Navigating the challenges of Gen-AI in Chinese higher education: Balancing technological innovation with academic integrity and intellectual engagement

Synthesis: Bai and Costa (2026) use a qualitative design — semi-structured interviews with 33 staff and students in Jiangxi Province, China — to explore how Gen-AI is reshaping teaching, learning and thinking in Chinese Higher Ed. Drawing on Bourdieu's field and habitus and Arendt's view of thinking as an inward, untransferable activity, they identify two principal tensions: the erosion of independent, critical and creative thinking, and the destabilisation of established understandings of Academic Integrity. While Gen-AI tools save time and offer emotional support, they risk fostering cognitive passivity that undermines the intellectual processes fundamental to higher education. The authors call for critical curricular reform and a redefinition of intellectual Agency in an increasingly AI-mediated academic environment.

Key Findings

Three themes. Reflexive thematic analysis of 33 transcripts surfaces three themes: (1) concerns over independent, critical and creative thinking; (2) the impact of Gen-AI on educational and study practices (chiefly workload reduction); and (3) Academic Integrity and ethical concerns.

Theme 1 — cognitive inertia and dependency. Both staff and students worry that Gen-AI encourages cognitive inertia and reduces independent thinking, despite its efficiency. Participants described an "Over-Reliance on the technology" that "makes individuals think less actively; the ability to innovate decreases," and that "excessive reliance on Gen-AI will reduce our ability to analyse independently." There is an awareness that the convenience of Gen-AI can lead to superficial engagement with knowledge — echoing the wiki's Over-Reliance and Cognitive Offloading concerns.

Theme 2 — practical benefits vs. workload. Despite the dependency worries, participants acknowledge Gen-AI's practical value for performative, time-consuming tasks — creating test questions and test papers, guiding student thinking, analysing learning situations, and generating work materials, summaries and reports. A reported need to reduce workload sits at the centre of these uses, illustrating the ambivalent everyday negotiation of Gen-AI in Higher Ed.

Theme 3 — academic integrity and ethical concerns. The ease with which Gen-AI generates content — including academic papers — raises questions about originality and research integrity. Participants also noted that Chinese-company-managed Gen-AI tools "do not cater for political debates or diverse views and stances on key issues," surfacing an ethical and geopolitical dimension to AI-mediated academic work.

Theoretical frame. Bourdieu's field and habitus locate Gen-AI use within shifting institutional structures and dispositions, while Arendt's conception of thinking as an inward, untransferable activity supplies the normative criterion against which cognitive passivity is judged; hooks and Freire further anchor the analysis of curriculum and education as engaged practice and of knowing as "earned, not given."

Method. A case-oriented, reflexive thematic approach (Braun & Clarke) was applied to 33 semi-structured interviews from Jiangxi Province, with within-case then cross-case synthesis of staff and student transcripts, reflexive memos, co-researcher coding, and an Ethics-approved protocol (#EDU-2024-2716-2733).

Reform imperative. The authors argue for critical curricular reform and reimagined practices that prioritise intellectual development, reframing the purpose of higher education in an AI-mediated environment. Safeguarding the humanistic aspect of higher education demands redefining intellectual agency and critical engagement with technological change, linking to AI Literacy and Agency.

Connected Concepts

• Critical Thinking
• Academic Integrity
• Agency
• Higher Ed
• Philosophy Of AI In Education
• Cognitive Offloading

Connected Articles

• Critical GenAI Use Predictors — Predictors of critical GenAI use
• GenAI Impact Chinese Students Hss — GenAI impact on Chinese humanities and social science students
• Rudolph AI Myths Critical Higher Ed — AI myths and critical higher education
• Students LLM Usage Critical Thinking — Student LLM use and critical thinking

Citation

Bai, L., & Costa, C. (2026). Navigating the challenges of Gen-AI in Chinese higher education: Balancing technological innovation with academic integrity and intellectual engagement. Computers and Education Open, 100397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2026.100397