The Sino-American Competition in Higher Education

During the Trump’s administration, the Chinese economy, when adjusted by purchasing power parity, surpassed that of the US, posing an unprecedented challenge in political, ideological and socio-economic terms, far exceeding what the Soviet Union or Japan had achieved in the Cold War, or what led the European Union (EU) to become the world’s largest single market prior to the European debt crisis and the war in Ukraine.

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Education serves as a vehicle for hidden competition between China and the US on several levels:

– Education as a public spending competition: US government expenditure on education remains at 5%–6% of GDP (6.1% in 2020), higher than the EU (5.1%) and OECD members (5.2%). In China, this figure increased from 2% before 2000 to 4% since 2001, similar to upper-middle-income countries (4.1%). With its purchasing power advantage, China produces twice as many university graduates as the US (3.94 million vs 2.01 million).

– Education as a political ideology competition: leading universities in both countries cooperate with governments through think tanks. In 2020, the US and China had 2,203 and 1,413 think tanks respectively. The Chinese government funds them through the National Social Sciences Foundation at USD 400 million each year for about 10,000 projects. Think tanks generate over USD 1 billion per year in revenue in the US, much of it spent on expensive political campaigns averaging over USD 100 billion every two years.

– Education as a science-and-technology (S&T) competition: China’s public universities are subsidised by the government, leading to low tuition fees (USD 700 per year). Of the 851 public and 424 non-public universities and 2,000 other higher education institutions in China, 116, 39 and 36 best public universities were generously funded by the central government in Project 211 in the 1990s, Project 985 in 1998–2017 and “Word’s First-Class Universities” programmes since 2017, respectively. The leading US universities are privately run, relying to a large degree on alumni donations (e.g., around 45% of the budget at Harvard). Tsinghua University has a similar fiscal revenue to Harvard, with S&T funding at 20% and tuition fees contributing 55%, both mainly paid by government. The National Science Foundation in the US funded 13,800 projects with USD 10.17 billion in 2022, while the National Science Foundation of China funded 45,700 projects worth USD 4 billion in 2020.

The Chinese and American models of education are in fierce competition as they represent the two great powers’ different approaches to public spending, political ideology, science and technology research, socioeconomics, and talent mobilisation. – Education as a socioeconomic competition: families in both countries provide generous support for education. In China, 700,000 training institutions employ ten million teachers for extracurricular tutoring as the majority of students can only enter public universities through standardised tests. In contrast, elite US universities do not base admissions solely on scores, and middle- and high-income families have to bear the cost of extracurricular activities outside of tests. Both models result in serious educational inequality, but outstanding applicants with an exceptional record in advanced courses or Olympiads have special channels for admission to elite universities in both countries.

– Education as a talent mobilisation competition: in the 1940s, the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb employed 130,000 people for USD 25.4 billion (in 2020 dollars), while in the 1960s the Apollo Project on human spaceflight spent USD 153 billion (in 2018 dollars) in public spending and employed 400,000 S&T talents. Today, NASA still employs 40,000 experts in cooperative projects with leading universities in the US, highlighting the significant role of the government in talent mobilisation. The Chinese Ministry of Education controls admissions for each programme in each university in a planned model, resulting in a higher proportion of S&T to humanities and social sciences students (1:1.1) than in the US (1:1.84). The most popular majors in China are engineering and business, accounting for 32.81% and 19.27% of students, respectively, whereas the top three majors in the US are business, medicine and social sciences for 19.4%, 12.49% and 10.6%, respectively.

– Education as a tech-venture capitalism competition: in 2022, China’s R&D investment exceeded USD 400 billion, ranking second in the world after the US. Most R&D came from the private sector, such as tech unicorns incubated by leading S&T universities. In the Global Unicorn Index 2023 of 1361 tech unicorns worldwide, 666 and 316 ones come from the US and China, respectively. The top three unicorns in China were founded by alumni of Tsinghua, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong, with the rest of the top 10 all from leading S&T universities.

The Chinese and American models of education are in fierce competition as they represent the two great powers’ different approaches to public spending, political ideology, science and technology research, socioeconomics, and talent mobilisation. China invests significantly in education, producing twice as many university graduates as the US each year, while elite universities in the US rely more on alumni donations. China’s planned educational model allows for more government control over admission programmes, resulting in a higher proportion of S&T students than in the US. Both countries prioritise education in incubating tech unicorns as a means of competing in global tech venture capitalism.