Edu-plomacy with Chinese Characteristics: International Higher Education Exchange and Public Diplomacy along China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract:

Higher education exchange plays a crucial role in the cooperative pillars of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a trillion-dollar infrastructure investment and global development project launched in 2013. As part of its reemergence as a global power in recent decades, China and its higher education system have undergone tremendous modernization, in part through a renewed emphasis on attracting and educating global talent. This thesis examines contemporary Chinese education diplomacy from the perspective of foreign students in Shanghai, China from BRI signatory countries. Situating their experiences in the literatures of soft power and public diplomacy, and contextualizing this inflow of students within China’s long history of educational exchange, I consider whether these students are “successful” subjects of China’s international education system. These students, most of whom are attracted to China by generous scholarships and better postgraduation employment prospects, are simultaneously potential diffusers of positive foreign perception for the Chinese state, and a population of strong recognized legitimacy and political agency in their home countries. Through a foreign student survey and qualitative interviews with students, exchange student administrators, and Chinese education policy officials, I attempt to trace the impact of these students on China’s hallmark international aid and investment project of the twenty-first century.