This paper examines how state governance models in China and Japan have shaped the development and outcomes of academic excellence initiatives (AEIs) from the mid-1990s to 2025.Drawing on comparative policy analysis and a state governance framework, it explores how China' s centralized-decentralized supervisory system and Japan' s bureaucratic-coordinative model influenced funding structures, institutional autonomy, internationalization, and reform implementation.While both countries adopted AEIs in response to global competition and economic objectives, their results diverge sharply, with China showing rapid gains in global rankings and Japan demonstrating incremental but limited progress.The analysis highlights how governance capacity, policy continuity, and national strategy influence AEI effectiveness.
Nicole Gallagher (Sun,) studied this question.