International Co-operation Between Chinese and UK Higher Educational Institutions in the Arts

This research discusses the concept of guanxi, and how guanxi affects international co-operation between Chinese and UK higher education institutions in the arts. This study uses Foucault's philosophy of dispositif to build a new theoretical model called the guanxi dispositif (GD) model, which is an original idea that comprises a combination of Western and Eastern philosophies and discourse analysis.
The research questions posed are: RQ1. How deep is the involvement of guanxi in co-operative categories in arts related HEIs? RQ2. How widely of guanxi’s involvement in the area? RQ3. How do higher education organisations use guanxi in their relationships with their partner institutions in the Arts and Humanities? In order to answer these questions, pragmatic paradigm and Methods-Strands Matrix (MM) research designs were used to build the fieldwork of this research, which was largely composed of questionnaires and interviews employed in a quality-quantity-quality process to analyse meta-inference.
The findings suggest that: 1) guanxi exists in most forms of international co-operation conducted by Chinese people in higher education institutions; 2) guanxi increase the efficiency of co-operation, especially in relationship setup; 3) Chinese people tend to use guanxi in international co-operation, and Western practitioners prove willing to use it more during China-related collaborations; 4) guanxi exists in a simplified but not weakened form in modern China. Future studies should continue to test the theoretical framework of the guanxi dispositif (GD) model formulated by this research.