Are Chinese Universities Better?

Comparisons are Odious, but are Chinese universities better than their Indian counterparts? If we go by the hard facts, the simple answer is yes. But the simple answer is not always the correct answer. If we were to reflect more seriously on the ultimate intent of higher education, the answer to our initial question becomes more inflected and complicated.

For instance, if the primary purpose of a university is to not merely to disseminate information and impart skills, but nurture creative and critical thinking, the superiority of Chinese universities over their Indian counterparts is questionable. 

Not that all Indian universities excel in creativity and critical thinking. As a rule, they do not. But at their very best, at the apex of India’s hierarchical higher education pyramid, our top universities, and institutes of technology and management do produce critical and creative leaders, even prodigies. Unfortunately, most of the latter are exported out of India and fulfil their true potential in advanced Western countries. But that’s a topic for discussion at another time. Yet the plain truth is that the number of global CEOs awarded their first degrees in India far outnumber those from China.

That’s because Chinese higher education institutions excel in programmatic, not creative, thinking. As for criticism and dissent, their scope is severely limited in the prevalent single-party dictatorship. Big Brother watches over all university agendas, even departmental meetings. Deviance is identified and punished.

Free thinking in China may be possible in limited safe spaces, but competition and intrigue makes it infrequent and risky. On the other hand, India is a criticism-surplus society. Our campuses are hotbeds of discussion, debate, dissent, even anti-government protest and propaganda. Though the latter have been more restricted in recent years.

In my many visits to China and Chinese universities, I found it very difficult to persuade faculty and students to speak about their work conditions, let alone express opinions about national or global issues. Discussion on politics or socio-economic conditions of China is totally out of bounds. In general, people tend to mind their own business, sticking to their own well-defined tasks and responsibilities.

Ideas have utility only if they are useful to the 100-million strong CPC (Communist Party of China) which rules 1.4 billion Chinese with an iron fist. Therefore, every major university has specialised think tanks or groups of scholars and intellectuals working on specific problems and issues prescribed by higher-ups in the chain of command and control.

In that sense, China is devoid of public intellectuals, let alone gadflies that hold up a mirror to the government or CPC. This doesn’t mean that there is no feedback mechanism. Feedback  and ‘constructive criticism’ travel from the lowest echelons to the highest authorities, but strictly through the official CPC channels and hierarchies.

However, unlike India, China is essentially a meritocracy, albeit an authoritarian one. The best and most talented are spotted early and promoted up CPC and government ladlers basis their performance. Competence is incentivised, incompetence penalised. In sharp contrast to India, there are no reservations and quotas based on caste, religion, region and language.

Moreover, entrance exams to China’s best schools are entirely merit-based, with even offspring of powerful CPC members denied special treatment. Contrast this with India, where almost every seat in every government funded institution has a quota tag attached.

For the past 20 years in particular, China has been investing heavily in higher education. Therefore investment, infrastructure, and administration of China’s universities is generally far superior to their Indian counterparts. China has doubled the number of universities as well as the university-age enrolment. UNESCO Institute for Statistics puts the gross Gross Tertiary Enrolment Rate (GTER) of China at 48.44 % to India’s 26.93% for the year 2016 (https://www.livemint.com/Education/GP0k0R7jySJvdUQcoyxMAN/What-India-can-learn-from-Chinas-rise-in-higher-education.html). India’s H-index citations at 12.6 million also lag considerably behind China’s 39.2 million (ibid). Similarly, the aggregate number of foreign students in Chinese varsities is close to 500,000. In India the number is under 50,000, with most of them from Nepal, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

According to QS World University Rankings (WUR), China’s tally in the world’s top-500 universities has gone up from 16 in 2012 to 26 in 2022. More remarkably, for the first time, two, Peking University (12th rank) and Tsinghua University (14th rank), have made it to the top 15. In Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings, China’s share in the top-500 has increased to 24 in 2022 from 11 in 2016. India’s compares poorly, with only 7 in the top-500 QS WUR in 2012, with just one more ten years later. In the THE top-500 in 2022 India had only 5, one less than the 6 that made it in 2016.

(https://indianexpress.com/article/education/despite-language-barrier-chinese-universities-make-huge-gains-global-rankings-last-decade-8007350/) In the THE Asia rankings, Tsinghua University and Peking University are rated one and two in Asia. India has only 4 universities in the Asian Top 100 to China’s 17.

Admittedly China has done better than us when it comes to progress in higher education. But China envy is unwarranted. We cannot be like them, either as a state our society. With our mixed state and private higher education muddle, we must blunder on, finding our place in the global higher education system.

Top-down dictation of policy or ideological interference in the cause of nationalism or other pious principle will prove ruinous. The forcible imposition of Hindi or any other regional language as the primary medium of instruction would be an example of one possible gross error which we seem to on the brink of making. India’s floundering higher education institutions need less bureaucratic control in public universities and less commercialisation in the private sector.

Above all, universities must strive for, recognise, and reward excellence. Without that, India’s aspiration of being a visva guru or world teacher will remain a pipe dream or, worse, a foolish delusion.