On the ‘Intrinsic Development’ of Higher Education in China

Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has begun to propose a neologism – the educational concept of ‘intrinsic development’. On the occasion of the 2012 Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress, President Jinping Xi again called upon people to promote the intrinsic development of higher education. During the past 25 years, Chinese higher education has gone through drastic changes and reforms, but regrettably the idea of intrinsic development has not been expounded or defined adequately, let alone properly practised. Based on actual developments in the past and on the present situation, the author of the present article aims to examine the concept of intrinsic development and how it has been neglected or even betrayed in reality. The author concludes that the core idea of the intrinsic concept lies in improving the academic quality and level of Chinese higher education instead of worshipping the dazzling numbers of papers published and projects undertaken, in the natural growth of education from the inside instead of the quantitative expansion pushed by outside forces, in building the higher institutions and the disciplines with distinctive features instead of pursuing universal ‘comprehensiveness,’ and in developing a higher education in accordance with its internal and intrinsic laws instead of submitting to external forces, whether they are political, economic, or commercial.