PKU, one of the most prestigious universities in China, was celebrating its Centenary in May 1998. The occasion required an exceptional speaker. With the support of the MoE and the Beijing municipal government, the university invited then President Jiang Zemin. PKU’s cautious suggestions on the content of the leader’s speech included a sentence on the promotion of ‘socialist world-class universities’. Jiang decided to be even bolder and removed the word ‘socialist’. The goal of ‘building world-class universities’ thus became the central phrase of Jiang’s celebratory remarks. The education bureaucracy of MoE and the media drummed up the new slogan, and university officials and academics participated in public sessions to study Jiang’s ‘important speech’. PKU and Tsinghua, officially and widely recognised as the two most prestigious and influential Chinese universities, seized this opportunity and jointly lobbied the government to put their money where their mouth was.
It was the beginning of Project 985 (as in 1998, May), formally launched the following year to promote a substantial upgrade in infrastructure and research capacity in these two universities and build them to be China’s first world-class universities. An unprecedented amount of special central funding entered their coffers, with an initial payment of 3.6 billion yuan for the first three years (round one) (Min & Wen, 2010, pp. 105-110; Guobing Zhang, 2010, pp. 59-62). Collective actions between the top two players played a powerful role in strengthening the advocacy on the centrality of research and education for China’s future development
strategies. The MoE was also an important actor in this process, advising on and assisting the two institutions’ collaboration, and promoting Jiang’s speech and ‘985’ proposal to the central bureaucracy and public opinion (Guobing Zhang, 2010, pp. 60-62).
Later in 1999, another seven elite national research universities were handpicked by the government and added to the prestigious Project 985 funding list. The seven institutions were: Fudan University (Fudan); Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU); Nanjing University (NJU); Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT); University of Science and Technology of China (USTC); Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU); and Zhejiang University (ZJU). As a result of the significant investment, they have achieved rapid growth and strong performance (Jinchun Li, 2007, p. 49).
Despite further expansion of the Project 985 in the following years,70 these nine institutions continue to be referred to as ‘the first nine’ (qian jiu suo 前九所), which sets their elite status apart from other Chinese national universities. Among the nine, a de facto ‘2+7’ structure is widely acknowledged and the dominant role of the two backbone universities PKU and Tsinghua remains explicit, which has had a long-term impact on the relationships between the nine universities.
Fast-forward to November 2002. The 16th Party Congress had just appointed a new leadership in President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. The initial years of the decade were a difficult time for the country, with SARS hitting Chinese cities and the consequences of global
downturns affecting China in various ways. Wen was widely believed to have an aversion to elitism and was willing to curb inequality in favour of a more equitable distribution of resources in society. This was also true of education. Suddenly Project 985 was on a shaky ground, facing principled opposition at the highest level. The elite national research institutions were concerned, as the failed extension of the funding scheme would be a significant setback. The universities known for their fierce competition suddenly found common ground.
In 2003, they organised, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the first of what would become a series of annual symposia on ‘Building world-class universities’ (Tsinghua, 2003, p. 104; Zhong Zhou, 2010). Their joint goal was to prove to the leadership, with scientific methods, that Chinese academic institutions were far behind the world leaders in education and research, and that sustained Project 985 funding was imperative for China to catch up with the rest of the world. The MoE agreed and supported, and worked behind the scenes for the same goal. They successfully mobilised national media outlets to receive extensive media coverage and public reports. In particular, at this 2003 symposium, SJTU’s education research team unveiled the ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ (ARWU), demonstrating the disadvantaged positions of Chinese universities in the global index. In that ranking, Tsinghua, the top Chinese university, sat at around place 250, while PKU came in second at around 300 (ARWU, 2003). While the 2003 Tsinghua symposium was a larger affair, with a dozen national universities participating, university leaders described it to me as the first real collective lobbying action by
70 More Chinese universities were admitted into the Project 985 in the later years during the further development
phases of ‘Project 985’. Its members increased from nine in 1999 to 39 in 2011. In December 2011, Education Minister Yuan Guiren concluded that after a few rounds of project expansion in the last decade, the highly successful ‘985’ project would remain at their current scale from now on and no more universities would be added to the ‘985’ project (Xinhuanet, 2011). See Appendix D for the full list of Project 985 members.
the ‘2+7’ group. During the symposium, participating universities held split views and debated on ‘elitism’ versus ‘equity’ in the 985 funding allocations. Some suggested that if the
concentration of resources flowed only to the few top universities, it would adversely restrain other universities’ development and growth. The Project 985 funding strategy was a national matter, affecting the entire university sector rather than just a few elite institutions. Yet, the ‘2+7’ members argued that it would be a wise strategy for the government to prioritise and concentrate its limited resources on a small number of leading players to lift them to a world- class status. They emphasised that China should take advantage of its old tradition and Deng Xiaoping’s slogan of ‘concentrating energy on the targeted areas (key stakeholders) to accomplish large undertakings’.71 They also argued that leading universities would value their significant national missions and social responsibilities; as the vanguards, their breakthroughs and achievements would drive the development of other universities and the entire sector (Tsinghua, 2003, p. 106).
On the day when the Tsinghua symposium concluded, a number of participants (university executives and higher education experts) from the ‘2+7’ institutions gathered for an informal dinner to celebrate the successful event and discuss collaboration strategies. Over dinner, they formed a consensus that the symposium served as an important policy advocacy platform and should be held every year. They agreed to extend it amongst the nine members, as they shared significant common interests, strived for the same goal, and faced similar policy and development challenges. A participant in that fateful dinner explained to me how the membership of the nine was discussed:
We agreed that night that we had to establish and define some boundaries and thresholds for the symposia membership. If all 985 members were included in this annual symposium, it would be too difficult for us to manage. Not that we wanted to exclude anyone intentionally … Additionally, within the ‘nine’, the top two members Tsinghua and PKU preferred to call the network ‘2+7’ rather than ‘nine’, which would differentiate their topmost status from the other seven.
In May 2003, Tsinghua drafted an agreement to formalise the arrangement. It stated that Tsinghua and its Research Institute of Education intended to promote regular discussions on ‘building world-class universities’ amongst the nine institutions through a series of annual symposia (yiliu daxue jianshe xilie yantaohui 一流大学建设系列研讨会). Given the top two leading players’ status, Tsinghua first sought endorsement from PKU. After the leaders of both universities signed this agreement, it was circulated to the president’s offices of the other
seven institutions. Soon, this semi-formal collaborative framework was established, and the nine universities agreed to host the joint symposium on an annual rotation basis.