The China-centric era? Rethinking academic identity for sustainable higher education internationalization in China

Although recent decades have witnessed remarkable development of China’s higher education (HE) since its Open Door policy in 1978, China’s cross-border collaboration in HE has not always been smooth. The global rise of neo-nationalism in recent years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, has put international academic collaboration under grave threat. This conceptual article first conducts a critical review of China’s strategy for HE internationalization to discern its underlying rationale and what is encumbering the process. By examining the concept of academic identity through the lens of academic nationalism and academic internationalism in Chinese HE context, it is argued that the crux of China’s cross-border collaboration issue may largely lie in the imbalanced nationalist and internationalist dimensions of Chinese academic identity. The article has implications for Chinese academics to balance their identities for better global collaboration and sustainable HE internationalization amid geopolitical tensions in an era of flux.