Several establishments, including the prestigious Renmin de Beijing University, have decided to no longer participate in international records, while President Xi Jinping called not to “copy standards and foreign models”.
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After the economic decoupling, are we going to attend an academic decoupling? The universities of Nankin, Lanzhou and especially the prestigious Renmin University of Beijing have decided to no longer participate in international higher education rankings. It is the National Radio website that has disseminated this information, adding that “it will become a trend”.
This announcement comes following a very publicized visit to President Xi Jinping at Renmin University on April 25. He had then declared that “China is a country with a unique history, a separate culture and a particular national context” and that “we cannot blindly follow others or just copy standards and foreign models when we build world class universities “.
has his eyes, “to trace a new path for world class universities with Chinese characteristics, we must remain faithful to the leadership of the party and to the orientation of Marxism and serve the cause of the party and the people”. In the evening, television had shown Xi Jinping leaving university to the applause of a chanting crowd: “We will remain faithful to the party and will be up to the confidence of the people”.
For the moment, Western observers remain cautious. “We do not know if it is only propaganda or a real basic movement that will affect university relations,” said a diplomat in Beijing. However, for several years that Xi Jinping is preparing such a movement. In May 2014, visiting the University of Beijing, he said: “There will never be a second Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Mit or Cambridge, but there will always be a first University of Beijing, Tsinghua, Zhejiang, Fudan and Nankin. “On September 22, 2020, he had presided over a meeting, ordering managers of the educational and cultural world to” put into practice the general plan of the education of the education of the new era “, a plan which will be published a few days later. Still in the fall of 2020, the Renmin University created its own research center on university assessment and announced that it would no longer collaborate with international classification organizations from 2022.
“Inclusive approach”
Questioned by Le Monde, the American company Quacquarelli Symonds, which publishes one of the most renowned rankings – the QS World University Ranking -, says that it will continue to have an “inclusive approach”. “In the rare cases where institutions are not directly engaged with us, we strive to find reliable data from other trusts worthy of confidence to be sure that our rankings are as complete and reliable as possible”.
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