Governing the Academic Clock: The Temporal Experience of Chinese Academia Under the China Discipline Evaluation

Across the global higher education (HE) sectors, the academic profession is undergoing a profound transformation. Viewed from the lens of “time” as a foundational dimension of academic labour, the long-standing ideal of the “unhasty pursuit of knowledge” is being displaced by a condition of being “hurried and harried”. This shift is largely driven by the global intensification of evaluation cultures, and is particularly acute in China. Thus, this paper investigates how China Discipline Evaluation (CDE) – the country’s flagship national assessment of university disciplines – reorganises academic time and, in doing so, reconfigures the academic profession. Drawing on 47 semi-structured interviews with scholars from 19 universities, this study reveals how the CDE functions as a hegemonic apparatus that systematically restructures the rhythm of academic life. The analysis identifies four interrelated temporal challenges that characterise the academic life under the CDE: “time acceleration”, “time b/locking”, “time fragmentation”, and “time commodification”. Using a Foucauldian lens, the paper argues that these temporal challenges are effects of a “permanent fear of failure”, which is triggered by a mechanism of “dual precarity” inherent in the CDE. At the institutional level, the CDE rankings generate chronic uncertainty regarding resources and reputations. This precarity cascades downward to the individual level, tying academic careers to CDE outcomes. In this way, this dual precarity compels academics to internalise the CDE’s evaluation logics and self-regulate in line with its temporal demands. Crucially, such temporal regime of the CDE, as analysed above, reflects a distinct governance architecture in China: the “bureaucratised project system”. In this hybrid model, bureaucratisation and the project system co-exist and collide, doubling the time pressure by stacking the demands of one system atop the other. In doing so, the CDE functions as a hegemonic apparatus that reorganises academic values, recalibrates institutional priorities, and secures the party-state’s leadership over the HE system. Ultimately, this paper contends that the disciplinary power of the CDE deepens distrust among the state, universities, and scholars, and fundamentally undermines academic agency and jeopardises China’s aspirations as a global higher education powerhouse. In this sense, the Chinese case offers a critical horizon for the global profession, illustrating how intensified evaluation regimes cultivate self-governing subjects whose agency is progressively hollowed out by the politics of time.