World-Class University Building in China: Culture Matters

World-Class University Building in China: Culture Matters Hongshia Zhang1, Shu Gao21: Institute of Education2: School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences Nanjing University, China, 210093 2010,10,19

In terms of the issue, most of domestic literatures have paid much attention to the statistic data, such as publications in SCI journals, so the conclusions are normally very optimistic. Very few take cultural factors into account, even less concerned with the academic traditions of the culture, which underpins all activities of a university. This study, then, focuses on the impact of Chinese epistemological traditions on the activities of present Chinese top universities.

The two systems as showed in the two triangles and the the table are consistent by oneself, but they are incompatible with each other; this has caused many conflicts in the campuses of Chinese top universities today. So, this study will elucidate the current conflicts by focusing on three aspects of university: Knowledge Creation Processes Knowledge Evaluation Process Knowledge Dissemination Methods

1. Concept of Science Take archaeology as an example. As Dr. Tang (2010) appointed, the most striking problem in Chinese archaeology is the belief and attitude of the archaeologists to “the Ancient”. There are two tracks of conceptions of “the Ancient” here; one is in the normal reality domain, and the other is in the Chinese ideological domain. So some of the researchers are inclined to search the merit side of the ancients regardless of the truth, which is against the scientific principle of modern archaeology. I．Knowledge Creation Processes

2. Concept of Discipline Construction In order to cope with the requirement of WCU standard, Chinese universities are busy in “discipline construction” work without serious consideration on the issues raised by Dr. Tang. One of the “discipline construction” program is called “Key Discipline Bases” initiated by the central government. In order to make their disciplines to be selected as one of the “bases” and then get extra resources from the government, many deans of departments/schools spend tremendous time and energy running between their campuses and government offices to “making relationships” which largely connotes corruption actually.

One of the reason of this situation is that research fields in China are divided into a national hierarchical system, rather than the taxonomic one in the Western system. So the most important task for Chinese deans is to promote their disciplines as many as possible into the “Key Disciplines Bases” regardless of the nature of the discipline and their relationships with others.

Another reason is that the understanding of Chinese officials and some professors about “basic fields”, “professional fields”, “cross-disciplinary cooperation” and their precise roles in university development is not congruent with those by WCU faculties. For instance, most Chinese professors like to call their research interests as “disciplines” rather than “fields”, because the latter is regarded as too trivial by their academic community.

3. Uniqueness of Social Science In the West, natural sciences and social sciences are related intrinsically to each other; science principle has logically and historically led to democratic beliefs and market-based social systems which reversely produced modern social sciences. But it was/is not the case in China. Thus, given that the faculty in social sciences and humanities have limited sense of modern theory of liberty, democracy and scientific way of reasoning, can their counterparts in natural sciences work with them effectively in cross-disciplinary research, setting up research evaluation standard and procedures, and working out general education aims and curriculum in university-wide, etc.?

Some Chinese scholars in social science fields encounter many practical dilemmas between, e.g. Social responsibility and the sense of duty for the country; Academic integrity and surviving in their academic community; Internationalism and patriotism. These conflicts are reflected in the whole process of research including topic selection, method adoption, results communication etc (Zhang, 2010b).

At many student oral examination meetings you may often hear such critics as: “Your idea is wrong”; “Since your viewpoint is wrong, you couldn’t have a correct result”; “Why don’t you read the book written by [someone important]?”; “Your conclusion is one-sided and incomprehensive.” Very few care about new findings, new methods, or new data, even in some natural science fields. Similarly, very few care about the standard of reference citation. II．Knowledge Evaluation Process

As Weiping Yang (2010) , the party secretary of the Institute of Beijing Gene Group pointed out that, “The peer review system in China is not conducted properly, since too many power-holders from the academic, administrative and political sectors manipulate the process. For instance, the Chinese academician system does not play a good role for constructing a democratic and fair research community.”

The current crisis of scientific integrity is another prominent problem. In consequence of the Confucius’s saying, as stated previously in the triangle, there is a modern version of Chinese saying: “Stealing books is not categorically stealing”. Stealing knowledge is perceived largely as showing admiration to knowledge and the author. So it must be difficult for Chinese students and even many scholars to understand why plagiarism is so wrong.

In WCU, the processes of research, learning, and teaching, as well as social services, are conducted in a holistic manner (Levin, et.al, 2006). The underline rationale is what we just showed in the Dewey’s philosophy triangle. So it has become a convention that knowledge creation process involves students to participate, which is referred to as “research-teaching integration model”. In addition, teaching is also supposed to have some appropriate concerns with social needs. III．Knowledge Dissemination Methods

The holistic process in WCU makes the educational aim of cultivating student critical thinking conforms to the spirit of scientific finding of the faculty,so that they can be efficiently fulfilled in the same process. It is not the case in China however. Many researches on Chinese student learning styles have revealed that the absorbing style is the dominated one, which is congruent with the instilling teaching style and the lack-of-creation research paradigm of the faculties.

There are a series of educational contradictions on Chinese campuses, such as those between the traditional moral education and modern citizenship theories, between scientific principles and traditional Chinese humanities. In addition, the curricula of natural sciences are encouraged to be structured in line with the Western standard, while humanities and social sciences stay very Chinese.

Apart from education, another major knowledge dissemination activity considered here is publication. There is a unique system of publication regulation in China. The most striking one is the “edited monograph” which implies that it is legalized to copy or re-organize the ideas, sentences and even paragraphs in other’s books as long as the referenced literatures are listed at the back of the book in the form of bibliography.

Conclusion The concept of knowledge for a significant number of university faculty are still affected by the Confucius tradition. This results in the problematic situation in research processes, educational aims and methods etc. This implies that it will takes a long time for a Chinese university to “grow” into the league of WCU. The term “grow” here means that the Renaissance gap in Chinese history has to be filled up in some forms, because only if the scientific beliefs of knowledge, rather than merely the factual knowledge and technologies, have been “adopted”, can the knowledge creation enterprise be nationalized in China.

Thank You !

“Believe in the ancients’ saying; disseminate them with loyalty.” Learning for being appointed as officials Hierarchical social strata Traditional Chinese Philosophy of Edu.

Science-based contingent-upon knowledge Democratic society Dewey’s Philosophy of Education Natural-grow needs of students Back

The main function of Shuyuans was to prepare students for the Chinese civil service examination (1300s -1905) which consisted of essay questions testing candidate's understanding of the Confucius teaching. The examination determined whether the candidates could be appointed as feudal officials. The whole process of knowledge creation, as well as the assessment and dissemination in Shuyuans was totally different from that in the universities of past and present. Back

The central ideology of Daoism is: “To be adaptive to Nature”, then “Doing nothing is the best way for governing”. The main difference between Daoism and Confucianism is that the latter does encourage people to do something instead of nothing, but none interested in Nature, caring little beyond the internal relationships of people. Thus, whenever encountered with disasters, Chinese tend to find solutions through adjusting the relationship instead of targeting the Nature. Back

Chinese knowledge were divided into four categories in the Qing Dynasty: Jin, Confucius Teaching; Shi, History; Zi, Books by other Ancients and Ji, Literature. The western counterpart was/is sciences, social sciences and humanity.

This means modern disciplines have been introduced to and operated in Chinese universities for only about a hundred years. The natural development or evolution of Chinese epistemology was stopped by the Opium War and then skipped into the stage of the modern time without waiting for the appearance of the book like “The Novum Organum” which constitutes the basis of the modern scientific research paradigm in WCU today. Back

World-Class University Building in China: Culture Matters