The Chinese Century? The Challenges of Higher Education William C. Kirby Abstract: One can ½nd in any airport kiosk books that proclaim ours to be “the Chinese century.” We have titles such as “The Dragon Awakes,” “China’s Rise,” “The Rise of China,” and “China’s Ascent,” to name but a few. But to rise is not necessarily to lead. What constitutes leadership? In higher education, China is building the fastest growing system–in quality as well as in quantity–in the world.The foremost global powers of the past four centuries all offered models in the realms of culture, ideas, and education. This may be said of seventeenth-century France under Louis XIV; of the Qing during the Qianlong reign of the eighteenth century; of Britain and Germany in the nineteenth century; and of the United States in the twentieth. China now aspires to educate global elites. For the twenty-½rst century, then, are Chinese universities poised for global leadership? On Sunday, April 21, 2013, a crowd gathered at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing to inau- gurate a new college at Tsinghua University. Letters WILLIAM C. KIRBY, a Fellow of from Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President the American Academy since 2005, Barack Obama were read aloud, followed by video is the T. M. Chang Professor of testimonials from past and present American sec- China Studies at Harvard Univer- retaries of state: Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and sity and the Spangler Family Pro- John Kerry. Together with Vice Premier Liu Yandong, fessor of Business Administration who hosted the meeting, all identi½ed the founding at Harvard Business School. He is of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua as a landmark a Harvard University Distinguished in the history of U.S.-China relations and in the as - Service Professor, and the former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sci - cent of Chinese universities. The vision of Tsinghua ences at Harvard. His recent publi- and of the new college’s benefactor, American busi - cations include the edited volumes nessman and philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarz- The People’s Republic of China at 60: man, was to build a residential college that would An International Assessment (2011) house and educate, in China, the global leaders of and Prospects for the Professions in the twenty-½rst century. Schwarzman College and China (with William P. Alford and its resident Schwarzman Scholars program would Kenneth Winston, 2011). His latest book is Can China Lead? Reaching match in ambition and endowment the Rhodes the Limits of Power and Growth (with Scholarships at Oxford University, which for more Regina M. Abrami and F. Warren than a century have been committed to educating McFarlan, 2014). those with “potential for leadership.”1 © 2014 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00279 145 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00279 by guest on 27 September 2021 The The dynamic new president of Tsinghua Studies, the Guoxueyuan. Its famous “four Challenges University, Chen Jining, noted that the new tutors”–Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei, of Higher Education college and program were part of Tsing - Chen Yinque, and Zhao Yuanren–added hua’s long history of internationalization. international and scienti½c dimensions to But whereas the university once prepared the study of Chinese language, literature, Chinese citizens to study in the United linguistics, and archaeology. Tsinghua’s States, Tsinghua was now to be the educa- history department, founded in 1926, was tional destination of top postgraduate chaired for its ½rst decade by Jiang Tingfu stu dents from America, Europe, Asia, (T. F. Tsiang), who revolutionized the and beyond. study of China’s modern international Today, Tsinghua University is one of re lations. John K. Fairbank, a pioneer in China’s two leading universities and one modern Chinese studies in the United of the world’s elite schools in terms of States, learned his Chinese history from admission. China and the world of Chinese T. F. Tsiang at Tsinghua. higher education have come a long way With the establishment of the National since Tsinghua was founded in 1911, the Government in 1928, Tsinghua became Na - xinhai year of the Xuantong Emperor tional Tsing Hua University and the fol- (that is, the last year of the last emperor lowing year inaugurated its graduate of the last imperial dynasty). The history school. By 1935, Tsinghua’s ten graduate of Tsinghua mirrors the story of higher departments counted for one-third of the education in modern China. graduate departments across China. It was Founded by the Qing court as Tsinghua a comprehensive university by 1937 and a xuetang (Tsinghua Academy) near the site leading player in a vibrant mix of institu- of the Tsinghua yuan, an imperial garden tions (public and private, Chinese and for- of the eighteenth century, Tsinghua began eign) that included Peking University, Jiao as a preparatory school for students se - Tong University, National Central Uni- lected to study in the United States. At versity, and the Academia Sinica, accom- the urging of then-president of the Uni- panied by private colleges of high quality versity of Illinois, Edmund J. James, the such as St. John’s University, Yenching U.S. government remitted a portion of Uni versity, and Peking Union Medical Col - Boxer Indemnity funds for the education lege. All this made Chinese higher educa- of Chinese in the United States and the tion one of the most dynamic systems in establishment of Tsinghua. China, James the world in the ½rst half of the twentieth argued, was on the edge of revolution. century.3 “The nation which succeeds in educating This period of development ended in the young Chinese of the present genera- 1937, when the Tsinghua campus was oc - tion,” he wrote, “will reap the largest pos - cupied by Japanese troops. In 1938, many sible returns in moral, intellectual, and of its faculty and students marched with commercial influence.”2 In its ½rst decade, the National Government to the interior, Tsinghua built up an American-style where Tsinghua became part of National campus–its Jeffersonian grand auditori- Southwest Associated University (Lianda) um inspired by the auditorium at Urbana- for the duration of the war. The universi- Champaign–to prepare its students for ty’s return to its campus in 1946 would study in America. offer only a short respite before the onset By 1925, Tsinghua was itself a college of of civil war and the Communist conquest liberal arts and sciences and home to of China. In December 1948, Tsinghua’s China’s leading Institute of Chinese longtime president, Mei Yiqi, left Beijing. 146 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00279 by guest on 27 September 2021 In 1956, he became president of a re - In November 2009, Tsinghua reopened its William C. newed and distinguished National Tsing famous Institute of Chinese Studies. The Kirby Hua University in Taiwan, leading part of Tsinghua School of Economics and Man- a divided Tsinghua in a divided China. agement began to lead the university in re - After the establishment of the People’s forming its general education curriculum. Republic on the mainland, Tsinghua, like And at the university’s one hundredth most institutions of higher learning, was an niversary in 2011, a magni½cent New Sovietized. It became a polytechnic univer- Tsinghua Academy (Xin Tsinghua xuetang) sity to train engineers. The schools of sci- was dedicated not to the ½elds of en gi - ences and humanities, agriculture, and law neering, science, and technology, for were all abolished, and their faculty mem - which Tsinghua has been best known in bers were dispersed to other institutions. recent decades, but to the performing arts. This reorganization positioned Tsinghua President James of the University of Il - for leadership during the First Five-Year linois was convinced, in 1907, that “[e]very Plan (1953–1958), when it trained many great nation in the world will inevitably of China’s subsequent elite, but the re - be drawn into more or less intimate rela- lentless politicization of universities un - tions” with a rapidly changing China.6 He der Mao Zedong ½rst weakened, and then imagined a world where China learned nearly destroyed, Tsinghua. During the from others, not the other way around. But ear ly years of the Cultural Revolution he also conceived of a China that would (1966–1976), Tsinghua became a promi- rise because of its international educa- nent battleground for factional and ideo- tional alliances. During his time there logical strife at the national level. It re - was a robust market for books concerned opened fully only in 1978.4 with the “rise of China.” They had familiar Over the subsequent decades, Tsinghua’s titles: The Dragon Awakes; China Awakened; agenda was tied closely with that of the era Sun Yat Sen and the Awakening of China; Ris- of “opening and reform.” The university ing China; and an unusual entrant, pub- received bountiful government invest- lished in 1904, New Forces in Old China: An ment and rose to lead China in engineering Unwelcome but Inevitable Awakening.7 and science. It established a series of pro- In the second decade of the twenty-½rst fessional schools, one of which, the School century, one can ½nd in any airport kiosk of Economics and Management, has be - books that now proclaim ours to be “the come the most selective school in the Chinese century.” We again have titles such world for undergraduate admissions. as The Dragon Awakes; China’s Rise; The Rise Tsinghua’s graduates have come to dom- of China; China’s Ascent; As China Goes, So inate the Chinese leadership elite, counting Goes the World; and, most forcefully, When among them Presidents Hu Jintao and Xi China Rules the World.8 A cynic might note Jinping.5 that this is why being a foreign China spe- Today, Tsinghua has reestablished itself cialist is so easy: all the books being writ- as a comprehensive university.