What makes the existence of universities in China ironic? As I see it, the irony lies in this: China is oountry ruled by a communist party that advocates atheism and often expresses a negative view toward religion. Nevertheless, if it were not for religion--specifically, Christianity--China would not have any universities!
Some readers of this blog may be aware of the fact that a number of the modern, Western-style universities established in the 19th and early 20th centuries in China were founded by Christians. In fact, Wikipedia even has a list of them (see here). They were generally established by Christian missionaries and churches (Catholic and Protestant) for both religious and educational purposes. Although all of them (except those that moved elsewhere, like Taiwan) were taken over by the new communist government after 1949, and consequently lost whatever Christian character they had, it is still true that some universities in China have a Christian connection. For example, consider Peking University (for its official English name, the university prefers the older spelling of the city's name, rather than the newer spelling "Beijing"), perhaps China's most highly regarded institution of higher learning. It is located on the campus of the former Yanjing University, which evolved from several educational institutions founded by Christians (pictured is the famous Wuming--"no name"--Lake on the campus, and an adjoining pagoda). Moreover, Yanjing University's academic programs in the arts and sciences were actually merged into those of Peking University, so, in a sense, Peking University is the successor to Yanjing University.
Nevertheless, it is not their historical origins that make me claim that China would not have any universities without the influence of Christianity. After all, many Chinese universities have purely secular origins. Rather, it is the fact that the concept of the university is, as sociologist Rodney Stark says in his book The Victory of Reason (p. 52), a "Christian invention," emerging in Europe during the Middle Ages under the auspices of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the type of education offered by the medieval university was quite unlike that offered by imperial China's highest-level educational institution, the Guozijian (which still exists, as a historic site, adjacent to Beijing's Confucian Temple). Students attended the Guozijian to be trained in Confucianism, so as to be better prepared to pass the civil service examination, which largely tested candidates' knowledge of the Confucian classics. In contrast, according to Stark:
The new [European] universities were not primarily concerned with imparting the received wisdom. Rather, just as is the case today, faculty gained fame through innovation. Consequently, medieval university professors gave their primary attention to the pursuit of knowledge. They did not settle for repeating the received wisdom of the Greeks but were fully prepared to criticize and correct the ancients (page 52).
Thus, we can see that higher education in pre-modern China and medieval Europe was strikingly different in character--the former intended to pass on an existing tradition, the latter to examine and even challenge tradtion. Consequently, the introduction of the Western-style university represented a real revolution in Chinese higher education, a revolution that Chinese reformers embraced in their desparate effort to modernize the country in the face of the challenges posed by the West. Even the communists, with their ideological hostility toward Christianity, could not help employing this "Christian invention"--even if they attempted to shape it to their own purposes. And so, without Christianity, China--the country with perhaps the most atheists in the world--would have no universities. How ironic!