Abstract—The Chinese Dream presented by president Xi
Jinping focused on the renewal of the Chinese nation, the
prosperity of the country and the well-being of its people.
Incorporating the global influence ambition of China into
nation-building and education, this study employed a macro
policy analysis approach to synthesize the effects of the state-led
ideals on nation-building and the roles to be played by higher
education. A total of nine comprehensive policies, covering the
period 1985 to 2017, and receptive to globalization,
nation-building and higher education were selected. The
findings revealed that nation-building in the post-Moa era is
built upon three critical priority determinants labelled global
influence, socialist market economy and talent management.
These core nation-building determinants delineate specific
higher education guidelines in terms of citizen education,
science and technology, talent management, and innovation
amidst accelerating global modernization and freedom-of-mind
requirement for the establishment of a socialist consultative
democracy. The findings further offer direction to higher
education for the provision of a fit-for-purpose workforce
capable of operating in both a modern global and local market.
Index Terms—Higher education, nation building, policy
analysis, rejuvenation.
L. Steynberg is with the School of Economics and Management, Hebei
University of Technology, Tianjin, China. She is also with the Department of
Management and Entrepreneurship, Tshwane University of Technology,
Pretoria, South Africa (e-mail: steynbergl@tut.ac.za).
J. P. Grundling is with the Department of Management and
Entrepreneurship, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South
Africa (e-mail: grundlingjp@tut.ac.za).
B. Liu is with the Department of Economics and Management, Hebei
University of Technology, Tianjin, China (e-mail: liubing@hebut.edu.cn).
Y. Li is with the School of Economics and Management, Hebei
University of Technology, Tianjin, China (e-mail: yuan.li@hebut.edu.cn).
Cite: L. Steynberg, J. P. Grundling, B. Liu, and Y. Li, "Assessment of China‘s 1985-2017 Higher Education Policy Reform: Nation-Building Directives," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 10, no. 12, pp. 917-925, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).