Reactive Management of University Reputation During the COVID Crisis: Governance and the Control of Public Narratives in Chinese Higher Education

Reputation management (RM) is initially applied within business research, whereas under the premise of commercialisation of higher education (HE), this concept has been widely studied in HE realm. China, as one of the emerging countries in global competitions, RM was initially borrowed from Anglo-Saxon HE, and it gradually developed in Chinese HE. However, most of the studies focussing on promotion strategies, which implies crisis management could be dismissed; thus, further studies are needed to develop the holistic picture of RM in Chinese universities. Particularly, how COVID-19 casts an impact on RM in Chinese HE and its link to governance is rarely discussed. This study adopts an active/reactive RM framework to explore the practices of Chinese universities from practitioner’s perspective. The findings suggest that RM in Chinese HE is underdeveloped and overly focussed on external audiences. In response to crises, Chinese universities rely on public narrative control, known as 'Yuqing' management. ‘Yuqing’ directly translates into public opinions, yet it has political impact and reflects the generalisation of prevalence societal opinions and political attitude of people. The rationale of this is deeply rooted within the how Chinese universities are governed, i.e. the financial and political harness.