Chinese academics (academic staff and research students) have been encouraged by the national mobility strategic plan of “going out” and “bringing in” for years. This program not only speeds up the academic mobility for Chinese overseas returnees but also opens a window for foreign academics who have been provided with valuable opportunities with Chinese academics in mainland universities. For the two parties, those who have grown up and been educated in the different political camps, the way of how Chinese academics and western scholars work collaboratively has not been researched. The tender could lead to their changing perceptions of their cultural identity, and to transform learning and teaching in the mobility program.

In this paper, we argue that Chinese academic mobility has gone beyond intuitional space.  “Educational mobility is defined as the association between parents’ and children’s educational attainment” (Gruijters, Chan, & Ermisch, 2019, p.214). However, the tender between the two groups of talents in this case has gone beyond the institutional landscape of China’s education mobility. At this turn, the emerging cases of their time, space, and daily life and as a consequence, how it responds to the social change due to the development the Chinese academic mobility plan, are key to research. 

Our research is the first part of our collaborative reflective research journey (a Chinese overseas returnee and a western scholar) in China. Using a collaborative autoethnography research method (Hernandez, Chang, & Ngunjiri, 2017), we aim to provide readers with opportunities to actively respond to the text. The cultural nuances from these transitive journeys could benefit both academics in international joint programs and research students who have been involved in Chinese academic mobility programs to become more culturally aware, sensitive, and competent from an understanding of how cultural identities evolve in the vibrant multicultural and multilingual contexts.

References

Hernandez, K.-A. C., Chang, H., & Ngunjiri, F. W. (2017). Collaborative Autoethnography as Multivocal, Relational, and Democratic Research: Opportunities, Challenges, and Aspirations. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 32(2), 251-254.

Gruijters, R., Chan, T., & Ermisch, J. (2019). Trends in educational mobility: How does China compare to Europe and the United States? Chinese Journal of Sociology, 5(2) 214–240