Education

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper visits China this week, it is largely with one thing in mind: to further cement trading ties between our two countries.

Yet it might behoove the Prime Minister to reflect upon the role that higher institutions of learning in both of our countries could play in deepening dialogue on the values that matter most to us. More profoundly, the Prime Minister should ask how we can better equip our next generation of students with critical knowledge on China to help them understand and facilitate a durable and broad-based relationship with that country.

In a research report recently completed for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, I document some startling findings: Canada, perhaps more than any other country, has played a pivotal role in the development of China’s system of higher education since the beginning of China’s period of Opening and Reform. According to the research of York University scholar Qiang Zha, the Canadian International Development Agency has invested more than $250 million in higher education since the early-1980s, an amount surpassed only by investments made by the World Bank during the same period. Much of this early funding went toward the development of basic capacity-building in professional studies, including a highly successful program to build Chinese management education.

Today, however, federal agencies such as CIDA are no longer providing education funding to China on nearly the same scale as they once did – a shift that reflects China’s rapid emergence as a global power, and the willingness of the Chinese government to invest in universities capable of producing the knowledge necessary for governing more than 1.4 billion people. Canadian universities, in turn, have responded to this shift by establishing joint agreements – often focused on maintaining or enhancing ties between professional programs. China, with Canada’s early help, has now become a world leader in the provision of technocratic, professional higher education, and Canadian universities want to be at the table.

Educational ties are deep between our two countries. But by and large what they do not do is offer Chinese and Canadian faculty and students the opportunity for shared opportunities to examine different perspectives on citizenship and what this means in a global age. On one hand, many academic disciplines, such as political science, have developed into a service industry in Chinese universities – forging public policy in the name of governance. This development means that larger questions of what is “just” and “fair” can be lost, and that disciplines such as political science can wind up upholding some of the authoritarian features of the Chinese political system, as Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council post-doctoral scholar Stephen Noakes has recently argued.

On the other hand, although Canada boasts some of the world’s leading scholars in Chinese studies in history, politics, society and religion, there is little regional or national infrastructure in place that provides Canadian scholars with a forum for building and enhancing humanities-based programming for research and teaching on China – whether within Canada or between Canadian and Chinese programs. Indeed, over the last 10 years two of the only national organizations that served to link Canadian-based China scholars in the past have suffered sharp declines in funding. This development stands in stark contrast to the Australian government’s recent commitment to invest millions of dollars in Chinese studies.

There are signs of promise, however, for the creation of stronger humanities-based programming within Canada and between Chinese and Canadian universities. Within China, a small but growing number of academics across the disciplines are seeking to break out of past constraints on their research and teaching and forge programs that train their graduates in critical-thinking skills. Back here in Canada, the subject of “Chinese studies” is rapidly expanding to incorporate Chinese-Canadian scholarship.

With Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) being the third most common language spoken in this country, and with increasing numbers of Canadians residing within the People’s Republic (some 300,000 at present), we are facing a moment in which we need to generate far more discussion with each other about China to understand what it means to be Canadian. These shifts offer important openings for new forms of collaboration – ways to encourage new generations of students in both countries to engage in the hard work of introspection and dialogue about values and how to best uphold them. We would do well to follow trail-blazing initiatives such as that of Professor Errol Mendes at the University of Ottawa, who worked with Beijing University, and with the help of CIDA funding, to produce three edited volumes on human rights.

But much more needs to be done, including establishing new publication outlets – unlike Australia, Great Britain and the United States, Canada does not have a single academic journal devoted to Chinese studies – as well as expanding and disseminating French-language scholarship on China and enrolling far more students in Chinese language programs. Just as important, funding is needed to establish far closer ties between colleagues working to develop and enhance humanities-based scholarship in China.

In the rush to do business with China, questions of justice and fairness need not be left behind. Prime Minister Harper’s trip to China offers an opportunity for Canadians to rethink how we want to engage with China and develop Chinese studies in Canada. There is much to be said for enhancing humanities-based scholarship and teaching to cultivate global citizenship within both of our countries.

This piece was first published in The Montreal Gazette on February 6, 2012.

Kimberley Manning is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University.