The ‘internationalisation agenda’ and the rise of the Chinese university: Towards the inevitable erosion of academic freedom?
| Author | Catherine Owen |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119893633 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119893633
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(2) 238 –255
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148119893633
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The ‘internationalisation
agenda’ and the rise of the
Chinese university: Towards
the inevitable erosion of
academic freedom?
Catherine Owen
Abstract
This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the
globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the
internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production
whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet
partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different, non-liberal and, perhaps,
incommensurable values. Therefore, in advancing the internationalisation agenda in non-liberal
environments, UK-based scholars find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place: either
legitimising and sustaining the subjection of knowledge production to the state on one hand, or
engaging in a form of epistemological colonialism by demanding adherence to ‘our values’ on
the other. Using Chinese research culture as an illustration, the article contributes to ongoing
debate on the ethics of social science research collaboration with universities based in contrasting
epistemological cultures.
Keywords
China, decolonisation, epistemology, illiberalism, internationalisation, university
The production of knowledge has always been a boundary-crossing endeavour.
Universities are typically one of society’s most ‘global’ institutions and academics have
tended to be cosmopolitan citizens (Teichler, 2004: 8). Nevertheless, the international
dimension of university activity has dramatically increased over the last 30 years, as glo-
balisation has intensified the means through which universities around the world may
communicate, collaborate and compete with one another. Thus, what has come to be
Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Corresponding author:
Catherine Owen, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4
4RJ, UK.
Email: C.A.M.Owen@exeter.ac.uk
893633BPI0010.1177/1369148119893633The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsOwen
research-article2019
Original Article
Owen 239
known in Britain as the ‘internationalisation agenda’ has become an important strategy
for the co-ordination of education and knowledge production in this interconnected envi-
ronment. Materially driven by national economic imperatives and discursively sustained
by global ranking tables and scholarly journals’ impact factors, processes of internation-
alisation unwittingly universalise not only the form and structure of the Euro-American
university, but also Euro-American epistemologies and ways of knowing (Chakrabarty,
2000: 5).1 Universities that deviate from this model perform poorly on these Western-
centric indicators of excellence and are erased from the global landscape of higher educa-
tion (Yang, 2014).
The central contention of this article is that, in the context of contemporary interna-
tionalising trends, whether one promotes approaches to knowledge production dominant
Euro-American universities or seeks to diversify or decolonise international research
partnerships, the result is a reduction of epistemic pluralism in global academia.2 This is
due to a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are
premised upon forms of knowledge production which consider that ‘professors and stu-
dents must be free to pursue knowledge wherever it leads and to publish their work freely
without fear of sanction by either academic of external authority’ (Altbach, 2015: 6), yet
partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different, non-liberal and,
perhaps, incommensurable values.3 Therefore, in advancing the internationalisation
agenda in non-liberal environments, UK-based scholars may find themselves caught
between a rock and a hard place: either legitimising and sustaining the subjection of
knowledge production to the state on the one hand, or engaging in a form of epistemologi-
cal colonialism by demanding adherence to ‘our values’ on the other. If Levine and
McCourt (2018: 93) are right to argue that the pluralism underlying the study of politics
in Western universities necessarily entails ‘epistemological scepticism’ insofar as ‘no sin-
gle knowledge system can ever possess the whole truth, at least as this applies to political
matters’ then Western-based scholars must be open to decentring the ways of knowing
dominant in Western universities. But what happens when, in so doing, we open the door
to challenges to that very pluralism? To recall Isaiah Berlin’s famous metaphor, it appears
that the internationalisation agenda is driving scholars to speak the language of the fox, a
pluralist who knows many different things, while our epistemic practices remain associ-
ated with the hedgehog, a monist who knows one big thing (Berlin, 2013).
In what follows below, I consider this tension using the example of the growing influ-
ence of China as a non-liberal actor in global higher education. I locate its differing epis-
temological approaches in their historical and cultural contexts, demonstrating that social
science knowledge production in the Chinese university is shaped by the triple, mutually
reinforcing logics of its Confucian heritage, the increasing governmental control of the
public sphere and the rapid economic development of the university sector. The result is
that social science knowledge performs a very different, arguably incommensurable,
function in both locales: while study of social science in the the Western university has
maintained a relatively independent, critical space in relation to state power, in Chinese
universities it has endured tense relations with the Chinese government in its short history
and continues to be subject to close government scrutiny. Existing theoretical lenses, I
argue, can do little to overcome this problem of epistemological incommensurability. The
liberal approach broadens the space in which a diversity of epistemological standpoints
may be articulated, but fails to provide insight into the historic power dimensions that
have shaped – and continue to shape – their interaction. Decolonial scholars argue that the
liberal approach is insufficient because epistemology is necessarily socially and
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