Adapting to an American world: the asymmetrical coupling of American and Chinese education

Abstract

The extensive study-abroad consulting industry that prepares Chinese students for American schools exemplifies, and is conditioned by, the asymmetry in Sino-American educational connectivity. Mobility from China to the United States involves more students, money, and prestige, as well as a lengthier and more densely institutionalized preparatory path than movement in the opposite direction. America-bound Chinese applicants often derive from special America-oriented school programs and hire mentors from the consulting industry. These mentors help them write American-style application essays and cultivate extracurricular activities in conformance to Anglo-American upper-class ideals. Proximately, the applicants seek to adapt to the presumed values of the American admission commissioners. In extension, they could be seen as adapting to America’s education culture and class structure, or even to a global power constellation in which America is hegemonic. Yet, though tempting, framings that juxtapose a ‘world culture’-representing America to a peripheral Chinese ‘non-world’ run into conceptual contradictions.