Building World-Class Universities in China: Global Trends, National Characteristics, Provincial Demands and Local Strategies

Abstract

China is one of the fastest-growing developing country, the birthplace of global university rankings, and has prioritised the building of World-Class Universities (WCUs). The study had three objectives: (i) to explore the national response to global trends in higher education; (ii) to examine the main practices and values of Chinese provincial governments and national ministerial universities involved in the building of WCUs and to further explore the forces that drive their respective behaviours; (iii) to analyse, from the perspective of faculty members, how these national policies, provincial policies and local institutional strategies are implemented in an elite Chinese ministerial university. Drawing upon qualitative methods, this study included document analysis (41 national government policies and four provincial government policies, and eight institutional strategic plans) and in-depth interviews were conducted. Online semi-structured interviews were conducted with sixteen faculty members working at one Chinese university and data were analysed thematically using NVivo 12. The study revealed that China's pursuit of globally competitive universities shapes national polices that continually modify the balance between national supervision and HEIs' autonomy and encourage institutional mergers to optimise resources within the sector. These policies also foster the internationalisation of their universities, and build diversified, targeted and performance-based funding schemes. This study also found that the provincial policies and institutional strategies exhibit isomorphism with the national policies in the model of goal setting and interpretation of the definition of WCUs. The driving forces behind this finding mainly stem from provincial governments and ministerial universities' dependence on national resources and their ambiguous understanding of WCU definition. Additionally, considering the diverse developmental advantages and needs of provincial governments, which possess the local resources required, universities differentiate themselves based on their regional development goals to highlight their competitive advantages. In terms of local practice, faculty members argue for WCUs to be rooted in national and local needs while engaging with the global knowledge system. Yet, in practice, decision-making on university partnerships and talent recruitment heavily relies on global rankings. Despite acknowledging government contributions and the emphasis on teaching in policies for building WCUs, the inflexible evaluation system of resource allocation at Chinese universities is a concern, and research remains an unwavering priority. Government efforts to reinterpret global academic standards by enhancing local characteristics' perceived value have ambiguities in implementation. The findings suggest that faculty members' academic lives are interlinked across the 'glonaprocal' higher education development, and they may proactively address the forces at all levels by adapting localisation. It makes contributions by developing a 'glonaprocal' approach as a theoretical framework for understanding the interactive relationships between global trends, national policies, provincial policies and local (institutional strategies and faculty members' perceptions).

Date of Award	1 Aug 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Miguel Antonio Lim (Supervisor) & Susie Miles (Supervisor)