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"The United States is the global leader in higher education, but this was not always the case and may not remain so. William Kirby examines sources of-and threats to-US higher education supremacy and charts the rise of Chinese competitors. Yet Chinese institutions also face problems, including a state that challenges the commitment to free inquiry"--

Preface -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Chapter 1: A Global Dialogue on Liberal Arts and Sciences: Re-engagement, Re-imagination, and Experimentation -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2: China's Search for Its Liberal Arts and Sciences Model -- Toward a China Model -- Precarious Balance -- Brain Race for Innovative Thinkers -- Experimentation and the Liberal Arts -- International Cooperation amid a Concern about Sovereignty -- One Country and Two University Systems -- References -- Chapter 3: The Significance and Practice of General Education in China: The Case of Tsinghua University

The People's Republic of China, like the Chinese Communist Party that ruled it, was from its conception internationalist in premise and in promise. The PRC in its formative years would be Moscow's most faithful and self-sacrificing ally, a distinction earned in blood in Korea and by the fact that, unlike the East European "people's democracies," the PRC's allegiance was not bought at gunpoint. This article researches one of the most ambitious international undertakings of that era: the effort to plan the development of half the world and to create a socialist world economy stretching from Berlin to Canton. What was China's role in this undertaking, and how did it shape the early PRC? How did this socialist world economy work (or not work)? How successfully internationalist was a project negotiated by sovereign (and Stalinist) states? Why did Mao Zedong ultimately destroy it, and with it, the dream of communist internationalism?