New Humanities for a Technological University: The Emerging Debate in China

I have followed with interest the transformations undertaken by Chinese universities, observing the expansion of programs related to artificial intelligence, robotics, integrated circuits, and biotechnology, while existing courses are reviewed, merged, or redesigned. The movement impresses me by its scale and by the way scientific and social priorities seem to be prompting institutional reorganization, leading me to think that this picture extends beyond the Chinese context. It seems to me that the place reserved for the humanities in universities whose present is increasingly articulated through technology is narrowing.

The question that most provokes me is centered on the fact that artificial intelligence already interferes with the criteria by which certain forms of knowledge are considered current, useful, or socially necessary. In view of the capacity of systems to produce texts, images, translations, and analyses, professions and the expectations directed toward university education are inevitably affected, changing in the process. Faced with this, the university must respond to immediate transformations while educating people for a future it cannot yet know with precision.

At present, I perceive China as a kind of interlocutor between two paradigms, as an ongoing field of experimentation. Its transformations render visible, on an enlarged scale, a series of dilemmas that also traverse Brazilian, European, and North American universities: the relationship between education and employment, curricular renewal, integration among fields, and the place of forms of knowledge whose social contribution cannot be reduced to productivity indicators.

The Meaning of the “New Humanities”

I use “new humanities” here as an interpretive translation of xin wenke, an expression frequently rendered into English as New Liberal Arts and, in certain contexts, as New Humanities and Social Sciences (Wang; Tian, 2019). Since the term “liberal arts” is not common in Portuguese, I chose to translate it, from the English, as “humanities.” In doing so, I acknowledge the risk of losing possible nuances of the Chinese term wenke because of the linguistic barrier, although other readings suggest that, within the Chinese university system, it encompasses fields such as philosophy, literature, history, economics, management, law, education, and the arts, to which communication and other areas of the applied social sciences are connected (China, 2022).

Based on Wang and Tian (2019), the proposal of the “new humanities” began to acquire greater institutional visibility in China from 2018 onward, being subsequently systematized in the Declaration on New Liberal Arts Construction, presented during the National Conference on New Liberal Arts Construction, held in November 2020 (China, 2020).

The project associates curricular renewal, interdisciplinarity, cultural valorization, and responses to scientific, technological, and social transformations (China, 2020). Among the principles presented are preservation coupled with innovation, value orientation, and differentiated implementation, considering the characteristics of institutions and fields of knowledge (China, 2020; China, 2022). The guidelines also emphasize the optimization of programs, the improvement of curricular systems, the creation of new educational models, and the integration of the humanities and social sciences with information technologies, the natural sciences, engineering, agriculture, and medicine (China, 2022).

I see in this concept an attempt to draw the humanities out of an exclusively defensive position, situating them within the scientific and technological transformations that are reorganizing the contemporary university. A degree in communication may incorporate data analysis and generative artificial intelligence while preserving inquiry into languages, mediations, and the cultural effects of media. A program in literary and language studies may engage with natural language processing and computer-assisted translation, maintaining historical and intercultural interpretation as part of its specificity. These possibilities correspond to the interdisciplinary orientation of the new humanities, through which boundaries between fields are reorganized and new objects, methods, and educational models are produced (Wang; Tian, 2019; China, 2020). It is believed that such integration may generate intellectual renewal, although it may also produce instrumental subordination if the humanities are understood merely as peripheral support for technological priorities, since this would entail the loss of part of their capacity to formulate problems, interpret values, and critically examine the meanings attributed to development.

A Large-Scale Curricular Reorganization

According to the official results of the registration and approval process for undergraduate programs for 2024, released by China’s Ministry of Education in April 2025 (China, 2025a), 1,839 new program offerings were approved at higher education institutions, while admissions were suspended for 2,220 offerings and 1,428 were formally discontinued. Following these adjustments, the Chinese system comprised approximately 62,800 undergraduate program offerings distributed across its institutions. In the same process, the Ministry updated the Catalogue of Undergraduate Programs in Regular Higher Education Institutions (China, 2025d), which came to comprise 93 categories and 845 program types, including 29 new programs, among them artificial intelligence education, intelligent audiovisual engineering, and digital theatre.

The Action Plan for the Adjustment and Optimization of the Structure of Academic Disciplines and Programs in Higher Education for 2025–2027 reinforced the expansion of emerging and interdisciplinary fields, the updating of curricular content, and the incorporation of artificial intelligence into teaching and learning processes (China, 2025c). In a convergent movement, Chinese universities expanded places in artificial intelligence, information science and technology, engineering, clinical medicine, integrated circuits, biomedicine, health, and new energy, linking higher education to national strategic needs (Reuters, 2025).

I see in this movement an understandable rationale, pointing toward a country that seeks to develop frontier technologies and must therefore educate people capable of sustaining complex scientific ecosystems. The intensity of the changes, however, provokes me into thinking, necessarily, about the risk of organizing curricula around economic forecasts, given that their validity may be quite short-lived.

Generative artificial intelligence tends to foster a confusion between professional activity and the field of knowledge. Today, a machine translates, creates images, or drafts reports, having become an extraordinarily powerful tool. On the one hand, it may seem that the possibilities opened by artificial intelligence are causing the corresponding fields and their practitioners, linguists, artists, analysts, and others, to lose their reason for existence. This conclusion, however, seems to rest on reducing a field of knowledge to the most immediately observable tasks of a profession.

The process of translation, for example, involves sensitivity to contexts, ambiguities, cultural memories, political effects, and authorial responsibilities. Automated translation can be rapid and functional, and this is undeniable, but the need remains to assess what has been preserved, displaced, or silenced, considering the losses immanent in every act of decoding and recoding. Translator education may incorporate systems management, terminological curation, and intercultural analysis, making its intellectual dimension more visible, although the refinement of the task toward the realm of sensibility still cannot be articulated by the machine, and it seems unlikely that it ever will be.

The same applies to photography, design, and communication whenever their purpose exceeds the mere transmission of information. What makes a Neil Gaiman short story what it is, a Shakespearean play, a philosophical reflection, and other humanistic phenomena, is not their information, but their capacity to transcend information, to exist both within and outside language, whereas the machine can never reach the “outside.” The “outside of language” lies in the tear that falls before a scene, in the fear or nausea produced by a particular description, in the need to leave a place or close a book, because language paradoxically communicates something incommunicable. The machine cannot occupy this “outside of language” because it is language. Image generators expand visual production, making it more urgent to understand authorship, authenticity, testimony, and circulation. Systems that produce texts require instruments capable of evaluating evidence, framing, and responsibility. In many cases, automation increases the complexity of the cultural questions that need to be investigated, although it is incapable of going beyond the economic level, in the broad sense, and replacing the human condition and its capacity to say, “beyond this point one cannot go,” out of ethical conviction, or “this alone does not satisfy me,” in response to existential questions.

A technological society depends on equipment, networks, and laboratories, while equally depending on concepts, narratives, legal categories, and historical memories. These forms of interpretation allow us to understand what systems do and to deliberate on their effects.

Language models participate in environments of meaning production, since they mediate questions, answers, translations, and classifications, reorganizing what becomes sayable, visible, and retrievable, which is the dimension of the sign. Models developed within different linguistic and institutional ecosystems will invariably express distinct repertoires, absences, and priorities. Dialogue with China becomes relevant precisely for this reason. Chinese artificial intelligence systems, situated within a particular linguistic and cultural tradition, broaden the diversity of the global technological landscape and provide material for investigating how values and knowledge are incorporated into new models. The new humanities could bring together philosophy of technology, communication, law, the arts, education, and data science, participating in the definition of problems and the assessment of their impacts. The fact is that a technological society depends on networks and laboratories, although it depends equally on subjectivity and culture, understood here, in Lotmanian terms, as a text constructed from the subjectivity of a society.

Can the University Anticipate the Future of Work?

I turn, then, to a point that has so far remained on the horizon of my reflection while still untouched in this text: the approximation between curricula and professional needs as a response to the uncertainty experienced by millions of young people throughout their education. A degree takes several years; tools and professional functions may change within a few months. The more narrowly a curriculum is organized around an emerging occupation, the greater its risk of aging and of becoming obsolete shortly after it has been implemented.

Technical and higher education will need to be accompanied by conceptual foundations, continuous learning, critical judgment, and communication. The race against obsolescence, like the race against human aging, is lost before it even begins. A university guided solely by the competencies of the present may educate for a market that has already changed. Conversely, one that ignores the transformations of its time will diminish its social participation. The challenge that imposes itself is to articulate long-term knowledge in relation to spaces of experimentation.

A Field of Dialogue Between Brazil and China

I understand that the new humanities offer a field of dialogue with several contemporary agendas of major importance: the critical use of artificial intelligence, science communication and misinformation, the ethics of neural data, assistive technologies, accessibility, and others, many of which deeply interest me. The Chinese experience offers technological scale, planning, and the accelerated creation of interdisciplinary programs, placing it prominently in the current global landscape. Brazilian public universities, in turn, have accumulated experience in university extension, collective health, community participation, and the analysis of inequalities, bringing points of convergence as well as counterpoints and challenges in relation to the Chinese context. Productive cooperation could place these traditions in dialogue, constructing common problems without presupposing that one model should reproduce the other and, above all, respecting their various cultural differences and divergences.

Academic rapprochement requires a language that combines candor and respect. We can discuss instrumentalization, productivity, and disciplinary autonomy while recognizing the density of the new humanities project and its attempt to respond to transformations affecting all university systems. Criticism becomes more consistent when it recognizes the interlocutor as a producer of concepts and a participant in the debate.

Which Humanities Will Be “New”?

Observing the transformations underway, I see a field of experimentation opening. The reorganization of programs, hybrid educational paths, and the incorporation of artificial intelligence suggest that the Chinese university is seeking to redefine its position in the face of scientific, economic, and cultural changes whose direction remains open.

Novelty will hardly be guaranteed by the mere presence of digital tools. A curriculum may incorporate artificial intelligence and preserve fragmented practices; a traditional program may produce contemporary reflection when it reorganizes its problems. In my view, the new humanities will depend on the capacity to formulate questions suited to the present while preserving historical depth and public responsibility.

It seems to me, finally, that the contributions of the new humanities are still waiting to flourish, which would occur when they participate from within the technological university, influencing systems, curricula, and policies in an integrated manner. We will need engineers capable of understanding languages and contexts, health professionals attentive to the cultural dimensions of care, educators able to evaluate algorithms, and humanities researchers willing to understand the material foundations of the technologies they analyze.

The Chinese experience invites us to understand which humanities may participate in the construction of artificial intelligence, interpreting its effects and imagining ways of being and thinking that are not yet contained within existing systems.

References

CHINA. Ministry of Education. New Liberal Arts Construction Conference held at Shandong University [新文科建设工作会在山东大学召开]. Beijing, 3 Nov. 2020. Available at: https://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/202011/t20201103_498067.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

CHINA. Ministry of Education. MOE releases latest undergraduate program accreditation and approval results. Beijing, 30 Apr. 2025a. Available at: https://en.moe.gov.cn/news/press_releases/202504/t20250430_1189218.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

CHINA. Ministry of Education. Promoting the adjustment and optimization of undergraduate programs to improve their capacity to serve high-quality development [推动高校本科专业设置调整优化提升服务高质量发展能力]. Beijing, 22 Apr. 2025b. Available at: https://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s271/202504/t20250422_1188246.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

CHINA. Ministry of Education. Action plan for academic discipline adjustment issued. Beijing, 1 Sept. 2025c. Available at: https://en.moe.gov.cn/news/press_releases/202509/t20250901_1411338.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

CHINA. Ministry of Education. Notice on undergraduate program establishment in 2025 [教育部高等教育司关于开展2025年度普通高等学校本科专业设置工作的通知]. Beijing, 30 June 2025d. Available at: https://www.moe.gov.cn/s78/A08/tongzhi/202506/t20250630_1196068.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

POUILLE, Jordan. In the age of AI, Chinese universities overhaul their curricula. Le Monde, Paris, 26 June 2026. Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/26/in-the-age-of-ai-chinese-universities-overhaul-their-curricula_6754915_4.html. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

REUTERS. China’s top universities expand enrolment to beef up capabilities in AI, strategic areas. London, 10 Mar. 2025. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-top-universities-expand-enrolment-beef-up-capabilities-ai-strategic-areas-2025-03-10/. Accessed on: 31 July 2026.

WANG, Mingyu; TIAN, Hailong. Constructing ‘New Liberal Arts’ in China’s universities: key concepts and approaches. In: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION ADVANCES, 5th, 2019, Valencia. Proceedings […]. Valencia: Universitat Politècnica de València, 2019. pp. 1121–1128. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd19.2019.9111.

---

Glaucio Aranha is an Associate Professor at the NUTES Institute for Science and Health Education (NUTES), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he works at the Educational Video Laboratory (LVE), carrying out teaching and research activities in the fields of educational technologies and science communication from the perspectives of semiotics and media studies. He also serves as an associate researcher at the Center for Science Communication and Neuroscience Education at UFRJ (NuDCEN/IBCCF/UFRJ), developing research on the applications of semiotics and linguistics to neuroscience education. He is the lead researcher of the research group Cognition, Language and Audiovisual in Semiotic Systems (CLASS/NUTES/UFRJ) and co-leads, in partnership with Prof. Dr. Alfred Sholl-Franco (IBCCF/UFRJ), the research group Neuroeduc – Neurosciences Applied to Education (OCC/UFRJ). He is a member of the Science and Cognition Organization (OCC), where he currently serves as Vice-President, and of the Brazilian Association of Linguistics (ABRALIN). His areas of expertise include media studies, literary and narrative theory, linguistics, semiotics, mass aesthetics, and science communication.