Title: Building Fundamentals via Soft Sciences: The New Era of China’s Brain Race
Stream: Education, Sustainability & Society: Social Justice, Development & Political Movements
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Yipei Lu, University of Southern California, United States
Abstract:
Despite being the world’s largest international student sending-nation today, China’s presence in the international higher education arena only dates to the past four decades. The 1978 reform ignited a spark in the nation’s transition towards internationalization, transcending the Marxism-Leninism, Proletarianism, and Neoliberalism national ideologies that existed since the nation’s establishment in 1949. The reform triggered the first “brain race”, showcased by government-funded students studying hard sciences overseas, striving to improve China’s scientific and technological base. Initially, China’s rebuilding efforts have been carried out by these students in the hard sciences fields mostly through imitation and iteration to fill technological gaps. Three decades later, despite the hard sciences remaining a vital national need, modernized national competitiveness requires more than mere incremental improvements through imitation, leading to the nation’s transition from economic neoliberalism to state developmentalism. With a nascent focus on building a foundational academic culture environment to encourage innovation and research, the second “brain race” was triggered, showcased by a stunning number of Chinese international students pursuing soft sciences degrees today, surpassing business degree pursuits and just under hard sciences degree pursuits. This paper aims to analyze this striking phenomenon which partially displays China’s new national strategy of bolstering its economic base by nurturing innovative students who can build a new fundamental academic culture and innovative science base through soft sciences, as well as how the international higher education uplift towards soft sciences is key to building a sustainable academic and research foundation which modern day China direly needs.
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