China expands successful world-class universities initiative

China will further expand its Double First-Class initiative to develop world-class universities and excellence in specific academic disciplines on par with the best in the world, Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng told a recent meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature.

The new phase of the initiative will include more interdisciplinary research, strengthened collaboration with industry, as well as adopting longer-term approaches to research.

Huai said the government will “moderately expand” the signature programme with a focus on ‘advantageous disciplines’ that more precisely match the country’s strategic goals. In recent years China has been culling university programmes to make way for more technology programmes related to key industries.

The Double First-Class initiative to boost the quality and international competitiveness of China’s higher education was launched almost a decade ago with 140 universities and expanded in 2022 to cover almost 150 universities.

Institutions and disciplines selected under the programme receive special funding for teaching and research in specific subject areas, as well as other benefits that can help them to compete with the world’s elite universities.

In a briefing on 5 November 2024 to a group of lawmakers during the NPC session, Huai pointed to the initiative’s “remarkable strides”.

“Since 2016, universities under the scheme have trained more than 50% of the country's masters and 80% of doctoral students and undertaken more than 90% of the special tasks of training high-level talents urgently needed by the country,” Huai said.

According to the minister, the scheme has delivered over RMB256 billion (US$35.5 billion) in research funding nationwide, with a number of universities and specific disciplines gradually entering the ranks of the world’s best, according to recent lists published by international rankings organisations.

“The overall international influence, competitiveness, and discourse power of China's higher education has been enhanced,” he said at a meeting of the NPC Standing Committee earlier this month.

The scheme now covers more than 500 disciplines at around 150 universities, with greater emphasis put on building world-class disciplines.

World-class in subject rankings

The ministry believes world-class disciplines can more effectively bolster global competitivenes compared to concentrating on universities, which are subject to a wide range of metrics and still fall behind their Western counterparts in various indicators.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Ranking, in its 2024 global ranking of academic subjects released on 11 November showed that Chinese universities led the charts in 18 disciplines.

Among them, Tsinghua University is ranked first in the world in two new disciplines – chemical engineering and environmental science and engineering.

This year, a total of 308 disciplines from 100 universities were selected. Peking University and Tsinghua University ranked first and second with 26 and 23 top-class disciplines, respectively, followed by Fudan University, Shanghai, with 14 top-class disciplines.

“The Double First Class initiative is transforming China’s higher education system, with far-reaching implications for global competition,” said Futao Huang, vice-director in the Research Institute for Higher Education at Hiroshima University in Japan, in a commentary this week for University World News.

Huang, an expert on China’s higher education system, noted that “many institutions participating in the programme have made notable strides in areas such as disciplinary development, talent cultivation, research innovation and global impact.

“Yet alongside these successes, there are critical challenges and areas that demand reflection and refinement to ensure sustained progress when it comes to reforming the higher education system”.

Huang noted that “to sustain momentum, Chinese universities must move beyond short-term academic output and prioritise long-term growth in research innovation, talent development and international partnerships”.

Huai said in his report to the NPC that some universities focused solely on the short-term goal of gaining world-class status. Under the current evaluation system universities are assessed on a range of indicators such as research paper citations. This has led them to churn out international publications instead of working to produce long-term results.

More interdisciplinary teaching and research

The next phase of the Double First Class initiative will also focus on promoting interdisciplinary research, according to Huai. Universities will be expected to unlock major scientific breakthroughs via broader integration and collaboration across disciplines.

“The model for talent development needs to evolve, with greater emphasis on integrating STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with the humanities, and on strengthening collaboration between education and industry,” Huai was quoted by official media as saying.

However, some scholars pointed to a contradiction between pushing to build specific disciplines, which in practice strengthens disciplinary divisions, and interdisciplinarity, which seeks to break down such barriers.

Chen Hongjie, a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Peking University, argued in a recent commentary that universities were less motivated by interdisciplinary research, which posed “an obvious dilemma” as disciplines not only remain an integral part of the higher education management system, they are also a “strong basis for the allocation of resources and power”.

“In practice, universities usually develop disciplines solidly and do some interdisciplinary work only in a superficial manner,” he wrote.

The NPC meeting also highlighted nurturing top research talent, including young researchers in basic disciplines. Compared to foreign counterparts, Chinese universities still have a “relatively big gap” in attracting talent, Huai noted.

Global technology rivalry

Against a backdrop of global technology rivalry, China has urged universities to step up the pace of breakthroughs and discoveries.

Huai cautioned that while major achievements have been recorded in fields such as manned spaceflight and lunar and Mars exploration, together they make up only a small number of “disruptive results”.

He particularly noted insufficient “original innovation”, a reference to major scientific discoveries and technological inventions that are unprecedented.

Universities should serve national strategic goals with “more precision”, he stressed.

Huai’s remarks underscored the role of universities amid an intensifying global technology race, according to an academic in education management at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, a new research university with world-class aspirations, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Referring to United States policies to restrict technology imports and to decouple from research collaboration with China in ‘sensitive’ fields, she said China’s “current strategic needs are about breaking the technological ‘blockade’ and enhancing the core competitiveness of independent science and technology”.

The lack of innovation could also be attributed to a need for academia-industry linkages, she told University World News, as a lot of research originates from enterprises rather than universities, many of them building “castles in the air” – a reference to research that is out of touch with industry needs.

The Chinese government has ratcheted up its efforts to achieve breakthroughs in critical technologies and to combat pressures on its domestic industries, in response to the US’ increasing restrictions on China’s access to key technologies.

Restrictions are likely to increase as Donald Trump becomes US president in January 2025. According to analysts the incoming Trump administration could potentially accelerate technological decoupling from China.

While some technologies, such as AI chips, continue to face bottlenecks as a result of US restrictions, others are still making headway, according to Tilly Zhang, a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, a Beijing-based consultancy firm.

“There are many moving parts; it is not that once some areas get blocked you then lose all original innovation capabilities,” she said, citing fields such as humanoid robotics and autonomous driving as technologies with ample room for “free exploration”.