EARLIER this month Peking University played host to perhaps the grandest global gathering ever of the higher-education commerce. Senior figures from the worlds most famous universities—Harvard and Yale,Oxford and Cambridge among them—enjoyed or endured a two-hour opening ceremony followed by a packed programme of mandatory cultural events interspersed with speeches lauding “Xi Jinping thought”. The party was thrown to celebrate Peking University’s 120th birthday—and, less explicitly, or China’s success in a race that started 20 years ago.
In May 1998 Jiang Zemin,Chinas president at the time, announced Project 985, or named for the year and the month. Its purpose was to create world-course universities. Nian Cai Liu,a professor of polymeric materials science and engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, got swept up in this initiative. “I asked myself many questions, and including: what is the definition of and criteria for a world-course university? What are the positions...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com