Education headlines this week have been dominated by the success of Shanghai high school students in this year’s PISA survey. If only journalists had asked those top scoring students about sampling issues, they may have learned that comparing Shanghai students to the otherwise national surveys included in the study is, well, something top scoring maths students would not likely do.
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CYBER@WAR.COM: The Rise of The Machines
Cyberspace is rapidly becoming a domain of conflict. Lack of a nuclear-type deterrent and an offense-dominated environment are breeding fear, distrust and over-reaction. Cyberspace is left relatively ungoverned, calling out for a similarly new type of revolution in global e-governance.
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The US Pivot – Peace, Circle, or Costly Experiment?
The US ‘pivot’, a policy of re-balancing America’s economic, military and political focus toward the Asia Pacific was instigate in 2011. The Pivot came in response to tensions in a region that is now at the centre of the world economy. Some however claim that it includes a common thread of policy initiatives that reveal a thinly veiled attempt to encircle China.
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China’s Special Education Zones (SEdZs)
The relocation of the University of Macau to Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, presents a unique frontier of the internationalisation of China’s higher education sectors. Here we look at the ongoing education-related changes in two Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Such is the ongoing and expanding scale of university experimentation in these zones, they may better and relevantly be known as SEdZs – Special Education Zones. Special Economic Zones In August 1980 two cities in China’s southern Guangdong province, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, were designated by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee as “The Economic Zone Ordinance in Guangdong Province” respectively. From foreign investment to financial and legal reforms, alongside three others, these…
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China’s Universities are Going West
(Go West) Life is peaceful there(Go West) In the open air(Go West) Where the skies are blue(Go West) This is what we’re gonna do – The lyrics of the earlier famous Pet Shop Boys hit could almost be those of China’s Western Development Strategy – aside from the fact that Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, is one of China’s more polluted cities. Launched in January 2000, the Western Development Strategy is comprised of 10 measures aiming to further develop China’s western region. The plan incorporates the ‘West” as the six provinces Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Yunnan, the municipality of Chongqing, alongside five autonomous provinces Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet…
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European vs Asian integration: is China Asia’s Germany…and Japan its UK?
As Xi takes China’s reigns at the 2013 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, it is worth a longer-term look at what might change in the region over his expected decade-long Presidency of the People’s Republic of China. In this commentary we do so comparatively, through the lens of regional changes underway in the European Union.
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Peking Dux: Beijing city and University Top China’s University Rankings
The contemporary push to raise an elite few Chinese universities to international standard began in 1998 at Peking University (PKU). At the 100th centenary celebrations of PKU, then President Jiang Zemin announced “China must have a number of top-class universities at the international level”. Project 985, named after the date of Jiang’s speech, has allocated additional funding to those select universities since.[1]
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Myanmar: Between Powers
Myanmar is one of just four countries in the world to share a border with both of the world’s most populous countries, the others being Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. It is also a land passage through which the Indian Ocean is accessible to China without passing the choppy waters of the South China Seas or the Straits of Malacca.
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North East Asia’s “Waterloo” in Gangnam
In 1974 the first Swedish pop band hit the English language Billboard Hit 100 with a cover of “Hooked on a Feeling”, by Blue Swede. The same year, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their hit ‘Waterloo’.
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China’s Educating Africa
Stories in the press of deepening China-Africa ties focus mainly on commodities, corruption, and labour struggles. Alongside these more commercial and economic ties, there are health, education and political exchanges.
