Events

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is known to be a Chinese government-led vision that emphasizes infrastructural developments to achieve economic cooperation and market integration among countries along proposed routes spanning across Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. The component of education and training, however, has also emerged as an important aspect of this trans-continental project. In 2016, the Education Action Plan was released to serve as a blueprint for building a transnational educational community to spur collaborations and exchanges among countries on the Belt and Road routes. According to the plan, the fundamental mission of education is to “serve as a bridge to closer people-to-people ties, whereas the cultivation of talent can buttress the efforts of these countries toward policy coordination, connectivity of infrastructure, unimpeded trade, and financial integration along the routes” (EAPBRI, 2016). Education is thus imagined as a vehicle to promote mutual learning for improving development of education at both country- and regional-level, to deepen cross-cultural understanding and bonds, and to cultivate talents and future leaders needed to advance the BRI. In other words, education and training is meant to develop the ‘soft infrastructure’ (Peters, 2019) that would hold together and sustain this ambitious vision.

At the same time, China has played a significant role in the context of international higher education as both a ‘sender’ of international students to and ‘importer’ of educational models from western countries. The BRI framework, however, is changing this pattern. China is now gaining prominence as a hub for hosting international students, particularly for its role in contributing to greater levels of intra-Asia student mobility, and this achievement has been attributed partially to the Belt and Road Scholarships. Additionally, there are attempts to export Chinese educational programmes to the rest of the world, such as the setting up of Confucius Institutes and scholarships across Asia to promote Chinese education and values, the formation of various high-level educational partnerships such as the University Alliance of the Silk Road and the University Consortium of 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, as well as the establishment of international branch campuses and joint educational ventures such as the Xiamen University Malaysia and Soochow University in Laos. These developments manifest what Yang (2010: 243) observes as a “new form of China’s higher education internationalisation, featured by a much-improved balance between introducing the world into China and bringing China to the world”. The scale, speed and comprehensiveness of these internationalisation efforts has also spurred questions about the role of Chinese higher education in wider geopolitical and international influence, knowledge and cultural diplomacy, as well as its potential in re-scripting the prevailing western hegemony in global higher education.

The primary objective of this workshop is to create an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in how the BRI is revising patterns and processes of higher education and academic mobilities (including those of faculty, researchers and students) in East and Southeast Asian regional contexts. We are keen to understand how different actors and institutions are responding to opportunities and challenges emerging from this current reconfiguration of the global landscape of higher education. We are also interested in generating novel approaches towards understanding the role that China and Chinese education plays in shaping contemporary globalisation of knowledge spaces, with interests particularly in ‘rising’ Asian universities, intra-Asian student mobilities, and the prospects for Asian regionalism.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Understanding Scholarship Provision in Relation to International Mobilities: The Case of China
Johanna WATERS, University College London

Belt and Road Initiative: Implications on China’s International Student Mobility
Rochelle Yun GE, University of Saint Joseph

China in the Global Field of International Student Mobility: An Analysis of Economic, Human and Symbolic Capitals
Peidong YANG, Nanyang Technological University

Staff and Student Mobilities at a Mainland Chinese International Branch Campus in Malaysia
Sin Yee KOH, Monash University Malaysia

Mobile Scientists, Mobile Knowledge Worlds, Shifting Political Subjects
Ravinder SIDHU, University of Queensland

Panel Discussant | Parvati RAGHURAM, Open University, and National University of Singapore

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Yi’En CHENG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Prof Brenda S.A. YEOH
Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Assoc Prof Kong Chong HO
Asia Research Institute, and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you complete the form below to RSVP.