Auditing Chinese higher education? The perspectives of returnee scholars in an elite university

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature of audit culture in higher education against the backdrop of Chinese higher education in transition, this paper has discovered that Chinese higher education is undergoing an auditing process. However, this Chinese audit regime is not only guarded by a quantifiable scientism, but also by ideological control of communism and a Confucian guanxixue and paternalism to form a new synthesized pattern of governance, and thus is a different form from neoliberal audit culture in the West. Lastly, the paper warns against the threat posed by the collusion of economic and administrative rationalization to academia in China.

► Chinese higher education is undergoing an auditing process. ► This audit regime is a new synthesized pattern of governance. ► This governance has disintegrated and hierarchicized the academic community. ► It has created the economic-administrative rationalization threatening academia.