Knowledge power or diplomacy? University alliances and the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

The growing importance of China as a major actor in international order has generated tremendous interest among social scientists, but scholarly debates remain in their disciplinary confines. Our study connects existing international relations research on China and the Belt and Road Initiative with two concepts in higher education studies—knowledge power and knowledge diplomacy—to reveal the multi-faceted approach that China applies towards its “outward-oriented” internationalization activities in the knowledge domain. By studying two instances of university alliance-building through the Belt and Road Initiative, an empirically less examined area in both international relations and higher education studies, we demonstrate how China embraces a knowledge diplomacy approach in the case of the University Alliance of the Silk Road and knowledge power in the case of the Asian Universities Alliance. We argue that the co-existence of the two approaches points to the aim of China’s multi-faceted approach to its external relations in the knowledge domain. By combining alternative organizational structures and logics embodied in different university alliances, this approach presents a non-hegemonic attempt to normalize China’s network centrality in an interdependent world. We conclude that China’s Belt and Road Initiative university alliance-building efforts should open up a rich analytical space that encourages further exploration through a world-centered tianxia heuristic.