Strategic agency dynamics of higher education institutions in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA)

The Chinese government proposed the concept of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in 2019, adding the Hong Kong and Macao two Special Administrative Regions to the original Pearl River Delta in the Mainland China, aiming to achieve regional economic and cultural integration on the political basis of “One country, two systems”. Many Chinese scholars describe this regional rebranding as a strategic approach to benchmark against the San Francisco Bay Area and New York Bay in the United States, and the Tokyo Bay in Japan, and collectively refer to the world four major bay areas including the GBA. The concept of GBA is driven by the popular top-level design policy of the Chinese central government in recent decades, and several sectors are promoted to cooperate in the region to better improve economic and innovation development. The higher education sector, in the context of the Covid-19 suspension of customs clearance between the Mainland and Hong Kong, plays a leading role to act, which engage many universities from Hong Kong, Macao, and other provinces in mainland China to gather in the Guangdong area of GBA to establish campuses or new universities. At present, more than 15 different types of new universities and university campuses have been established, including universities in Hong Kong and Macao. Different types and degrees of academic autonomy, university governance, and culture under the “One country, two systems” have brought diversification to higher education sector in the region, but at the same time buried challenges. While the GBA is a significantly ambitious project, to which several resources have been allocated, there is still little understanding on how government, province and city policies interplay and how higher education institutions respond to the policies and the emerging opportunities. Against this backdrop, this study investigates the GBA as an ecosystem in which universities interact with a multiplicity of political, policy, economic and social actors in order to implement the development plans set up by the central government in Beijing. This study contributes to this debate from a conceptual perspective – how to study cross border integration of HE; from a methodological perspective – in penetrating the invisible barriers and gather in-depth information on how actors engage with the GBA; and from a policy impact perspective, by providing a better understanding of changing dynamics in Chinese HE. Our hypothesis is that even in a system with strong political steering by the central, provincial and city governments, higher education institutions are able not only to respond strategically, but also to engage with innovative practices. Our preliminary findings show that across the Guangdong region in mainland China, as well as in Hong Kong and Macao, universities position themselves strategically with new campuses, programmes, partnerships and joint education.