Supporting data for "Deciphering China's Reemergence through Its Higher Education Engagement with Southeast Asia: Perspectives of Soft Power and Neo-Tributary Framework"

This dataset contains supporting data for the thesis “Deciphering China's Reemergence through Its Higher Education Engagement with Southeast Asia: Perspectives of Soft Power and Neo-Tributary Framework”. This doctoral study aims to elucidate the current situation of China’s strategy for global rise via the prism of its higher education engagement measures in Southeast Asia, including language training, educational development aid, student mobility, and institution/program partnerships.

A qualitative case study method has been adopted by choosing Cambodia as the field site. Main approaches for data collection are documentation, institutional data analysis based on two training seminars sponsored by Ministry of Commerce of China (MOFCOM), and semi-structured interviews with 40 informants. The interviewees include ten leaders of relevant institution/program partnerships, seven insiders of China’s higher education aid projects in Cambodia, seven members of the Confucius Institutes at Cambodia, and sixteen Cambodian students from various disciplines of Chinese universities.

Thus, the data files include four parts: institutional data contains institutional documents of seminars co-sponsored by MOFCOM and UNESCO-ICHEI and photos the author took during field trip in Cambodia; interview recordings and transcripts contain audio recordings and transcripts of informants; invitation letter and consent form contain original version of invitation letter and interview guide used to recruit informants and their signed consent forms; secondary data contains documents and statistics of MOFCOM scholarship programs, official development assistance to Cambodia, and seminars sponsored by MOFCOM.