The widely established role of higher education institutions in contributing to regional development is now also encouraged by the Chinese government. This development has been enabled by changes in state policy that in some respects align with global trends towards expansion, marketisation, and regional decentralisation in national higher education systems. However, the regional engagement of higher education institutions in China takes distinctive forms that are shaped by specific features of its governance system, including the politicisation of higher education, the incorporation of higher education institutions into the administrative hierarchy, and the disequilibrium of funding schemes between central and provincial owned higher education institutions. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of this relationship between higher education and regional development in China. It argues that the policy to encourage regional engagement by higher education institutions in China has generally served to enhance patterns of regional inequality between the coastal and inland regions and between upper- and lower-administrative level cities.
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