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In reviewing the many changes within Chinese higher education over the last 30 years, one cannot help but note the impact of the macro-level context in which they have occurred. At the end of the 1960s, China’s economy was seemingly headed toward bankruptcy, schools throughout the country had been closed for nearly four years, and the structures of social, political and cultural authority were in substantial disarray. China managed, however, to pull back from the verge of chaos, largely overcoming its internal ideological disputes by the end of the 1970s, the more specifically political turmoil of the late 1980s, and the Asian financial crisis during the late 1990s to establish a pattern of stable and remarkably rapid growth. (Since the 1990s, China’s economy has been growing at a rate of around 8% to 10% annually.) Importantly, this pattern of growth has been maintained apparently without social or political chaos. It has, moreover, been accompanied by social transitions that have helped to propel no less rapid educational change. In this chapter, China is discussed as an example of a large, rapidly growing transitional society in which higher education change is playing a central role in social transformation. While many of the changes are specific to China, there may well be lessons for other transitional societies seeking new educational forms and practices.