In response to the challenges presented by unprecedented growth in higher education (HE) since 1978, China adopted policy experimentation (PE) as a means of introducing and testing HE reforms. This study involves four in-depth case studies of important reforms facilitated by policy experiments at different junctures of China's HE development: early 1980s, mid-late 1980s, late 1990s, and early 2010s. Within each reform, two elite universities as 'experiment points' (shi dian) were selected. Through cross-case analysis informed by semi-structured interviews and extensive documentary analysis, the study offers a holistic historical perspective on how PE has been used to bring about institutional changes in China's higher education. The study documents different rationales used for implementing policy experiments. State actors use PE to exert pressure on universities to introduce reforms, to lower associated risks and to strengthen the nation's overall HE policymaking capacity in a volatile and extremely heterogeneous context. For their part, university leaders have adopted PE locally to navigate China's politically charged policymaking environment and to negotiate with state actors more favourable terms for reforms. Therefore, the PE approach enables state-university interactions and power negotiations that create and maintain 'strategy space' for consensus-building and institutional changes. It is an iterative process characterised by central-local interaction and intentionally ambiguous boundaries. The state, however, retains ultimate authority for legitimatising, selecting and expanding policy experiments. It is best understood as elite-enabled experimentation within existing political hierarchies. Over time, China's PE approach has become a semi-institutionalised mechanism for HE reforms. In the various policy experiments discussed in this study, PE functions as a productive, disciplinary and symbolic force at different stages of the policy process. Sometimes it appears to offer a genuinely productive mechanism for producing, identifying and negotiating innovative policy options that may be replicated at a larger scale; sometimes its essential use lies in its generated regulative effect; and sometimes it assumes more of a symbolic role allowing the government to acquire or consolidate reform legitimacy. Policy processes are mediated by these different uses of PE towards either reform efficacy or institutional conformity. This study situates these reforms within broader political, social, economic and historical contexts, and highlights the policy implications for higher education reform internationally.

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist eine ethnografische Studie über uigurische Minkaohan Frauen, die in Urumchi, der Provinzhauptstadt des Uigurischen Autonomen Gebietes Xinjiang in Chinas Nordwesten leben. Der Fokus der Untersuchung liegt auf der dritten Generation von Minkaohan, die in den späten 1990er-Jahren bis in die frühen 2000er-Jahre an Han Schulen mit Chinesisch als Unterrichtssprache ausgebildet wurden. Über einen Zeitraum von neun Monaten wurden mit den Methoden der Teilnehmenden Beobachtung und der Durchführung von Interviews in Urumchi Daten gesammelt. Zu den Hauptthemen, die sich in der Analyse der Feldforschungsdaten herausbildeten, gehören die uigurische Sprachkompetenz, die Wahl von Heiratspartnern, das Erlernen von weiblichem Geschlechterrollen, das Verständnis von muslimischem Glauben und der Konsum von globaler Populärkultur als Versuch Unabhängigkeit und Selbstbestimmung zu erhalten. Dabei spielt die inneruigurische Vorstellung einer starren Minkaohan/Minkaomin Binarität, in der Minkaomin-Sein mit normativ- authentischem und Minkoahan-Sein mit anormalem Uigurischsein gleichsetzt wird, eine wichtige Rolle. Die Begriffe „Minkaohan“ und „Minkaomin“ sind als diskursive Kategorien zu verstehen, die in einen größeren sozio-ökonomischen und politischen Kontext von Uiguren als eine ethnische Minderheit in der Volksrepublik China eingebettet sind. Es wird untersucht, wie Minkaohan Frauen den Diskurs einer Minkaohan/Minkaomin Binarität wahrnehmen, hinterfragen und diesen in den staatlichen Mehrheitsdiskurs einordnen, um sich Selbst (Self) und den Anderen (Other) neu zu positionieren. Die vorliegende Studie zielt darauf ab die Diversität innerhalb der uigurischen Gesellschaft in China näher zu beleuchten. Diese wird nicht nur vom chinesischen Diskurs über Uiguren, sondern auch oft von der westlichen akademischen Wissenschaft, die sich auf die Beziehung zwischen Uiguren und Han Chinesen konzentriert, vernachlässigt. / The present work is an ethnographic study of young Uyghur minkaohan women living in Urumchi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China’s far northwest. The focus of this study lies on a third generation of minkaohan who were educated at Han Chinese schools (with Mandarin as the medium of instruction) around the turn of the new millennium. Participant observation and interviews were conducted over a nine-month period of fieldwork in Urumchi. The main themes that emerged from the analysis of the fieldwork data include: managing language competence; choosing a marriage partner; learning about normative female gender roles; defining a personal understanding of religious belief and practice, as well as consuming global popular culture in order to perform the ideal of an independent and self-determined woman. Inner-Uyghur notions of a fixed minkaohan/minkaomin binary, which equates being minkaomin with normative, authentic Uyghurness and being minkaohan with abnormal, exceptional Uyghurness, plays a crucial role here. The terms minkaohan and minkaomin need to be understood as discursive categories embedded in the broader socio-economic and political context of Uyghur people’s position as an ethnic minority group in the PR China. This study investigates how the women perceive, question, and utilize the idea of a minkaohan/minkaomin binary and frame it within the state’s majority/minority discourse in order to renegotiate, position, and redefine Self and Other. The broader purpose of this study is to highlight the diversity of Uyghur communities in China and focus on relations between different Uyghur communities in Urumchi – a topic, which is neglected not only by the Chinese state discourse on Uyghurs but often also by Western academic literature centered on Han-Uyghur relations.