Engagement With China From Inside and Out: Kindness and Academic Dialogue

Abstract

This special collection draws upon themes discussed at the annual China and Higher Education conference series started at the University of Manchester. One recurring theme concerns the experiences of academics in Chinese institutions, particularly international and returnee academics in China and the related recruitment and management policies. The articles in this issue all relate to this theme, as well as wider processes of cooperation between China and ‘external’ partners or ‘outsiders’. In this light we also propose more attention to the notion of ‘kindness’ to describe both the theory and practice of these engagements.

As the IJCE grows in strength scale with 100-plus submissions each year and over 100,000 downloads and ballooning citations, and as the broader academic world keeps turning, a series of guest editors or editorial teams have been invited to curate special collections. These editorial arrangements help open up new platforms, perspectives and contributions. As a daimond/platinum open access journal, IJCE publishes ‘special collections’ which vary from the traditional special issue given the dynamic and online form of publication. Papers are published as they flow through the editorial and production processes, alongside those from general submission, and are then are collected together through an editorial and online mechanisms. In early 2022, Miguel Antonio Lim, Rui He and Choen Yin Chan were invited to design options for a suite of papers which would make an interesting contribution about Chinese higher education using the IJCE platform. A series of authors and papers were identified which were submitted into the regular editorial process, resulting in the publication of five papers.

Papers in this special collection were originally presented at the fourth China and Higher Education (ChinaHE) conference in 2021. The ChinaHE annual conference series, spearheaded by a group of academics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, was set up as a platform for researchers to discuss the overlapping issues between China and Higher Education studies. Throughout the years, over 200 hundred abstracts and papers have been submitted to the conference attesting to the heightened interest of the academic community in China’s growing role in global higher education as well as higher education policies and practices in other countries.

Internationalisation of higher education in and outside of China continues to face unprecedented challenges, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following continuous quarantines and lockdowns, immediate concerns in the international higher education sector focused on issues such as financial instability (IAU, 2020) and (im)mobility of international students (Mok et al., 2021). China was placed at the forefront of such discussions due to the country’s status as both a leading source country for international students and a significant host of international students and academics from other countries (Wen & Hu, 2018). Yet, questions about the role of China and international higher education were raised well before the global health crisis. For example, Chinese students have increasingly questioned the value of an international higher education degree (Huang & Turner, 2018). Scholars have similarly argued that the value and benefits of international higher education unevenly impact different social groups (Riziv, 2019). Mobility, in particular, has been spotlighted in this debate, considering the tendency for elite, privileged groups to have the greatest opportunities to be internationally mobile (Brooks & Waters, 2011). International academics’ experiences in China have also drawn a lot of attention.

From the very beginning, the annual conference series was meant to foster dialogue between researchers from different academic and national backgrounds who were interested in the emerging role of China. In the time since the start of the conference, there have been challenges to the global perceptions of Chinese policymakers which have extended to Chinese academics and students. COVID scapegoating of China and allegations of intellectual property theft are only two of the challenges that have arisen in recent years. With this backdrop, we propose to reignite interest in connections between those considered ‘outsiders’, which could be understood through the lens of nationality and geography, but also in other socio-political aspects, and China. This concern and research area is applicable to all fields but in our case and for this special collection lies with the area of ‘higher education’, in reframing the existing narratives, and promoting education development, understanding exchange and global ‘kindness’. We propose a renewed attention to practices and theories of ‘kindness’ in light of increasing polarisation and even international conflict with respect to China and its interests. This proposal builds on recent work by scholars such as Cheng and Adekola (2022), who propose kindness as a lens for understanding Chinese students and contributing to their learning and development.

The polarising debates in many countries frequently impact issues and discourses around Chinese higher education, Chinese students and academics, and those who work and collaborate with them. Krane et al. (2017) and Markle (2019) find that acts of kindness create positive impacts on students’ learning and wellbeing. The term kindness is linked in studies with ‘trust’ (Jasielska, 2020), ‘happiness’ (ibid), ‘positivity’ (Passmore & Oades, 2022), ‘safety and calm’ (Layous et al., 2017). These are in stark contrast to the largely negative concepts that Chinese international students and academics used to describe some of their anxieties during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many were subjected to racist aggression (Lim et al., 2022). Anxieties and ‘unkindness’ in higher education predate COVID. Unkind experiences have been outlined by Chinese and Chinese international students linked to increasing pressures to perform in higher education (Ma, 2020). Stereotyping and deficit narratives of Chinese international students also limits a sense of empathy and kindness as portrayed by institutions.

What the papers in this special issue do is to show the connections between ‘foreign’ scholars in China and highlight a range of ways in which kindness could potentially reshape their experiences and engagement with their Chinese employers and colleagues. Chen, J. and Zhu, J. (2022), Zhang et al. (2022) and Mouritzen (2022) show that scholars often encounter cross-cultural difficulties but that acculturation strategies and empathy can be powerful tools to overcome these difficulties. Mouritzen’s (2022) reflection on liminality is a challenge to policy makers to bridge this liminal gap that foreigners experience. Santiago et al. (2022) show that a range of fruitful collaborations are possible, and not just in ‘hard’ science but in areas where care and kindness are important such as scientific advances in healthcare. Finally, Marini and Xu (2023) while studying the ‘research influence’ of foreign academics in relation to their ‘domestic’ counterparts show that those who collaborate with international colleagues achieve greater ‘influence’ but it is nevertheless a cautionary tale to critically understand whether the race for research influence is itself a contributor to unkind environments.

These studies highlight different forms of collaboration between China and international partners but can serve as a starting point to studies about the experiences and construction of kindness among individuals in these collaborations. Some may think that kindness is an approach of the naive, but we would argue that a frank and open dialogue regarding the potential and the limitations for ‘kindness’ as an approach that affects change in teaching, research, and social responsibility in higher education. We would also like to consider how kindness can be incorporated into organisation and general culture (Kaplan et al., 2016) and as a ‘moral duty to act that extends beyond legal responsibility’ (Cheng & Adekola, 2022). What role can China and higher education play to promote kindness?

The articles submitted to this special collection offer interesting insights on the issues and questions outlined above from outsiders’ (i.e. non-Chinese scholars) perspectives. We hope that they contribute to the ongoing construction of a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding and narrative of China and higher education.