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For all its problems on the student side, Western universities are still on top when it comes to research quality. I tend to think of our universities as top-tier research institutions glued precipitously to crappy status-stratified indoctrination centers and finishing schools. I mean, I can't tell you how many professors my peers had at university who very clearly hated teaching (particularly undergraduates). Chinese students come to the West to study because, unlike most local students, they're motivated to actually participate in research and aren't repelled by disagreeable professors.
The goal of the Chinese is a) to participate in the status system of Western universities and therefore enhance the prestige of China (even if they believe it's not as meritocratic as it should be, they still want in on that sweet status while it's for the taking) and b) to bring knowledge and expertise from the West to China.
Their geopolitcal strategy is to use Western institutions to springboard Chinese research. I have a friend who works for a technology firm out of a non-Western country, that has satellite locations in the US placed in strategic locations specifically to pull away talent from American R&D divisions and enhance their homegrown research. My belief is that Chinese students at American universities are there for very similar reasons. And that's particularly why a lot of the geopolitical debates concern Chinese students who study at American instutions and return home.
I have no doubt the eventual goal of the Chinese is to make their own universities better than Harvard or Yale, and presumably a combination of Han supremacism, Confucianism, and Communist ideology motivates their belief that they'll come out on top.
Fair assessment! I don't know if that's how they try and mold their own universities back home, but that is all plausible, I think.
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