Getting to know Yantai
A ticket for the future?
A large delegation visited Yantai last week. Nearly 50 RUG staff members and students got the chance to meet with their Chinese future colleagues. The UK’s editor-in-chief saw it all first hand.
The existing campus in Yantai needs to undergo considerable renovations. There are 160 million euros available to that end, including the construction of a brand new research facility. The RUG will not be paying for any of it.
Members of the University Council also paid a visit to the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, the first foreign university in China.
The conversation with a high ranking member of the communist party at the campus mainly focused on academic freedom.
Reading time: 11 minutes (2,248 words)
Urban planning porn: that is how the researchers from the Faculty of Spatial Sciences jokingly describe their view of the metropolises below as they fly across China. Countless sky scrapers and soaring housing flats seem to rise out of the mist. In China, even the sky is not the limit.
Chinese project developers do not build based on supply and demand, but simply speculate based on expected growth. Because land cost so much, building up rather than out is the best way to earn money. The results of that approach are pompous apartment building that seem to have been constructed with little thought and often remain largely unoccupied for years.
Oscar Couwenberg, dean of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences (FSS), points out five colossal flats which block the view of the Yellow Sea, which is mere kilometers from the Yantai campus. ‘For a long time, there was not a single lit on in those buildings at night. Virtually no one lived there.’
Construction is the motor behind rapid development in China, but more questions are being posed about the wisdom of this tactic and whether or not it could be done in a smarter way. ‘What is the quality of life of someone who lives there? The Chinese can build like no one else, but they don’t have an answer to that question. That is where we come in.’
Laboratory
Yantai, a city of seven million, glitters in the afternoon sunshine. The bay along which the city unfolds, punctuated by dozens of grey apartment buildings that disappear into the horizon, can be seen from the campus of China Agricultural University (CAU), the RUG’s partner in their Chinese venture. Couwenburg says that he does not need a dedicated research facility here: ‘This country is one big lab’, he says.
If the plans proceed, spatial sciences will be one of the RUG faculties that will be a part of the University of Groningen Yantai (UGY), together with the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The campus is already there: 1.25 square kilometers of lecture halls, canteens, sports facilities and housing for thousands of students and staff. But similar to the largely empty apartment buildings flanking the campus, it also remains below full occupancy.
Spare no expense…
The city of Yantai and province of Shandong want to make a hefty investment in the campus in order to facilitate Groningen’s arrival. A budget of 160 million euros has been made available to that end. There are also private funds of roughly 80 million euros to set up the laboratories. The RUG will not pay for any of it.
Aside from the to-be-built research facility and a data center, no additional construction will be necessary, according to project leaders Pieter van Hoesel and Erika Hepping (Property and Investment Projects) at the RUG.
But the existing lecture halls, toilets, the library, the main campus building, the canteens, the sports facilities and the student flats are in need of serious renovation. The campus could also benefit for a little gezelligheid in the form of bars and terraces. ‘We would all really love a good cup of coffee right now’, says Erika Hepping.
Two things that will be missing are a pool and a field hockey pitch, since the latter is a sport that is largely unknown in China. Erika Hepping says, ‘I spent 15 minutes trying to explain what field hockey is and how there’s a ball that you have to hit with a stick. ‘Oh yes’, they said. ‘We know what you mean. Cricket!’ Eh, not exactly.’
By the way: all of the buildings on the Yantai campus are earthquake resistant. Yantai lies on a fault line, and the last big earthquake was 50 years ago.
Nine million students
Every year, more than nine million students start college in China. And the foreign universities, of which there will eventually be ten max, are especially popular. One such campus is Nottingham University in Ningbo, which is a two-hour flight from Yantai and was the first foreign university to open its doors in China.
Where meadows intersected by a meandering sand path once stood in the early 2000s is now a modern university with roughly 7,000 students, sleeping accommodations, bars and athletic and research facilities. The light grey main building is a replica of an iconic building in Nottingham, complete with a clock face on the tower and a canteen appropriately named after Robin Hood.
Robin Hood? Stealing from the reach and giving to the poor? Chris Rudd, provost of Nottingham Ningbo, has to laugh at the comparison. The fact of the matter, which he quickly concedes, is that Chinese families have to dig deep to be able to pay to send their pride and joy to such a university: students pay roughly 13,000 euros per year, not including the cost of housing, which is a shared room with four to six fellow students. That amount multiplied by 7,000 students would be close to 90 million euros. Rudd does not beat around the bush: ‘Yes, we make money.’
Profit is for Yantai
Any profits that are eventually made at UGY will be reinvested in the Yantai campus in their entirety. Not a single cent will go to the Netherlands, which is a condition from the Chinese government. The tuition fees at UGY are not yet set in stone, but they will likely be around 12,000 euros.
That may seem like a lot, and it certainly is more than what Dutch students pay for their studies. But non-EU students in the Netherlands (including Groningen) have to pay so-called institutional tuition fees. That is just as much as a Chinese student would pay at the branch campus.
Non-EU students in the medical programme pay 32,000 euros, which is a breakeven point because the government does not contribute to it. A private university like UGY will also have to ask for a breakeven point for their tuition fees. The RUG is hoping to eventually have around 10,000 students in the lecture halls in Yantai.
But that did not go off without a hitch, he says. In their first year, back in 2004, there were only about 250 students who tentatively enrolled. Since the university has become better known and developed a reputation, that is no longer the case. ‘The six Chinese universities in Ningbo are jealous of us. The education we offer is better and affords a certain status.’ But It is still difficult to persuade British students to come to Ningbo. ‘It may well be that the RUG will have an easier time of it. Dutch students are more eager to travel than the British.’
Academic freedom
Changhui Hua is an important man at the University of Nottingham in Ningbo. He is a high ranking official within the Communist party in China who ensures that the British university is staying on course. Four members of the University Council (SOG, Calimero, Lijst Sterk and the Personnel faction) and Council chairperson Tim Huiskes meet with him in the stately conference center of the university.
The most important topic of discussion is the question of academic freedom. The answer – after roughly an hour and a half of translating questions and answers – remains puzzling to the RUG delegation: everything can be discussed, but provocations are not tolerated.
‘What would be considered a provocation?’, Gert Jan Bokdam of the Personnel faction asks later. ‘I understand that there are certain topics that are sensitive in China. The same goes for the Netherlands. When I used to have discussion my grandfather at birthday parties about the war in Indonesia, that would pretty much ruin the party. It’s about making sure that noting is taboo.’
During a stroll around the campus in Ningbo following the discussion with Hua, Evan Clarke (SOG) and Pieter Polhuis (Lijst Sterk) wondered aloud what would happen if a RUG student were to write their thesis about how awesome Hitler – would that be permitted? Or what about someone praising IS? ‘That would not be accepted in the Netherlands, either. I think it’s important that we hold ourselves to the same standard that we are holding China to’, says Evan Clarke.
Nina de Winter of Lijst Calimero is a bit more cautious: ‘Be that as it may, China is still a communist country. There is no getting around that.’ They also wonder if Yantai will soon have their own stern Changhui Hua. When De Winter poses that question to RUG president Sibrand Poppema later, he says that the answer is a decisive ‘no’: for Groningen, the rules will be different.
‘Manage the sensitivities’
Provost Chris Rudd of Nottingham University Ningbo admits that certain topics (especially with regard to territory, such as Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea, but also the Dalai Lama) are touchy. But in his experience, nothing is truly black or white in China, but rather very grey. ‘You have to accept that this country is different, and you have to adapt to that. But that is not necessarily a problem, and you can absolutely do great academic research here. You have to manage the sensitivities.’
But it remains true that during a recent address in Beijing, Chinese president Xi Jinping called on universities in China to follow ‘Marxist teachings’ more closely and said that students would be better off being taught about that, and implored universities to keep western influences at bay. Zetian Fu, the chairman of the board of directors at CAU in Yantai, recalls that particular speech with a smile. ‘But that was just a misunderstanding.’ That message was specifically referring to Chinese universities, not the foreign universities in China. ‘Academic freedom is enshrined in the law’, Fu says emphatically.
In fact, the Faculty of Science and Engineering dean Jasper Knoester, who regularly visits China, posits that Chinese law is actually even clearer than Dutch law in that regard. A bit of relativism is appropriate, he says. ‘Let’s not forget that the Dutch government is heavily involved in scientific research when it comes to awarding subsidies and funding.’
Why Yantai?
The campus in Yantai was founded back in 2003. The China Agricultural University (CAU), in a move toward internationalisation, initially wanted to collaborate with University College Dublin, but that deal fell through at the last minute. So the CAU was for sale, at which point Groningen came in.
Internationalisation is important for the RUG, says president Sibrand Poppema. More than seventeen percent of Groningen students are international, and that number is only going to increase over the next few years. Demographic developments have also decreased the number of Dutch students. The international students are the only thing saving the RUG from shrinkage.
Fewer students means less money and less research. European universities are being rapidly overtaken by their Asian counterparts in the international rankings. However, China does invest in scientific research. A branch campus in Yantai would lead to opportunities and the accompanying funds for the RUG.
Ticket for the future
Alvin Xue is a happy, 19-year-old student who is quick to laugh. He is from the province of Sichuan, more than 1,500 kilometres away from Ningbo. ‘That’s where the pandas live’, he says proudly. It was his parents who wanted him to go to Nottingham University. He says he had never even heard of it.
Fellow student Edwiin Chen says that studying at Nottingham University is a ticket for the future. ‘I’ll have a better chance for a good job, and I’d like to go abroad when I’m finished’, he says in near-perfect English. ‘I learned English in just one year. We had English grammar lessons in school, but I truly learned to speak it here.’
‘The education here is much better’, says Alvin Xue. ‘We’re encouraged to research and figure things out for ourselves.’ Fellow student Edwiin Chen agrees. ‘At Chinese universities, instructors present both the problem and the solution. All you need to get a good grade is regurgitate what they say. Here we’re presented the problems and we have to find the solutions ourselves.’
That is recognisable, says RUG professor Francesco Picchioni at Science and Engineering. He has just returned from a visit to several businesses in Yantai. He quickly realised that that is exactly what is missing from the professional field in China. ‘Critical thinking, taking the initiative, doing research. That is the essence of our education. China could stand to learn a thing or two from us’, Picchioni says. The paper factory he had visited that afternoon, which was more modern and innovative than anything European, immediately gave him a research project to work out with his students in Groningen.
What’s next?
A branch campus in Yantai is still not a sure thing. The relevant faculty councils and the University Council get to vote on the plans. The faculty councils of both science and engineering and spatial sciences will vote on the matter in June, possibly July. The University Council will handle the question following the summer vacation, most likely in late August.
In order to make the branch campus legally possible, the RUG still has to wait on a so-called General Order in Council from the minister of education. The order will specify the conditions for approval. If the RUG wants to being a preparatory year in August of 2018, the order will have to be completed by the end of this year
Questions remain
Is Picchioni convinced of the use of the University of Groningen Yantai? He would not go quite that far. ‘I’m sixty percent convinced. I have a good feeling about it, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered. And that means that sixty percent can go up, but it could also go down.’
Jasper Knoester, at Science and Engineering, is enthusiastic about Yantai. But he has always been. ‘Everything here just shows how much they welcome us’, he says. But even Knoester knows that at ‘his’ faculty, the spearhead of the entire Yantai plan, people are still uncertain. He remembers a meeting where someone said: ‘This will ruin my career.’ He knows that these are emotional, uncertain times, and that prejudices can also play a role.
Oscar Couwenberg, from Spatial Sciences, ‘has faith in the project’, he says at the Beijing airport on the way back to the Netherlands. But he does share the concerns of the faculty. Preparations alone are taxing on the staff, and there is no money for recompense. ‘I can’t keep clearing my schedule at a moment’s notice, and neither can the others. You can’t just take everyone from Groningen.’
Nina de Winter, with student party Lijst Calimero, is worried about that as well. ‘How are we going to compensate for this in Groningen?’ She says there is no clear answer to the questions. ‘It’s like the sky is the limit. You want this? You got it. You want something else? You can have that, too. Want something done this way? No problem. Want it done another way? Absolutely, we’ll take care of it. Except I’ve seen no concrete plans for how they’ll be doing it all.’
RUG president Sibrand Poppema has heard it before and is taking these matters seriously, he says. And he makes a promise: ‘We are not going to cannibalise Groningen to feed Yantai.’