blockmans, W., de Weerdt, H., 2016. The diverging legacies of classical empires in China and Europe. Eur. Rev. 24 (2), 306–324. https://doi.org/10.1017/ countries are being applied. The Nan Hai and Hong Kong are not ana­ S1062798715000654. logues: what they share is that they are places of cross-over, in which Calhoun, C., 1992. Introduction. In: Calhoun, C. (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere. profound cultural differences have taken political form. There is an The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–48. instability and even unreality in such borderlands, in which double Cheng, S., 2001. The recruiting system of Jianguan in the Tang Dynasty (Tangdai jianguan de xuanren zhidu). Soc. Sci. Front (Shehui kexue zhanxian) 3, 129–134. coding is normal and everything is dual-referenced, like facing mirrors Habermas, J., 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The MIT Press, and the endless receding images they create without resolution. Bor­ Cambridge. derlands do not lie comfortably with demands for singular identity. Hall, D., Ames, R., 1995. Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture. SUNY Press, Albany. When singular identity is demanded they become more dangerous pla­ Hayhoe, R., 2011. Introduction and acknowledgements. In: Hayhoe, R., Li, J., Lin, J., ces, as the history of partition in India shows. By the same token bor­ Zha, Q. (Eds.), Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities. Springer/CERC, U – derlands are also places of hope, in a world that needs to cross lines so as Hong Kong, Hong Kong, pp. 1 18. Hayhoe, R., Li, J., Lin, J., Zha, Q., 2011. Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities: in to find unity-in-diversity, heer butong. Borderlands are places where in the Move to Mass Higher Education. Springer, Singapore. constructive moments, we can begin to forge something new that en­ Hayhoe, R., Zha, Q., 2011. Peking university – icon of cultural leadership. In: Hayhoe, R., st ables differences to be combined. What other way of moving forward is Li, J., Lin, J., Zha, Q. (Eds.), Portraits of 21 Century Chinese Universities. Springer/ CERC, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, pp. 95–130. there, other than unity-in-diversity, in the face of our global challenges? Jacques, M., 2012. When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the If, as Benedict Anderson (2016) famously stated, the nation is Birth of a New Global Order. Penguin, London. nothing more than an ‘imagined community’, then a thoroughly West­ Macaes, B., 2018. The Dawn of Eurasia: on the Trail of the New World Order. Penguin, London. ern university located inside China can only be seen as a Zen embodi­ Marginson, S., Yang, L., 2020. China meets Anglo-America on the New Silk Road: a ment, a ‘dream within a dream’. The reality is more messy but comparison of state, society, self and higher education. In: van der Wende, M., potentially more constructive. A way needs to be found to build a Kirby, W., Liu, N., Marginson, S.S. (Eds.), China and Europe on the New Silk Road: Western-Chinese hybrid university in Hong Kong, in which stellar aca­ Connecting Universities Across Eurasia. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 255–283. demic cultures are protected and better funded than before; the auton­ Pieterse, J., 2018. Multipolar Globalization: Emerging Economies and Development. omy of the institution is nested effectively within the state (which, Routledge, London. interestingly, was Humboldt’s idea); and the public sphere is nurtured Pusser, B., 2011. Power and authority in the creation of a public sphere through higher education. In: Pusser, B., Kemper, K., Marginson, S., Ordorika, I. (Eds.), Universities inside and outside the state, rather than blowing itself up. Then the Hong and the Public Sphere: Knowledge Creation and State Building in the Era of Kong university can position itself as one of the pathways to a more Globalization. Routledge, New York, pp. 27–46. liberal Sinic political culture, which is needed on the mainland as well as Shattock, M., Horvath, A., 2019. The Governance of British Higher Education: the Impact of Governmental, Financial and Market Pressures. Bloomsbury, London. in the SAR - rather than blocking out the existence of Sinic political Tu, W.-M., 1985. Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. SUNY Press, culture, and ultimately failing in a Western-style attempt to sustain its Albany. model by denying the other. Wang, J., 2007. John Dewey in China: To teach and to learn. SUNY Press, Albany. Yang, L., 2021. Similarities and Differences Between Notions of ‘Public’ in the Sinic and Liberal Anglo-american Traditions, and the Implications for Higher Education. DPhil Funding Thesis. University of Oxford Department of Education, Oxford. Zhao, Y., 2000. Analysis of advisor system in Ancient China (zhongguo gudai jianguan zhidu yanjiu). J. Pek. Univ. Philosophy Soc. Sci. (Beijing daxue xuebao, zhexue The research was conducted in the ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global shehui kexue ban) 3, 97–104. Higher Education, funded by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (awards ES/M010082/1, ES/M010082/2 and ES/T014768/1).

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