Why China is mirroring Western education

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On the outskirts of a busy port city lies a university campus that looks a lot like a scene from the British Midlands. Students in hoodies and headphones wearing thick, rectangle-rimmed glasses discuss ‘critical thinking’ and on sunny days sit crossed-legged on the grass by a lake as construction dust blows in the wind.

Foreign institutions are falling over themselves to set up partnerships with Chinese universities

But some of these students have never liked a Facebook message or sent a friend request. They send tweets on Weibo not Twitter and upload photos on Weixin not Instagram.
Welcome to Ningbo in China, Northern Zhenjiang province, five thousand miles away from the UK.
Every international business in the world, from textiles to technology, is trying to access the Chinese market. The education business is no different.
Ningbo is famous for its entrepreneurs and foreign investment. For the last 10 years it has also been home to Nottingham Ningbo (UNNC) a satellite campus of Nottingham University.
The campus is a partnership between the University of Nottingham UK and the Wanli Education group, a Chinese state-owned company. Staffed with both Chinese and international academics, it is sold as a genuine UK university experience in China.
The Chinese dream 
This new fleet of universities is part of China’s big ambition to become a world powerhouse for education – for students from San Francisco to Shanghai.
Foreign institutions are falling over themselves to set up partnerships with Chinese universities - from cooperation projects to creating campuses that mirror their own in Chinese cities. For international universities this provides an opportunity to get a foothold in a country already obsessed with education. And more importantly for the students, for future business leaders in particular, it offers an insight into a marketplace that still proves elusive for international companies.
"I think being immersed in the country changes your sense of the reality of it, “said Joseph Healey, a Scottish banker in his early 50s who took a masters degree at UNNC after serving as a senior executive at the National Australia Bank. “I spent over 10 years discussing China with leaders in business [outside of China] and a big part of the problem is that we have a shallow understanding of the complexity of this country. So it is no surprise that so many businesses have failed.”

(Credit: Duke Kunshan Photography)

New York University, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Liverpool University, among others, have all set up campuses in China.
Meanwhile the Chinese government is pouring money in to transforming its education sector: in the last decade alone it quadrupled its number of annual university graduates. The country has also become the world's largest exporter of students, with nearly as many Chinese students studying for postgraduate degrees in England as there are Brits.
It now ranks 3rd in the world's most popular places for international study, behind only the UK and America, and is expected to attract more than half a million international students by 2020 studying degrees and study abroad programmes, according to the US-based Institute of International Education’s Project Atlas.
Challenges of China
But this huge expansion is not without its problems: there have been concerns over academic integrity at some institutions. In July 2012 Yale cancelled its programme at Peking University. The American Ivy League university allegedly blamed its decision on lower than expected interest in its courses. But its programme also faced controversy. In 2007 a biology professor openly criticised administrators for tolerating alleged widespread plagiarism amongst Chinese students.
International campuses like UNNC face a unique set of difficulties. Administrators must try to ensure a high standard of education and academic freedom in a country where politics can interfere in everything. In January, China's education minister vowed to ban university text books that promote 'Western values’, sparking widespread concern in Western educational circles.
The Chinese Ministry of Education has promised to provide foreign universities with the same freedoms they enjoy in their home countries. But the institutions must also comply with Chinese rules and regulations which means studying of Marxism is compulsory for Chinese students, for example, but not for international students.
And China's strict control of the internet also means that some foreign-based websites such as Google Scholar, a search engine which indexes scholarly literature across formats and topics, is blocked in the country. Researchers must use virtual private networks (VPN) in order to use such services.
There are other practical difficulties. While seminars are taught in English, many international students find themselves in classes where the majority of their classmates are not native English speakers. And this can create some significant obstacles.
“Mostly, Chinese students in class don't participate. Back home when you know you are right you tell the lecturer,” said Ella Appiah a 20-year-old student from Ghana studying for a bachelor’s degree in International Communications at UNNC.

(Credit: Alamy)

That might be more a product of cultural norms than any language barriers, said Amir Emamizadeh, a 19-year-old British student at UNNC. “Chinese students struggle in group activities as they don't have experience in that at high school,” he said.
Although to be sure for many of the students the advantages of being immersed in China far outweigh any of the difficulties. Students point out that being part of a rapidly changing society has significant advantages for their studies, in particular case work.
"As a global health student I feel that I have the advantage of studying in a country that gives me a first-hand experience in global health challenges in the 21st century. We have the chance to have field visits to different parts of China where we experience first-hand important health issues," said Kennedy Opondo, a 26-year-o