As China has become a global power, it has sought to build an exportable educational model that will influence international education, while at the same time supporting the interests of the Communist Party. China has simultaneously in some ways strengthened its commitment to the Western university model and embraced its emphasis on the liberal arts and sciences as a way to drive innovation and economic progress. Chinese universities serve multiple constituencies: Chinese who will work in China upon graduation; Chinese who will seek employment outside of China, particularly in Belt and Road countries; non-Chinese who may hope to stay in China to work; and non-Chinese who will leave China upon graduation. How will the universities address these competing demands? They will draw on indigenous ideas in ways that are attractive both domestically and beyond its borders. Professor Gerard Postiglione of the University of Hong Kong has been observing this effort play out in the context of China’s push to become an international leader in the Belt and Road era. On June 19, Dr. Postiglione joined the National Committee for a conversation about higher education in Hong Kong and on the mainland, as well as the implications of China’s campaign to become a global leader in higher education.
Gerard A. Postiglione is Chair Professor in Higher Education in the University of Hong Kong, where he was associate dean for research and director of the Wah Ching Center of Research on Chinese Education. He received the Humanities and Social Science Prestigious Fellowship Award from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Research Grants Council in 2014. He received a Lifetime Contribution Award for studies in higher education by the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in 2015. He was inducted as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association in 2016. His autobiography was published in Leaders in the Sociology of Education in 2016. He received a second Best Book Award from the CIES in 2017. Routledge press will publish a collection of his research works in July 2017. His other book in press is entitled The Changing Academic Profession in Hong Kong.
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