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Global science is set to experience different times in the 2020s. China surpasses the USA in terms of the number of scientific papers in 2020 in most scientific databases. This scenario is expected to have implications not only in East Asia but also beyond the region. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the scientific influence of the US-China competition on six major Muslim-majority science systems. Multiple data sources are used to collect data for the bibliometric analyses, which include the trend analysis of collaboration patterns, discipline-based collaborations, authorship patterns for responsibility in collaborations, and citation premium of collaborations with the USA versus China. All the analyses consistently demonstrate that the USA is losing its scientific influence on the selected Muslim-majority science systems to China. Analysis results indicate an astonishing increase in collaborations with China-based scientists in the last decade. Half of the selected Muslim-majority science systems collaborate more with China-based scientists, whereas the other half collaborate more with the USA in 2021, indicating a fifty-fifty split. The collaborations with China-based authors garner higher citation premiums for the selected Muslim-majority science systems than the collaborations with the USA.

This paper employs the notion of a "career script" as a conceptual basis to examine how age-based academic career norms are internalized, strategized, and reproduced among PhD students aspiring to become academics. It draws on interviews with 70 PhD students at leading universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau that were organized and explored using narrative inquiry. The findings suggest that the tournament-like, age-based career scripts are primarily shaped by institutional policies on recruitment and funding applications and reinforced through social interactions. Doctoral students internalize the established criteria for success defined by the career scripts and stigmatize those who lag behind in the attainment of institutionally predetermined milestones, thus discouraging any attempt to rescript career norms. While enacting successful career scripts, students experience age and temporal anxiety at a fairly young age, exacerbating ageism in the academic labor market.

Chinese students represent a substantial portion of the UK university student population, with most of them being postgraduates. However, whilst the UK remains a top choice for Chinese students seeking to complete a higher degree programme, competition within the global Higher Education (HE) landscape is intensifying. Consequently, popular HE destinations such as the USA and the UK must now contend with growing academic markets in Australia and New Zealand (Marginson, 2006) as well as some non-English speaking countries which offer appealing university degrees through English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) (Mok, 2007). It is therefore salutary to ensure that Chinese students continue to find the UK appealing. This is vitally important both for the economy and the intellectual diversity and talents these students bring to UK HE institutions. This study thus revisits the core motives which drive Chinese students to UK universities. Significantly, unlike other investigations which have treated the topic of motivation rather marginally and through broad research scopes, this paper uses a 'small-lens approach' (Ushioda, 2016), which here is operationalised through the combination of practitioner research and narrative analysis. The study therefore focuses on a small group (N = 16) of Chinese students to unpack the nuances of meaning which characterise their initial motivation to study in Britain.

The terminology of "Chinese characteristics" (zhongguo tese) is ubiquitous in China's political language, but its precise definition remains elusive. This study focuses specifically on the mobilising of the idea of Chinese characteristics of China's science evaluation programme: the China Discipline Evaluation (CDE). Implemented as an instrument of the higher education reform since 1978, it still plays a vital role in China today. This paper is structured into three parts. It begins by laying out the broad landscape of the science evaluation systems across several countries including China, to distil the distinctiveness of the CDE. Then, it moves to focus on the CDE and locates it in its historical and social-political context. Finally, it investigates the origin and use of Chinese characteristics, suggesting that this terminology functions as a rhetoric modality which describes, labels, and legitimates seemingly self-contradictory phenomena exclusive to China. It also emphasises the idea of Chinese exceptionalism that is touted as irreducible to other cultural forms. Based on these considerations, it proposes three dimensions of the Chinese characteristics of the CDE: (i) the paradoxical status of the evaluation agency, (ii) the co-existence of contradictory values embedded in the objectives and criteria of the evaluation, and (iii) the promotion of the visibility of the idea of China at the international stage. Overall, it shows that while the CDE may appear to be a decentralisation instrument, it is in essence a "hegemonic project" and "hegemonic apparatus" to fulfil the party-state's ambition in securing domestic stability and pursuing international competitiveness.

Entrepreneurs play a crucial role in fostering innovation and fuelling economic growth. China has recently sought to increase entrepreneurial intention in university students by providing entrepreneurship education based on the model deployed by universities in Western cultures. Additionally, a longstanding challenge for universities has been the wellbeing of their students. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this issue, leading to enhancing the wellbeing of university students being declared a global priority. Consequently, by drawing on a framework of conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptually develop and empirically validate a model for enhancing entrepreneurial intention and wellbeing in university students. The data were collected in December 2022 and January 2023. A total of 952 undergraduate students completed the questionnaire, with 476 responses from China and 476 from the UK. Findings indicate (i) positive associations between self-perceived academic performance and individual entrepreneurial intention, whereby self-perceived employability mediates the relationship, (ii) positive associations between serious leisure and wellbeing, whereby self-perceived employability mediates the relationship, and (iii) the country moderates the association between (a) serious leisure and wellbeing, and (b) serious leisure and self-perceived employability, whereby the association is stronger for China than for the UK. The theoretical contribution comes from constructing and empirically validating a model, evidencing alignment and divergence by country concerning acquiring specific personal resources via self-perceived academic performance, serious leisure, and self-perceived employability. Practical and policy implications arise from suggesting how higher education institutions can support their students to enhance individual entrepreneurial intention and wellbeing.

In educational research, there has been much stricture of neoliberalism as a scourge. In the higher education sector, the neoliberal turn has been observed as eroding academic freedom and deprofessionalising academics. Early career academics are often described as victims of neoliberalism. In this paper, we take a positive perspective through a deep dive into resilience that enables self-transformation and, potentially, system change. Our paper is situated in the Chinese higher education context where the "up-or-out" system has been put in place, mirroring the neoliberal university at a global range. We--a mid-career researcher and an early career academic--analyse our collective narratives generated through WeChat text and voice message. Drawing insight from Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, our narratives lead to four themes: capital accumulation and self-transformation, shaping the publication habitus, emancipation from symbolic violence, and resilience to symbolic domination. We conclude the paper with a call for sociology of resilience and recommendations for deneoliberalising higher education.

Until recently, modern science had been dominated by a handful of Western countries. However, since the turn of the millennium, the global science landscape has undergone dramatic changes. The number of nations where a significant proportion of research done is of high international standard has now increased considerably. China particularly stands out and is today one of the leading science nations in the world. Overall, Chinese research collaborations with countries in the Western world exemplify the general trend towards increasing complexity in the global research landscape. It has gradually become obvious that differences between institutional settings need to be managed more systematically to promote cross-border research cooperation for shared benefits, from individual to institutional levels. An informed discussion of managing complex conditions necessitates an understanding of the relationship-level dynamics of research collaborations. In order to identify what aspects of international research collaborations are the most pertinent to systematically manage at individual and institutional levels, this paper investigates projects in a bilateral Swedish-Chinese funding program. The paper finds that the majority of collaborations funded had yielded positive impact in terms of publications, strengthened research capacity in research groups, and resource accumulation. The challenges found in the collaborations are related to needs such as improving transparency, ethical concerns, and imbalances in reciprocity.

Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with China. Academic researchers are only beginning to describe how countries are responding to the ongoing need for global scientific collaboration amidst intensifying geopolitical competition. Several studies have examined the securitization of scientific connections with China in the USA, while others have documented developments in nations such as Australia, the UK, and Sweden. However, there is limited comparative research on approaches to international science amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap, illuminating the key dimensions of variation in country-level responses by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia. The questions we ask are as follows: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? Swedish government have been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed "responsible internationalisation" guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia's approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.

This paper contends that the inclusion of meso- and micro-level perspectives has been under exploration in the study of the internationalization of humanities and social sciences, in particular, in a state-mandated system where policy interventions in higher education and knowledge production have typically been aligned with state construction and national development. It argues that institutional and individual responses to state policies on the internationalization of humanities and social sciences should be investigated due to their respective roles in policymaking and implementation. It has, therefore, retrieved recent and historical policy documents during the post-WTO period and collected empirical data from two Chinese universities. A constructivist-interpretivist qualitative approach and a qualitative case study strategy were adopted for this investigation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the empirical data, this paper reveals the gap between the macro-level ambition of achieving outward-oriented diffusion of innovations and the local-level realities, as well as institutional dilemmas and conflicts in facilitating the internationalization.

In China, higher education institutions (HEIs) have a governance arrangement in which the university president and the party secretary occupy key roles. However, their legal roles as institutional leaders are vaguely specified in existing legal frameworks. Based on a four-dimensional theoretical model, this paper (i) clarifies the leadership roles in the dual governance structure, (ii) explores how HEI leaders (i.e. presidents and party secretaries) perceive their leadership, and (iii) applies the unique Chinese practices as a valuable test bed for critical reflections on how existing theoretical models of leadership are relevant in Chinese contexts. Through in-depth interviews with six top-level leaders from six Chinese public HEIs, our findings indicate that Chinese HEI leaders apply more structural than symbolic dimensions in their leadership practices. Whereas studies on institutional leadership conducted outside China tend to highlight the symbolic dimensions of leadership practices, our study suggests that top-level Chinese HEI leaders may assume the role of university managers rather than institutional leaders. We offer some reflections on the relevance of existing theoretical models of leadership and suggest the directions for further theoretical enhancement.

Although scholars have noted the detrimental nature of the various changes in higher education prompted by neoliberalism, its impact on the experiences of international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students has yet to be adequately studied. Informed by Bourdieu's concepts of "doxa," field, habitus, and capital, this paper examines the ways in which neoliberalism as "doxa" in the Australian higher education field has "colonised" the perception and practice of Chinese international HDR students whilst some students were able to demonstrate resilience to the pervasive neoliberal practices. The paper draws on a larger qualitative research project including interviews with 18 Chinese HDR students from four Australian universities. Data suggest that Chinese HDR research students gradually developed intensified dispositions of self-reliance and self-exploitation in response to neoliberal academic practices whilst others were enculturated into a "floating habitus" (or vulnerable position) in relation to academic publishing as they attempted to negotiate the tensions across fields and over time. Data further reveal that some participants demonstrated resilience to neoliberalism when empowered by their supervisors with less utilitarian and more critically reflexive supervisory practices. The paper argues that the embrace of neoliberalism in the Australian higher education field has become widespread yet controversial, and that thinking and enacting resilience sociologically may de-neoliberalise the higher education field in Australia and beyond.

Since 1990, a large and dynamic global science system has evolved, based on grass roots collaboration, and resting on the resources, infrastructure and personnel housed by national science systems. Euro-American science systems have become intensively networked in a global duopoly; and many other countries have built national science systems, including a group of large- and middle-sized countries that follow semi-autonomous trajectories based on state investment, intensive national network building, and international engagement, without integrating tightly into the global duopoly. The dual global/national approach pursued by these systems, including China, South Korea, Iran and India, is not always fully understood in papers on science. Nevertheless, China is now the number two science country in the world, the largest producer of papers and number one in parts of STEM physical sciences. The paper investigates the remarkable evolution of China's science funding, output, discipline balance, internationalisation strategy and national and global networking. China has combined global activity and the local/national building of science in positive sum manner, on the ground of the nationally nested science system. The paper also discusses limits of the achievement, noting that while China-US relations have been instrumental in building science, a partial decoupling is occurring and the future is unclear.

State policies regarding the internationalization of higher education (IHE) in China have undergone significant shifts between 1949 and 2019. This paper advances the proposition that these shifts in policies pertaining to IHE can be understood as part of a process of ongoing Chinese state formation in relation to national and global developments and does so by examining the history of IHE policy and policy changes between 1949 and 2019 to demonstrate this possibility. We consider three specific periods to make this case, including: (1) the period of Marxist-Leninist socialist nationalism, patriotism and proletarian internationalism and the early engagements of IHE (1949-1976); (2) neoliberal globalization and opening-up: a return to the international stage and further IHE (1977-2002); and finally (3) state developmentalism and the era of globally engaged higher education (HE) (2003-2019). In conclusion, the current implications of a neoliberal (capitalist) globalization are discussed in terms of real and potential implications for Chinese state formation, Chinese HE and society. The paper aims to investigate the historical underpinnings and formation of international HE in China and contribute to the significant gap in our current literature regarding IHE in China as a socio-historical phenomenon. It not only offers a detailed documentation of how policy on IHE has evolved and shifted in the context of significant changes in political and economic directions in China but also teases out influences of national concerns such as ideological and cultural considerations as well as neoliberal globalization.

China has adopted policy experimentation (PE) as a means of introducing and testing innovative policy options for reforms in higher education (HE). This paper explores how PE plays out in the HE sector, involving state actors and university actors in a dynamic interactive process and bringing about institutional changes. This paper proposes a theoretical categorisation to understand four types of PE that occurred in China's HE reforms, i.e. directive, authorised, exploratory and retrospectively authorised experiments. It discusses an empirically informed case study to illustrate the experiment process characterised by central-local interaction and intentionally ambiguous boundaries. The PE approach enables state-university interactions and power negotiations that create and maintain strategy space for consensus-building. The state, however, retains ultimate authority for legitimatising, selecting and expanding policy experiments. It is best understood as 'elite-enabled experimentation within existing political hierarchies'. This study provides a distinctive perspective for understanding and explaining the power dynamics embedded in China's HE reform process and more broadly the evolution of higher education governance.

This paper explores the understudied topic of international student sojourners' emotional intercultural competence in higher education by analysing Chinese postgraduate students' experiences of managing their emotions evoked during intercultural communication at a British university. Through ethnographic interviews, this study examines how students construct their emotion-management experiences as well as the effects of social interaction on the construction processes of these experiences. The findings shed light on the motives and pathways for deploying specific emotional intercultural competencies in practice. Furthermore, the findings manifest the central role of the interplay between individual agency and societal forces in shaping the substances, facilitators, constraints, two-way interactivity and dialectical tensions of emotional intercultural competencies that unfold in specific interpersonal, moral and structural contexts. By representing competence as a repertoire of action strategies performed by individuals to address their important concerns and by illuminating the meanings of competence in particular environments at particular moments, this study moves beyond the traditional 'list' approach which largely conceptualises competencies as fixed, individual-based and universal entities. The study emphasises the importance of taking a holistic, process-oriented, context-based and dialectical perspective in developing a deeper level of competence for empowering individuals engaged in intercultural communication. In addition, this study discusses practical implications regarding the development of emotion-management strategies towards competence for intercultural education in higher education.

Due to global attention on student employability, employers are expected to be involved in institutional governance in higher education and quality assurance (QA). Due to the difficulties in recruiting motivated employers to participate in external QA governance and process, this has become a challenging issue in many Asian nations. The paper aims to explore employer legitimacy in Asian national higher education regulations and EQA system according to a four-dimensional diagram of institutional governance model. There are two major findings. First, Asian governments developed QA policies with a focus on employer engagement but the emerging practice is still ineffective. Second, approaches of employer engagement in QA governance vary context to context, such as HK and Malaysia in the excellence mode; Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand belong to advanced type; and China, Thailand, and Vietnam fall in the intermediate category.

This paper investigates China's present approach of using "outward-oriented" higher education internationalization for status and image enhancement, and the challenges it faces in the response to this approach. It examines the three major dimensions of China's present approach including its cultural diplomacy based on Sino-foreign higher education collaboration (i.e., the Confucius Institute program), international development aid in higher education, and international student recruitment at the higher education level. The theoretical framework is developed based on neo-Marxist theories of center-periphery model and world system. The concepts of "soft power" and public diplomacy, Knight's argument of "knowledge diplomacy," and Hayhoe's argument about HE-based civilizational dialogue have been used. The paper reviews and analyzes China's strategic plans related to its higher education internationalization, as well as relevant academic and non-academic literature about the three major dimensions of its present approach. Findings reveal that tensions still exist between China's goals and the reality. It suggests that China's approach should be given a neutral and serious assessment.

International student education in China has been continuously changing in response to the rapid social transition since the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Adopting a historical perspective, this scholarly paper begins with an analysis of characteristics of international student education in China in terms of rationales, role of government, and international students. Several challenges are then identified and this paper concludes with observations on future trends of international student education development, with a special focus on the implications of "the Belt and Road." This paper contributes to a better understanding of China's role as an emerging host nation of international students.

This paper explores how a novel university governance model at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), largely learned from the West, has been implemented in the highly institutionalised and centralised Chinese higher education system. For this purpose, we first constructed an analytical framework, integrating the conceptualisation of an innovation process in higher education and the concept of embedded agency. This framework was then applied to analyse eight interviews, seven policy documents and six news media reports in our empirical investigation of the case university. Our major research findings are: the governance model adopted by SUSTech was a disruptive innovation and it was mostly challenged by the incompatibility between the norms around the governance model and the institutional context of Chinese higher education; this challenge was mitigated through three agency strategies, labelled by the metaphors of "new wine in a new bottle," "new wine in an old bottle" and "old wine in a new bottle." Successfully implementing these strategies calls on the visions, skills of playing power games and social capital of those initiating the innovation. Finally, we discuss the theoretical contribution and practical implications of the study in the conclusion.

According to UNESCO statistics, the People's Republic of China (PRC) sends far more students to study overseas than any other country in the world. Similarly, from the receiving countries' point of view, PRC students form by far the highest proportion of international students. In many respects, this is a success story, but it also poses a number of risks to universities. This paper focuses on one of those key risks that of student dissatisfaction (including from PRC students themselves). Using a sequential mixed-method study, it addresses two research questions: (a) Chinese students' level of satisfaction with their social integration into the university community and (b) the barriers that Chinese students' perceive in becoming more socially integrated into the university student community. The research finds that many Chinese students are dissatisfied with their range of friendships and that they find it more challenging to socialise with students of other nationalities than other students do. They point out a number of barriers to integration, with cultural distance playing a major role, but also argue for the impact of individual factors. The paper concludes by considering the implications for universities and suggestions for further research.

This paper explores the relationship between the student-supervisor relationship (SSR) and postgraduate students' subjective well-being. Based on a longitudinal survey of Beijing college students, the present study suggests that in China, the SSR is a supervisor-centred, top-down hierarchical relationship. The reciprocity level of the SSR is positively related to the students' subjective well-being. The trust level of the SSR also has a positive relationship with students' subjective well-being; improving the trust level may also mitigate the possible negative implications of the low level of reciprocity in the relationship. The present study further reveals that it is more difficult for first-generation students to establish sound SSR than non-first-generation students. Additionally, a good SSR is more important for first-generation students' positive well-being. The findings provide implications for educational practices on how to improve postgraduate students' subjective well-being by improving the SSR.

This paper presents new evidence on how enrollment expansion affects higher education access and production with a focus on social inequality and institutional stratification. From 1999 to 2012, the world's largest higher education expansion happened in China that annual college enrollment dramatically increased from 1,083,600 to 6,888,300. We evaluate this exogenous, unprecedented policy using nationally representative student-level survey data and newly available confidential institution-level data. Enrollment expansion, which reduced per-student resources, negatively impacted college quality as measured by value-added on graduates' employment and earnings. The inequality in access between high- and low-SES students and the stratified production between college institutional tiers persisted during expansion.

This paper documents the structure and operations of student governments in contemporary Chinese higher education and their effect on college students' political trust and party membership. We first investigate the structure and power distribution within student governments in Chinese universities, specifically focusing on the autonomy of student governments and the degree to which they represent students. Second, using a large sample of college students, we examine how participating in student government affects their political trust and party membership. Our results show that student government in Chinese higher education possesses a complex, hierarchical matrix structure with two main parallel systems--the student union and the Chinese Communist Party system. We found that power distribution within student governments is rather uneven, and student organisations that are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party have an unequal share of power. In addition, we found that students' cadre experience is highly appreciated in student cadre elections, and being a student cadre significantly affects their political trust and party membership during college.

Theoretical ideas about globalization and internationalization of higher education emphasize the tension among different ideologies of higher education. According to literature, a competition among states, economy, knowledge, and status generates this tension to drive higher education development. This theoretical understanding not only shapes our global imaginations but also permeates the organizational behavior of universities. In this paper, we focus on the institutional logics that motivate universities in Kazakhstan to engage with China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We investigate the ways that Kazakhstani higher education interprets and responds to China's vision of a global order. Based on interviews conducted at 10 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kazakhstan, we argue that Kazakhstan's engagement with the BRI circumvents the cultural connectivity and global cooperation that are embraced by Chinese policy discourse and perpetuated by academic literature. Rather, institutional leaders in Kazakhstan operate with a utilitarian logic that seeks revenue generation, links with industry, and opportunities for students in employment and further education. The pursuit of these strategic outcomes demonstrates a bilateral engagement with China rather than the multilateral cooperation envisioned by policymakers. In a higher education system dominated by the state, the institutions in our study exhibit partial agency to accrue pragmatic benefits rather than concede to isomorphic pressures or mimic internationalization from neoliberal contexts. The discrepancy between policy discourse from China and policy reception in Kazakhstan raises questions about the rhetoric of a multipolar global order and the realities of international cooperation in higher education.

China is now the second most popular destination country for African international students. This paper investigates the discourse surrounding this emergent flow of students, and the main aim is to offer a new means to conceptualize mobility between non-Western nations. The article highlights weaknesses in current postcolonial conceptualizations of student mobility. A key contribution to the literature on international student mobility is that it extends and adapts existing work on the unequal and asymmetrical nature of international student mobility by drawing on the concept of semi-peripheral (post)coloniality, to examine how specific modes of integration into the "world-system" result in particular discursive formations around international student mobility. The main argument is that relative structural positions between the sending region and receiving country are mirrored in discourse around international student mobility, which contains examples of civilizational paternalism and pursuit of pragmatic foreign policy goals.

In line with global trends, China experienced a rapid expansion in its higher education system in the second half of the twentieth century, and has seen especially large growth since the early 2000s. The expansion of higher education means an increase in the total quantity of educational opportunities. Although it is expected that education expansion can lead to a more equalized distribution of educational opportunities, based on the extant research in China, there is currently no consensus regarding the impact of higher education expansion on equality in educational opportunity. Moreover, only a few researchers have examined the difference in its impact between elite and non-elite higher education. By analyzing the data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2015, this study aims to investigate the relationship between higher education expansion and inequalities in educational opportunities in the context of China and to analyze the difference in the influence of this expansion between elite and non-elite higher education. The findings of this study show that, except for gender disparity, inequalities affected by household registration, family economic status, and parental education level were not ameliorated after expansion. In addition, the decrease in gender inequality in access to higher education was greater in elite than non-elite higher education. Possible reasons and policy implications are given based on the data analysis in this paper.

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are situated in evolving strategies of internationalization. China has moved from an internationalization strategy simply based on learning from the West, to a 'going out' strategy designed to both lift domestic research capacity and advance China's influence in the world. However, the 'going out' strategy nonetheless embodies ambiguities and dilemmas. The world of academic knowledge is not a level playing field but more closely approximates the centre-periphery dynamic described in world systems theory. This study explores the influence of publication incentives in the context of a centre-periphery world. It draws on analysis of 172 institutional incentive documents and interviews with 75 HSS academics, university senior administrators, and journal editors. The study identifies practices within China's HSS that reproduce centre-periphery relationships. By focusing on international publications, Chinese universities run the risk of downplaying Chinese-language publications and adopting standards and norms from global centres to assess domestic knowledge production. These could result in creating knowledge from and about China primarily in Western terms without adding a distinctive Chinese strand to the global conversation. Nonetheless, the study also identifies alternative dynamics that challenge the existing power hierarchies in global HSS, highlighting indigenous knowledge and the need to pluralize global knowledge production.

There are around 400,000 international students studying on Australian campuses in 2018, and the education of international students is Australia's third largest export, behind that of iron ore and coal, thereby playing a significant role in the country's economy and particularly the financial sustainability of Australian universities. Chinese international students, account for one-third in this cohort, are paradoxically both coveted as 'cash cows' and labelled as a 'security threat' to Australian society. The paper examines this particular 'Chinese Student Syndrome' through the lens of 'colonial modernity' and argues that along with the problems of Chinese firms in Australia, Chinese international students on Australian campuses, in many ways, take on the persona of China itself in Australia, and the implications associated with its global rise. At the core of this syndrome lies a deep-seated ontological framing of a historical teleology that centres the Anglo-European pathway to modernity as universal that grounds the epistemic certainty of higher education institutions in Australia and regards Chinese students as the outsider to this teleology.

This paper adds an organizational dimension to the body of literature on international student mobility. Existing studies examine push/pull factors and student motivations, neglecting that students' motivations and demands are not necessarily spontaneous, but can be shaped by external forces. Drawing on interview, archival and observation data collected on four leading cram schools that prepare students for the TOEFL/GRE, IELTS and SAT in China, I argue that cram schools not only coach students on test preparation and "how to study abroad," but they also adopt organizational framing to instill in students "why to study abroad." Leading cram schools have played an integral role in promoting a certain organizational framing as the dominant approach of a niche market in a given era. During the 1990s, when the TOEFL/GRE niche market was rapidly expanding, the market leader in this niche promoted self-help and nationalism as dominant discourses. Self-help discourse frames overseas study and test preparation not as means, but as the ends of students' lives: going beyond one's limit and making one's life complete. Nationalist discourse depicts overseas study as a detour to build a stronger China after learning from the West. After 2000, however, new organizational framing picked up momentum in the new niche markets of IELTS and SAT. Targeting urban middle-class consumers, market leaders in these new niches increasingly framed studying abroad as a springboard for immigration, a channel for becoming global elites and an opportunity for status improvement for the entire family. My article bridges literature on transnational higher education with studies on supplementary education.

In this qualitative study, the form and features of institutional governance in private universities in China are investigated. Using a comparative case study approach, it focuses on two private universities, each with differing institutional histories and forms of governance. It draws on thematic analysis of extensive documentation relating to the governance of private higher education and data from in-depth interviews with 26 senior managers on 38 separate occasions. Through the lenses of principal--agent and stewardship theories, the roles of the Council, as the governing body, and the University Committee, as executive team, in the institutional governance of private universities are explored. The principal features of the two governance forms relating to autonomy and control of shareholders and managers are identified. The paper fills a gap in the study of the institutional governance of Chinese private universities in English literature. As such, it provides insight into practice for policymakers, senior managers, and academics in the field of governance of private universities.

Regional higher education growth in non-federal states has not attracted much academic attention. This paper is one of the first attempts to explore China's latest higher education expansion and its systematic and regional impact from the perspective of multi-level governance. This article argues that the state had explicitly utilized the Commanding Heights Strategy to diffuse the higher education authority to sub-national level and promote regional growth. The Central authorities allowed the Ministry of Education establishing a vertical elite coalition to command the heights of tertiary institutional hierarchy and key resources for tertiary development. In addition, the state used both financial incentives and sectoral incentives to mobilize resources for regional expansion. The Commanding Heights Strategy shapes China's response to the higher education trilemma of costs, access, and quality. Under this strategy, the unprecedented tertiary expansion has expanded college access, but at the expense of affordability, quality, and a large and increasing regional variation.

China's rapidly expanding university system aims to balance quantity and quality through a variety of measures, including internationalization. This paper employs data from a survey of 1264 students from 39 higher education institutions in order to understand students' view on institutional approaches to internationalization. The data show that "the Project 985" universities (elite research universities in China) have used internationalization to sustain two objectives: elite education and innovative research for quality, because there are high levels of agreement on three indicators with internationalization of these universities: student and faculty mobility, internationalizing curriculum and program, and international research collaboration and partnership. In "the Project 211" universities (second-tier research universities), the data show that internationalization activities are highly related to curriculum reforms and faculty mobility. While the other degree-offering universities provide less opportunity for internationalization, the non-degree-offering institutions find their distinct way for institutional internationalization by providing more "international internship" opportunities. Our analysis also indicates that institutional internationalization is disciplinary oriented. In disciplines like law and art, students do not think that many activities are taken for internationalization by their institutions, while such disciplines as economics, management, and education have a higher level of internationalization. The paper will explain these findings in detail.

The search continues for a Chinese research university model that can balance quality and quantity in research and teaching. This paper argues that finding one depends upon deepening internationalization, defining educational sovereignty, and expanding university autonomy. The paper does this by examining selected aspects in the development of the research university systems of the Chinese mainland and China's Hong Kong, particularly with respect to the governance of research and teaching.

Due to the politicisation of universities-within-the-state, the state's governance of higher education in China differentiates itself from other countries. This study examines how the Chinese central government adjusts its governance over universities between 1978 and 2018. Based on an extensive analysis of policy documents and scholarly research, this study proposes an analytic framework, comprising the state's governance logics, governance instruments, and institutional demonstrations. The three strategically selected governance instruments, i.e. laws, policies, and finance, are demonstrated through various aspects integral to China's higher education--the dual-goverance structure, appointment of the principal leadership, access to higher education, university and discipline structures, curriculum and ideology, funding and grants, and tuition fees. Based on an in-depth investigation, the study argues that the underlying governance logics of the state are moving from direct controls to indirect supervision; however, despite the increasing university autonomy and academic freedom in some areas, the state has never abdicated the essential power and authority over higher education institutions. This paper contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of China's governance of higher education in recent decades.

Internationalization has become a new landmark of Chinese higher education, measured by indicators such as personnel mobility, number of offshore/joint programs, and international publications. Chinese universities have moved from isolation to the forefront of internationalization in a short timeline and amid the dramatic expansion of Chinese higher education to a mass system since the late 1990s. This has set the context of the internationalization discourse. At the same time, Chinese upper- and middle-class families increasingly choose not to send their offspring to Chinese universities, but rather to study abroad. These developments add up to a puzzle as to how internationalization has helped lift the standards of Chinese higher education. Drawing on the glonacal agency heuristic, resource dependency theory, and the Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education (EIHE) perspective, this paper utilizes the case study of two Chinese universities to address such two research questions: (1) How have Chinese universities managed to rise so dramatically in terms of internationalization? and (2) Why do they embrace internationalization so enthusiastically and how does this benefit them?

In recent years, over half a million Chinese students travelled abroad to study, making China the largest source of international students in the global higher education market. A large Chinese population on campus does not, however, generate prolific interactions between them and local students. Language barriers and cultural distance are frequently cited in the literature as factors that hinder communication, yet it is not clear how they actually affect the communication process. To address this gap, we utilise quantitative and qualitative data collected at one Australian university through an online survey (n = 124) and focus groups (N = 16) to investigate how Chinese international students and local students understand and experience intercultural communication. We find that both student groups are quite positive about language and cultural differences but struggle with comprehension problems and low-quality interactions. Intercultural communication requires interlocutors to establish common grounds between language and cultural variations via meaning negotiation. However, being restricted by intracultural practices and norms, students are not able to fully utilise communication techniques to fulfil this need. This, in return, affects their motivations to have further intercultural interactions. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for universities and suggestions for further research.

In this paper we investigate the current tensions for pedagogic change in the Chinese higher education system, and explore how the intricate interplay between the stakeholder relationships drives and mediates the system, and impacts on potential pedagogy. To achieve these goals, this study takes an inductive theory-building approach to gather the unique perceptions of 66 Chinese academics, and critically analyses the findings based through an Activity Theory framework. The findings indicate that institutional pedagogy is driven generally by regulated knowledge sources, knowledge dissemination, student compliance, parental expectations, examination achievement and pastoral care. The academics were enthusiastic about introducing more interactive, self-paced, authentic and web-based pedagogy, but continually indicated how traditional practice, social expectations, local regulations and economic restraints would frustrate reforming practices. The findings also show how pedagogic reform confronts existing subjectivity, and emphasise the importance of building and disseminating a rationale for changing prior to any pedagogic innovation. The Activity Theory framework demonstrates how potential pedagogic change has to be preceded by changing the understanding of stakeholders about the new goals and practices of learning. This study and the results have important implications for restructuring and reforming Chinese higher education system to meet future global and societal demands.

Tendencies to marketization and privatization in higher education, along with other factors, have challenged the idea of higher education as a public good in many countries over the years. China has experienced this situation to some extent. During the last 20 years, this has triggered various discussions on higher education and public good(s) in China. Drawing on qualitative data from 24 semi-structured interviews in both government departments and universities, this study defines and explores public and common good(s) in relation to higher education in China. As the first empirical study on this theme in the country, it is argued that this study makes a significant and original contribution to knowledge with international relevance. This paper identifies the complex nature of higher education in China and proposes that it may be better described in relation to common good(s). Also, as a common good, higher education in China contributes to the (global) common good and generates (global) common goods in many aspects.

This article investigates the transitioning process of international Chinese undergraduate students studying in Russia. The paper offers new insights into changes in the expectations and experiences of Chinese students at various stages of their joint educational studies in China and Russia. Drawing on a qualitative study of 20 Chinese undergraduates studying in Russia, the findings of the study indicate that before studying in Russia, most of Chinese students had low expectations about their study programme. However, once they were in Russia, students' perception of the value of their international education experiences changes through varied opportunities for self-reflexivity in an unfamiliar cultural environment. The study also offers an example of methodological approach useful for researching international students' experiences, particularly within but not limited to context of Sino-Foreign university partnerships.

Over the past few decades, Mainland China has witnessed a massive outflow of students to higher education institutions in Hong Kong. In the context of an up-surge in Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong, this research aims to explore (1) why Mainland Chinese students choose to study in Hong Kong over other higher education systems, (2) perceptions about the advantages and disadvantages of studying in Hong Kong, and (3) challenges in the process of acculturation from their homeland to Hong Kong. Five key themes are identified: education, finance, learning culture, language, and discrimination/labelling. While Mainland Chinese students often struggle to blend into the new environment, most gradually become accustomed to the local way of life. What remains a challenge is (perceived) discrimination following political tensions over the "one China, two systems" framework. This paper identifies the expectations and dissatisfactions of the participants with regard to studying in Hong Kong, ultimately offering higher-education administrators an insight into how to better cater for the expanding share of Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong's universities. This research is significant because it extends the literature by examining acculturation and cultural adaptation issues in an increasingly globalized context.

There are several common trends and challenges in the higher education (HE) system around the world, like expansion and diversification of HE, fiscal pressure and orientation to markets, demand for greater accountability and great quality and efficiency (e.g. The financing and management of higher education: a status report on worldwide reforms, 1998; Internationalisation of higher education and global mobility 43-58, 2014; Global policy and policy-making in education, 2014; Higher Education Policy 21:5-27, 2008). These trends and changes have reshaped university governance as well. Public universities are the main institutions to carry out HE in Australia and China. The engagement between Australia and China in HE sector has become closer and closer in recent years. To conduct better and further cooperation and collaboration between Australian and Chinese universities, it is critical to understand and acknowledge the differences in two nations' university governance. Moreover, by conducting this comparative study of two nations, it also helps us to figure out the changes in university governance over times under the global trends and the interactions between global and local factors. This comparative study focuses on the university level and attempts to identify the differences of university governance in Australian and Chinese public universities in three dimensions, state-university relation, university internal governance and university finance. This paper sketches the university governance in Australia and China and finds that the relationship between government and university is looser in Australia than that in China and Australian universities enjoy more autonomy and power than Chinese universities; as to university internal governance, Australian universities use a more business-oriented management mechanism; funding associated with full-fee paying international students has become very important for Australian HE while Chinese government funding has been decreasing as well but funds from international students play a minimal financial role.

Despite the upsurge in interest in e-learning (or online learning) in Chinese higher education, little is known about the ways in which lecturers design and run their online courses, or about how they perceive e-learning. This paper reports the results of interviews with higher education teachers in China working in conventional, campus-based universities, concerning their conceptions and beliefs of e-learning. The interviews were analysed from a grounded theory perspective that gave rise to seven emerging themes, namely: the 'centrality of the lecture', 'online cooperative learning', 'network learning', 'student learning', 'lecture plus online work', 'infrastructure and access' and 'professional development'. Discussion of these emerging themes helps us understand the ways in which these teachers think about e-learning and teaching, the beliefs they hold about their 'e' practice, the ways in which they implement e-learning, the problems they face in incorporating e-learning into their courses and the ways in which they perceive e-learners. This provides a fascinating and unique insight into e-learning in Chinese higher education. Evidence shows that it is a complex area with many influences, some of which can be attributed to social, cultural and Confucian-heritage factors. It is concluded that, despite enthusiasm by some for innovating e-learning, the dominance of traditional teaching methods in China suggest that the conditions for mainstreaming e-learning in the near future are not strong.

This paper proves that social media use can contribute in important ways to employability outcomes. Specifically, results from a survey of 196 recent graduate students in China indicate that social media use is positively related to employability skills. Internship effectiveness serve as a mediating mechanism through which social media use affects employability skills. Zhongyong has a moderating effect on the social media use-internship effectiveness relationship. In addition to the direct moderating effect, Zhongyong is found to moderate the indirect relationship between social media use and employability skills. We discuss implications of these results for research and practice.

Based on case studies of China and Japan, this study undertakes comparative research on major aspects of university curriculum and instruction-teaching activities of academics, their role in curriculum development, and their perceptions of these activities--between a mass and a universal higher education system. Major findings from the APA (Academic Profession in Asia) surveys administered in the two countries in 2011-2012 with a similar questionnaire provide hard data. However, the study also explores other contextual factors and drivers which might have affected the teaching activities undertaken by academics, their involvement in curriculum development, and their views of relevant activities. The paper argues that, although differences can be found in some aspects of the curriculum and instruction and academics' participation in these activities during the shift from the mass to universal phase of higher education, seen from the two case studies, it is less clear that the differences show the impact of transforming from mass to universal education. The national contextual factors, especially the origins of higher education and ongoing national policies in both countries, appear to play a significant role in how current academics perceived the curriculum development and instruction, and their participation in these activities. More importantly, as fundamental changes do not necessarily occur in all aspects of the curriculum and instruction, as well as the academics' views across universal and mass higher education systems, Trow's research can only be partly applied to the analysis of the curriculum and instruction in both countries.

The paper takes an interest in consumer behavior in international higher education (HE). It takes qualitative narratives of international student experience as a point of departure for a discussion of the degree to which students conceive of their experience in consumer terms when they evaluate their stays abroad. Intentionally, the group of informants consists of culturally diverse subjects (Danish and Chinese students). While the size of the sample does not allow for any wide-ranging conclusions on the connection between cultural background and adoption of consumer identity, it enables the researchers to evaluate whether cultural background seems to pertain to the propensity of students to think and act in a consumer-oriented manner in their experience of the different material and academic standards they were faced with in their study abroad environment. Based on an interest in the role of the student in the era of academic capitalism, the study investigates whether the fact that universities increasingly operate on market and market-like conditions influences students' way of conceiving of their study abroad experience. To what extent do students perceive themselves as consumers investing in services and products?

Higher education in Macau, China, is characterized by vocationalization of institutions, lack of faculty professionalization, and little or no shared governance. Using general statistics of higher education in Macau and a case study of one university, this paper illustrates not only the status of the profession but also the structural, cultural, and individual factors which influence that status. The findings have an important implication for the development of higher education in Macau in the post-colonial era. At a time of universal corporatization and commercialization in higher education, this study explores a challenge that higher education faces everywhere.

In this paper, we examine the local conceptions, interpretations, and implementations of internationalization at one Chinese higher education institution, to provide a more complex and nuanced understanding of internationalization in the globalizing educational context. In particular, we explore the analytical capacity of Marginson and Rhoades "High Educ" 43(3), 281-309, (2002) glonacal (global + national + local) agency heuristic by examining the local "layers and conditions" of our research site. We found two local conceptions, "Xue Shu Feng Qi" (a Mandarin phrase relating to the academic culture) and "Jie Gui" (a metaphor for internationalization) were used by local actors in relation to the inbound and outbound flows of scholars and disciplinary norms that influenced the global and national reputation of the department. We interpret these local concepts as salient "layers and conditions" of the glonacal agency heuristic, providing an empirical example to more fully understand the theoretical implications of this perspective in higher education research.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the motives, the educational experiences, and the plan after graduation of a particular group of mainland Chinese students pursuing teacher education in Hong Kong by using a modified two-way push-and-pull model as our analytical framework. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 130 prospective student teachers from The Hong Kong Institute of Education, the largest teacher training provider in Hong Kong. The findings confirm a long-standing concern regarding the lack of an English environment and internationalization in universities in mainland China. In addition, the majority of the participants were satisfied with the overall quality of the teacher education programs in Hong Kong. Finally, our participants were a very special group of mainland Chinese students because, unlike those on other academic programs such as business or computing, the graduates from teacher education programs do not have much transferable academic capital. When they decide to pursue their teacher training degrees in Hong Kong, they have already made up their mind to stay in Hong Kong after graduation. Thus, we extend the threefold classifications of mainland Chinese students studying overseas, as defined by Dimmock and Leong, by adding a new category--labeled "settlers'"--in their classification.

Faculty plays a critical role in the growing trend of internationalization in higher education. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that drive faculty members to get involved in internationalization. Employing structural equation model with data gathered from questionnaire, this study attempts to explore how faculty engagement in internationalization is motivated based on a survey in China, and institution type is also considered in our model. Our findings suggest that in the overall sample, both individual and environmental motivations positively relate to faculty engagement in internationalization, and individual motivation is the more critical predictor. One striking result is that individual motivation plays a complete mediating factor between environmental motivation and faculty engagement in internationalization, suggesting the significance of transferring institutional incentives to faculty's individual competence and efficacy. Institution type significantly accounts for environmental motivations. As to key university, the result was consistent with above. In general institution, however, the effect of environmental motivation is insignificant, indicating that sufficient funding is indispensable for the internationalization ambition of institutions. The implications for research and policy conclude this paper.

With the advent of mass higher education and the consequent absorption of significant national resources, both public and private, it is inevitable that universities are increasingly expected to meet a range of societal needs. They are expected to "connect" with society at large. In this paper, we argue that connectivity is best integrated with research, teaching and scholarship and should not be relegated to a "third stream". We compare degrees of connectivity of 50 national systems of higher education using ten indicators, making a distinction between domestic and international connectivity. The strongest finding is that smaller countries exhibit the highest level of international connectivity. The higher education systems in countries with large absolute numbers of researchers such as the USA, China and Japan are relatively self-contained compared with countries such as Ireland, Switzerland and Singapore. Another finding is the relative insularity of the education sector in Eastern Europe, including the Russian Federation. When differences in levels of economic development are allowed for, among lower-income countries South Africa stands out as having a well-connected higher education sector.