Untangling “Chinese Characteristics”: An Examination of the China Discipline Evaluation with Chinese Characteristics and What it Implies

The terminology “Chinese characteristics” is ubiquitous in the political language of the Chinese government. It is seen and heard everywhere but defining quite what it means is a different matter. What are these Chinese characteristics, how do they distinguish a Chinese political agenda from other countries, and what do they imply? Surprisingly the answers to these questions remain unclear. This paper is specifically interested in the mobilising of the idea of Chinese characteristics of China’s science evaluation programme: the China Discipline Evaluation (CDE). It is one of the key parts of the higher education reform in China since 1978 to grapple with the global knowledge-based economy. This paper is developed in three parts. It begins by laying out the broad landscape of the science evaluation policies across several countries including China, so as to distil the distinctiveness of the CDE. Then it moves to focus on the CDE and locates it in its historical and social-political context. In a third part, it investigates the origin of and use of Chinese characteristics, and presents an account that the idea of Chinese characteristics is a rhetoric modality in Chinese political language which describes, labels, and legitimates self-contradictory phenomena that are unique to China. At the same time, it also draws attention to the idea of Chinese exceptionalism that is touted as irreducible to other cultural forms. Based on these premises, I suggest three fundamental dimensions of the idea of the Chinese characteristics of the CDE, namely (i) the paradoxical status of the evaluation agency, (ii) the co-existence of contradictory values embedded in the objectives and criteria of the evaluation, and (iii) the promotion of the visibility of the idea of China at the international stage. In exploring these Chinese characteristics, it shows that although the CDE is seemly an instrument for decentralisation, it is in essence a “hegemonic project” and “hegemonic apparatus” to achieve the party-state’s ambition in securing domestic stability and seeking international competitiveness.