Role Differentiation in Chinese Higher Education

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Chinese Higher Education and Its Political Task

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 1-9

3. Theoretical Perspectives: Political Socialization and Higher Education

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 11-27

4. Historical Review on JU (1903–2013): A Wrestle Between Political Restriction and University Autonomy in Chinese Higher Education

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 29-53

5. Different Players’ Deduction on Political Task

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 55-64

6. The University’s Practices to Ensure the Complement of Political Task

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 65-85

7. Practices to Seek for Academic Freedom and Critical Thinking Under Political Restriction

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 87-106

8. Practices to Look for Flexibility and Alternative Space Under Political Restriction

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 107-130

9. Political Socialization in Chinese Higher Education: Role Differentiation as a Strategy

   • Xiaoxin Du

   Pages 131-146

10. Back Matter

    Pages 147-178

    PDF

This book examines tensions between the Chinese state and Chinese universities. It looks at the state’s demand for political socialization as a restriction on university autonomy and the university’s promotion of academic development through promoting academic freedom and fostering critical thinkers, using Jour University in PRC, as a case study.


The book focuses on the dynamics and complexity of the interplay between the state, universities, faculty, staff and students in the process of socialization through political education and academic affairs. Theories on political socialization and higher education guide this study. As universities’ socio-political task of imbuing students with a certain type of ideology coexists with their role of promoting university autonomy, examining China’s higher education system provides important insights as different players’ interaction. These present a dynamic picture of role differentiation as a strategy to cope with apolitically restricted autonomy, which challenges some common stereotypes that have been put on Chinese universities within the global community.

• Chinese higher education
• political socialization
• university autonomy
• academic freedom
• critical thinking
• political control
• Chinese Communist party
• Chinese universities

• Fudan Development Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

  Xiaoxin Du

Dr. Du Xiaoxin graduated from the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Her academic interests are focused on political studies in China, citizenship education, students affairs and young scholars’ mobility in higher education. She finished her Bachelor’s and Masters’ degrees in Political Science at Fudan University, China. From 2017 to 2020, she worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at National Institutes of Educational Policy Research in East China Normal University. Now she is a research assistant professor at Fudan Development Institute, Fudan University.

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