International University Consortia on the New Silk Road

Abstract

International collaborations among higher education institutions have existed along the Silk Road for a long time. With the initiative of the Belt and Road, it is believed that cooperation among universities and colleges may be influenced in various respects. In this study, seventeen university consortia that have been formed in the last thirty years along the Silk Road were investigated, including the membership structure, their starting point, goals and developments of these consortia, and the roles of world-class universities. The findings showed: 1) these consortia share the similar goals of multinational collaboration to foster solutions to new global challenges; 2) the thirty-year development of these consortia was divided into three phases, and most of the member universities are from the EU, China, and the US; 3) world-class universities were, are and will be playing the leading roles in these consortia continuously.

A Geocultural Power Competition in UNESCO’s Silk Roads Project: China’s Initiatives and the Responses From Japan and South Korea

“…As Japan ascended to a great power status in the early twentieth century, the Silk Roads became intellectually and ideologically an important subject as it offers a civilisational discourse that connects the East and the West (Winter, 2021b: 4). Even after the defeat of Japan in 1945, the rich and diverse content of the Japanese report, Research in Japan in History of Eastern and Western Cultural Contacts , compiled for UNESCO's East–West Major Project, demonstrates a strong Japanese scholarship in the Silk Roads archaeology and history (Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, 1957). As Japan became more aware of its international position in the 1980s, the semi-governmental television network NHK featured the Silk Road in documentary series, which stimulated the Japanese people's romantic imagination of the distant intra-regional history (Schoenberger, 1988).…”