About Studies on Marxist Theory in Higher Education

Studies on Marxist Theory in Higher Education

Studies on Marxist Theory in Higher Education is a Chinese-language academic journal published in Beijing by Tsinghua University Press and presented on the publisher's Tsinghua Journals platform. Its Chinese title is 高校马克思主义理论研究, in pinyin Gaoxiao Makesi Zhuyi Lilun Yanjiu, referring to research on Marxist theory in colleges and universities. This profile concerns that Tsinghua University Press journal only: a quarterly founded in 2015, carrying ISSN 2096-1170 as recorded in the Tsinghua University Press journal list, with volume 10, issue 4 appearing in 2024. It publishes research on the teaching and scholarship of Marxist theory in Chinese higher education, and its executive editor is Xiao Guiqing of Tsinghua University's School of Marxism.

Identity and bibliographic record

The journal's English title, Studies on Marxist Theory in Higher Education, is the name under which Tsinghua Journals presents the title internationally; the Chinese title, 高校马克思主义理论研究, is the title under which it is read and cited in China. The journal's own platform site carries a 2015 copyright line in the name of the journal, consistent with its founding that year, and the archive sequence reaching volume 10 in 2024 confirms a quarterly that has published four issues a year since 2015. Its ISSN, 2096-1170, is attested for this journal in the Tsinghua University Press journal list, and that publisher attestation is the basis on which the number is given here. Readers consulting the journal's platform pages should note that Tsinghua Journals pages have at times displayed header information belonging to other titles, and should rely on the publisher's journal list for this journal's identifiers.

Founding in 2015

The journal was founded in 2015, a decade after Marxist theory had been established as a first-level academic discipline in China. In December 2005 the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education formally added Marxist theory as a first-level discipline, a step scholars in the field link to the needs of ideological and political theory teaching in universities and to the development of Marxist theory itself. By 2015 the discipline had its own postgraduate programmes, its own schools within universities and a growing body of specialist journals. A quarterly devoted specifically to Marxist theory as it is taught and researched in higher education, launched from Tsinghua University in that year, addressed the point where the discipline meets the classroom: every Chinese undergraduate takes ideological and political theory courses, and the scholars who teach them needed a venue focused on their shared subject.

Scope and research themes

The journal publishes research on Marxist theory teaching and scholarship in Chinese higher education. Its recorded themes include the sinicisation of Marxism, that is, the adaptation of Marxist theory to Chinese conditions and its development in Chinese practice; ideological and political theory courses, the compulsory courses through which Marxist theory reaches all university students; and the Chinese path to modernisation, examined as a subject of Marxist theoretical research. Around those core themes sits the wider business of the discipline in universities: the construction of schools of Marxism, the training and development of the teachers who staff them, the design of curricula and teaching methods, and the relationship between theoretical research and classroom teaching. The journal's title defines its fence precisely: it is concerned with Marxist theory in the setting of colleges and universities, not with Marxist theory in the abstract alone.

Publisher: Tsinghua University Press

Tsinghua University Press, the publishing house of Tsinghua University in Beijing, publishes the journal within its list of Chinese-language scholarly journals, presented online through the Tsinghua Journals platform at the journal's own subdomain. The platform hosts the journal's archive, tables of contents and article records, providing English titles for the journal and its contents for international readers while the articles themselves are in Chinese. The journal is one of several Tsinghua titles in adjacent fields, distinct from the same publisher's Studies on Core Socialist Values, with which it shares a platform and an intellectual neighbourhood but not a title, an ISSN or an editorial remit. Tsinghua's institutional commitment to the field is longstanding: the university's own accounts record that it was among the founding members of the Marxist theory discipline in China, began postgraduate training in the subject in 1987, and established its School of Marxism in July 2008.

Editorial leadership: Xiao Guiqing

Xiao Guiqing, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Marxism, serves as the journal's executive editor. Biographical records describe him as vice dean of the School of Marxism, a doctoral supervisor and executive editor of 高校马克思主义理论研究, and as a chief expert of the central Marxist theory research and construction project. His scholarly specialism is the sinicisation of Marxism, on which he has published extensively, including a book-length holistic study of sinicised Marxism issued by China Renmin University Press in 2017. He has held national roles in the discipline, including service connected with the Ministry of Education's teaching guidance committee for Marxist theory programmes and the national association for the Marxist theory discipline in universities, and he remains an active voice in the field's debates, contributing, for example, to a 2025 discussion among leading scholars on twenty years of development of the Marxist theory discipline. An executive editor of that standing ties the journal closely to the centre of its discipline.

The host institution: Tsinghua's School of Marxism

The journal's intellectual home is Tsinghua University's School of Marxism, founded in July 2008 by bringing together professors of Marxism studies and ideological and political education from across the university. The university describes the school as playing a leading educational role in these areas in China, evaluated at the top grade in the Ministry of Education's discipline assessment, and hosting research platforms including the Collaborative Innovation Centre on Socialist Key Values and the Tsinghua Moral Education Research Centre, a key humanities and social sciences research base of the Ministry of Education. The school's faculty works across Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy, ideological and political education, modern Chinese history, politics and sociology, the same spread of specialisms that a journal on Marxist theory in higher education must cover. Publishing the journal from this school gives it direct access to the discipline's researchers and to the national conversations they lead.

Place in the discipline's journal landscape

Marxist theory in China is served by a recognisable family of journals, spanning general titles on Marxist studies, journals on teaching and research, and journals attached to particular universities and academies. Within that landscape, evaluations based on the reprint record of Chinese academic digests have listed 高校马克思主义理论研究 among the Marxist theory discipline's high-reprint-rate and high-reprint-index journals, alongside its Tsinghua stablemate on core socialist values, an indication that articles published in it are selected for reprinting and thus read well beyond its own subscriber base. Its specific contribution to the landscape is its focus: where general journals range across the whole of Marxist theory, this quarterly concentrates on the university setting, on teaching, curriculum and discipline-building, the concerns of the schools of Marxism that now exist across Chinese higher education.

Publication pattern and continuity

The journal is quarterly, publishing four issues a year. Its founding in 2015 and the appearance of volume 10, issue 4 in 2024 give a clean arithmetic of ten volumes in ten years, matching a journal that has appeared on schedule since its launch. The platform record also shows the journal active from its first years, with its site recording visits and content from 2016 onward under a 2015 copyright line. No change of title, publisher or frequency is recorded in the sources consulted for this profile. For a specialist quarterly in a discipline whose institutional structures were still young when it launched, a decade of continuous publication marks it as an established part of the field's infrastructure.

Readership and significance

The journal's readers are the teachers and researchers of Marxist theory in Chinese colleges and universities: faculty in schools of Marxism, teachers of ideological and political theory courses, discipline administrators and graduate students preparing to join them. Its significance lies in that focus. Marxist theory occupies a unique position in Chinese higher education, at once an academic discipline with postgraduate degrees and a compulsory element of every undergraduate's education, and Studies on Marxist Theory in Higher Education is the Tsinghua-published quarterly that addresses the scholars who carry both responsibilities. Published in Beijing by Tsinghua University Press since 2015, edited under the executive direction of one of the discipline's leading figures, and recognised in the discipline's reprint evaluations, it is a key source for anyone studying how Marxism is taught, researched and institutionalised in China's universities.