Educating ‘Socialist innovative graduates’ for the Chinese economy: An analysis of negotiations in China´s higher education reform

The Chinese government aspires to build its innovative capacity through `science and education´. Central to this process is the higher education reform with the objective to educate graduates with innovative and practical capabilities. The paper sets out to explore how this reform in constructed. The paper shows how policy and official rhetoric construct the innovative graduate as a `Socialist innovative graduate´, who on the one hand should be independent and creative and on the other highly knowledgeable and disciplined. This requires a fundamental reform of Chinese higher education toward interactive learning, combining Western and Chinese educational practices. Secondly, using a case study approach, the paper shows how this official strategy is modified when translated into practice. New and existing educational ideas and practices are negotiated, and consequently, at the current stage of the reform, institutional conditions for learning can be interpreted as being modernized rather than fundamentally changed. The `Socialist innovative agent´ is thus in reality more problem-solving and practical than independent and creative.