The paper reviews the rapid development of higher education and science in China in the last forty years. It discusses the conditions and strategies of that development, including the ways that it embodies a distinctive Chinese approach to higher education. In particular, the paper reflects on the policies whereby China coordinated with globalization in higher education and science after 1978, in building national capacity and global influence. Scale, nation-state policy goals and accelerated investment on their own are necessary but not sufficient (otherwise Saudi Arabia’s research universities would be stronger than they are). The effective national/global synergy developed by China, made possible by the international openness and part-devolution to science communities that was implemented in the Deng Xiaoping era, has been crucial in the rapid rise of China’s universities and science. This national/global synergy—and its potentials, tensions and limits—in turn has determined the nature of the achievement and will shape its future evolution.
The four decades since reform and opening up have seen dramatic changes in China’s higher education system. Focusing on international dimensions, the analysis supports the view that reform and opening up was not merely an economic and political reform, but an opening of the mind to the outside world, after the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. But it is important to be reminded that China’s relations with the outside world have a much longer history, with the spread of Confucian ideas to East and Southeast Asia, and the importation of Buddhism from ancient India; both during the Tang dynasty. The article points to key ongoing debates in China about the extent to which it can incorporate ideas from outside, while still retaining a Chinese essence. The rise of China as a knowledge hub and destination for international students is also charted, and the prospects for further development are assessed.
International exchange is an important part of China’s educational opening up, cooperation, and connection with other countries. It also serves as a unique strategic resource, helping to develop and consolidate mutual political trust, diplomatic exchange, economic and trade relations, cultural exchange and educational cooperation between China and other countries in the world, thereby enhancing China’s international image. We have seen positive contributions made to our progress towards peace among peoples, and noted the irreplaceable role played by China. International educational exchange is an important part of global international student flows. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, especially in the 40 years of reform and opening up, China has experienced a development process in education from language students to students at all levels and from quantity to quality. The change in the type of international students studying in China and of Chinese students studying abroad reflects the Chinese spirit and the broadening the appeal of China’s programs. It can be interpreted as the fulfillment of the “Chinese Dream,” contributing to national revitalization. The trade imbalance between exporting countries and destination countries in international educational exchange has been reduced.
Education, skills, and the development of an African workforce are at a critical moment. While it is recognized that Chinese firms hire local people, the focus of the debate is more on the position and opportunities for training and advancement. As such, the paper tries to answer the following questions. Does China really contribute to skills development in Africa? Does China employment, education, and skills transfer pattern contribute to Africa’s own structural transformation and benefit African workforce? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper first lays out the current magnitude of demand for skills in Africa and the priorities for education and skills transfer that can successfully address Africa’s skills shortage. Significantly, this will enable researchers and non-researchers to understand the diversity of Chinese firms’ skills transfer patterns and the reasons behind these patterns. In order to present a comprehensive and precise picture as well as understand the context for China and Africa education and skills transfer development, the paper draws from various data collected from diverse sources, including government statistics, firm reports, second-hand academic literature, local and international news media, official government reports, and research studies. The paper suggests that the assessment of skills transfer pattern should not only consider employees’ and employers’ direct interests, but also in the short run, skills transfer should focus on offering short, practical courses to secondary and higher education graduates involving primarily on-the-job training. In the long run, there is a need to change the way employees and students are trained, including curriculum reforms that favor science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Emphasis should also be placed on critical thinking, problem-solving, discovery, and experiential training.
This study reports how an expert Chinese teacher implements mathematics textbook lessons in enacted instruction. Our video analysis indicates that both textbook and enacted teaching included only one worked example; however, the teacher engaged students in unpacking the example in great depth. Both the textbook and the enacted teaching showed “concreteness fading” in students’ use of representations. However, the Chinese teacher incorporated students’ self-generated representations and facilitated students’ active modeling of quantitative relationships. Finally, the Chinese teacher asked a greater number of deep questions than were suggested by the textbook. These deep questions often occurred as clusters of follow-up questions that were either concept-specific or promoted comparisons which facilitated connection-making between multiple representations and solutions.
Providing further knowledge to and refinement of public facility location theory, this paper focuses on the distribution of basic educational facilities in China. The aim towards an equilibrium in the distribution of education resources has captured widespread attention in recent years. The basis of an education equilibrium is the balanced distribution of teaching facilities. Using the spatial analysis function of ArcGIS, this article discusses the evolution characteristics of education equilibrium and explores its dynamics with reference to primary and middle schools in Changchun City, Jilin Province from 2007 to 2013. The study found the spatial distribution of primary and middle schools in Changchun was uneven and the characteristic of close internal but sparse external has not changed. Low-level equilibrium of primary and middle schools in Changchun has been basically realized, but high-level equilibrium is far from being realized. Although there has been a trend towards suburbanization of these schools in recent years, the high entrance threshold has determined that high-quality school opportunity (schools with high-level resource allocation) has not increased for people. The spatial distribution of primary and middle schools is related to the factors of population, real estate, transportation and the education system itself. Education space, living space, and traffic space all interact and together affect urban spatial structure.