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1 Introduction

Over the past three decades, globalization has appeared as the most frequently used term in nearly all academic fields. The world has become flat and the connections among countries have been increasingly tight due to the ever-developing technologies. Globalization produces profound and widespread effects on various aspects, including social, political, economic and cultural spheres. As most researchers pointed out, globalization has changed everything people used to believe or the manner in which people used to think (Ball 1998; Flynn 1997; Fukuyama 1992; Giddens 1994; Mok 2000; Ohmae 1999; Robertson 1995). Viewed in this light, nearly all of the transformations of higher education could be attributed to the influence of globalization. The rapid development of the global world aggravates the competition among countries, exacerbates the existing inequality and compels all nations, particularly those in adverse situations, to improve their national competitiveness with the hopes of reaping more profit in the global market (Altbach 2001; Knight 1999, 2005, 2007).

Tertiary education, which is regarded as the most effective method to provide high-quality labour force and accelerate the development of the economy, has been considered a very important determining factor for national growth. Under the increasing pressure exerted by globalization, universities around the world are compelled to be more internationally active, demonstrating their global competitiveness, to compete for talent students and limited financial funding. Internationalization of education, which refers to higher education in the contemporary world, is obliged to ‘prepare students for living and working in a more connected, interdependent and globalized world’, while ‘research and scholarships need to contribute to national and international issues’ (Knight 2004, p. 14) and has become the primary mission of higher education institutions around the globe. Mainland China and Hong Kong are no exception of this trend.

This chapter explores the development of internationalization of higher education systems in Mainland China and Hong Kong in the past few decades. The chapter begins with the exploration of the rationales why both governments intend to internationalize their higher education institutions. The subsequent two parts focus on the different strategies and policies the governments have adopted and released to fulfil this goal. The final section concludes the chapter by examining the implications to policy makers in these two Chinese societies.

2 Internationalizing Higher Education in Mainland China and Hong Kong

2.1 Mainland China: Quest for World-Class Universities

Even before the term internationalization was widely used, international influence has been long observed in education in China. As early as in the Qing dynasty, which was more than a century ago, the government sent a group of students to the USA and Europe to learn advanced science and technology. The influence of Japan, former Soviet Union and other Western countries subsequently spread to China and affected the Chinese education system to a different extent. More recently, the integration of the global economy and the emergence of a global market have challenged the operation of education. A response from the higher education sector is a sharp increase in globalization activities since the 1990s, such as the flow of students and scholars, international collaboration on education programmes and the establishment of overseas campuses (Knight 2004). Interrupted by the political turbulence in the 1970s, internationalization activities resumed in Chinese universities after the opening-up reform in the late 1970s. Similar to many other reforms, the internationalization of universities was initiated by the state in a top–down manner. Various policies encouraging international higher education were issued, indicating the different aims and goals of internationalization in accordance with the development of higher education and the domestic and global economies.

Improvements in education quality and quest for world-class status were central to the internationalization practices until the 1990s. As with the development of the economy, a skilled labour force was required. Higher education was thus used to facilitate economic development and improve competency by preparing students for an emerging global knowledge economy. The government recognized that a huge gap existed between the Chinese higher education and advanced systems. The CCCCP Decision on Institutional Reform of Education issued in 1985 highlighted the importance of international academic exchange in improving higher education quality (CCCCP 1985). Consequently, universities were given autonomy for such internationalization practices. Indeed, the empowerment of the university was a major aim of this policy because it was issued during the transition from a planned economy to a market economy in which universities require autonomy to function. Similar to the deepening of the opening-up reform, the National Outline for Education Reform and Development issued in 1993 paid more attention to internationalization (CCCCP and State Council 1993). This policy explicitly stated that China was preparing to address the challenge of internationalization by improving education quality to a world leading level.

The emergence of a global market has intensified the competition among universities. Various league tables were published in an attempt to rank universities across the world. Countries across the world have actively participated in global ranking exercises, aiming to enhance competitiveness and the reputation of their higher education systems globally. Similar to its western counterparts, China has also committed to the global ranking exercise. The Action Plan for Revitalization of Education in the twenty-first century passed in 1999 made the request to establish world-class universities (MOE and State Council 1999). Following this policy, the government initiated the ‘211’ and ‘985’ projects to select a number of top universities and help facilitate their achievement of world-class status through additional financial support. Meanwhile, China actively participated in the global search for talent through a number of projects, such as ‘Changjiang Scholar Program’ and ‘Overseas High Level Recruitment’, to recruit overseas Chinese and foreign experts to work in China (State Council 2010).

The policies passed in the new millennium indicated a new direction for internationalization practices. Aside from repeating the request for world-class universities as a response to internationalization, the state attempted to take advantage of this process to promote Chinese culture and language. The promotion of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language was proposed by the 2003–2007 Action Plan for Revitalization of Education as a strategy to expand the influence of Chinese across the world (MOE 2004). Moreover, the intention to enhance the overall influence of China was clearly stated in The National Outline for Mid- and Long-Term Education Planning and Development passed in 2010 (State Council 2010). Educational aid to developing countries and operation of Confucius Institutes worldwide were considered to be effective strategies to expand Chinese value to the world. Some went even further and argued that education has been used as an important source of soft power to facilitate the rise of China in recent years (Yang 2010).

2.2 Hong Kong: Introduction of Market Principles

Hong Kong, under the ‘one country, two systems’ constitutional framework, has constantly prioritized internationalization to sustain its status as the ‘East–West meeting point’ (Mok and Cheung 2011, p. 232), particularly in the current era of knowledge-based economy. As all nations have realized the vital role played by higher education in spurring economic development, the competition becomes fiercer. Asian economies, like Singapore, Malaysia and mainland China, have made every effort to expand and improve their higher education systems to compete for regional leadership (Mok and Cheung 2011, p. 232). Within this context, internationalizing the Hong Kong tertiary education and building world-class universities have been inevitably considered as major tasks not only by policy makers, but also by the administrative staff of universities in Hong Kong.

The intensified pressure to enhance the competitiveness of university graduates in the global market, because of the fierce competition spurred by globalization, forces nearly all governments to increase higher education opportunities for their citizens and improve teaching and research quality, with the strong intention to ensure that their higher education systems could compete internationally (Varghese 2004). Hong Kong has undergone the same trend. The Hong Kong government conducted a series of educational reforms to expand its higher and ensure education quality as early as the mid-1990s (Chan 2008; Mok 2009). After the reunification in 1997, Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa of the newly established Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) government reemphasized the importance of higher education in improving global competitiveness and claimed to double the enrolment rate by 2010, which could provide 60 % of the graduates from secondary schools the opportunity to accept tertiary education (Tung 2000). Realizing that dependence on state funding can never meet the pressing demands from higher education institutions, the Hong Kong government openly advocated the diversification of funding sources. Higher education institutions are thus encouraged to attract more private donations, venture into the market and cooperate with enterprises in research projects and launch self-financing programmes.

In addition, under the influence of marketization, the Hong Kong government has paid more attention to the effective and efficient use of public money. As early as the 1990s, the University Grant Committee (UGC), as the government’s executive arm, conducted three major quality assurance activities, namely research assessment exercises, teaching and learning quality process reviews and management reviews, and connected the performance reports of these activities with the distribution of future public funding. The resulting competition among Hong Kong higher education institutions, principally the eight UGC-funded universities, namely City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Lingnan University (LU), Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and University of Hong Kong (HKU), has compelled individual institutions to pay more attention to their international profile, which is also an important factor in attracting more private donations. As Mok and Cheung (2011) pointed out, higher education institutions in Hong Kong have undergone a purposeful redistribution of higher education and research resources:

  • ‘Top-slicing’ of existing publicly funded first-degree places of all higher education institutions by the UGC for each three-year Academic Development Proposals exercise (4 % for the current 2009–2012 triennium) for the purpose of re-bidding and redistribution;

  • Planned transfer of a very substantive part of the research portion from the present block grant for higher education institutions by the UGC to the RGC for competitive bidding;

  • Competition for large-sum research funding through the ‘Areas of Excellence’ and Theme-based Research schemes;

  • Introduction of a more competitive regime for the allocation of research degree places by moving away from the current ‘historically based’ allocation of almost all UGC-funded PhD places, and incorporating factors such as past award results of RGC/UGC research grant schemes, research assessment exercise results, as well as the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship scheme award based on individual students’ choice of university and discipline specialization; and

  • A Matching Grant Scheme established in 2003 to encourage higher education institutions to search for private sector funding on their own in the first place, with the government offering a certain proportion of matching grant afterwards (including one-for-one dollar matching up to a floor and subject to an overall ceiling for any individual institution), to induce a sense of fund-raising culture among higher education institutions.

    (Mok and Cheung 2011, pp. 235–236)

3 Implications of Internationalization on University Practice: Experiences of Mainland China and Hong Kong

3.1 Mainland China: Talent Recruitment and Stratification of Universities

As highlighted in the aforementioned policies, the international recruitment of talent is considered an important strategy to improve the competency of Chinese universities. Indeed, key to the establishment of world-class universities is the attraction of world-class staff and students. As previously discussed, initiatives are launched to attract Chinese and foreign experts to work in China in both the long and short terms. However, China has been suffering from brain drain for a long time. Indeed, China was alerted by the scale of brain drain as early as in 1988 (Zweig et al. 2008). The USA, as a major destination for talent migration, has attracted a large number of Chinese students for years. Statistics show that in the last two decades, an overwhelming majority (roughly 90 %, slightly varied over years) of Chinese students who received doctorates in science or engineering from American universities have decided to stay in the USA in the first five years after graduation, and the stay rates have decreased only slightly in the longer term (Finn 2007, 2010). The most recent data demonstrate that the stay rates of Chinese doctoral recipients in the USA in 2003–2007 are higher than any other country (see Table 9.1) (Finn 2010).

Table 9.1 Percentage of temporary residents from China receiving S/E doctorates in 2002 who were in the USA, 2003–2007
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This phenomenon is not limited to the USA. In general terms, a significant number of Chinese students trained abroad do not return home (Fig. 9.1). Facing the large-scale brain drain, China adopts various strategies to utilize valuable overseas human resources (Zweig 2006). The policies examined earlier call for the return of Chinese students trained overseas repeatedly. Both the public and private sectors are found to actively participate in the search for talent. Special programmes are initiated by the state to provide financial incentives and streamline administration processes for returnees. Associations for overseas students and scholars are also established in many countries, supported by the Chinese government, to facilitate the exchange of information and strengthen the bond between overseas Chinese and their motherland (Zweig 2006). At the same time, the competition for talent between regional governments has intensified. Competitive employment packages and various incentives are offered by local governments to attract talented people to contribute to the local economy. In addition, individual institutions and enterprises are actively engaged in the competition for the best minds to enhance institutional performance (Zweig 2006; Zweig et al. 2008).

Fig. 9.1
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Number of returnees and students studying abroad in selected years (1978–2008). Source National Bureau of Statistics 1978–2008

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This trend of international talent flow predominantly from developing countries to advanced economies has been often viewed as a brain drain that harms the former. However, this argument has undergone gradual change (Altbach 2004a; Zweig et al. 2008). An increasing number of Asian scholars worked in the West and returned to their country of origin, as the academic system and overall living conditions at home improved. In China, a growing number of students have come back after graduation due to the efforts to attract overseas Chinese (Fig. 9.1). Despite a significant majority who choose to stay (Finn 2007, 2010), they are no longer viewed as a permanent loss by the Chinese government. A shift in policy strategy towards people trained overseas is observed in the internationalization discourse, as examined above. Instead of merely emphasizing returning as in earlier years, China now opts to encourage either returning or contributing to the homeland through multiple means to mobilize the valuable overseas human capital. Realizing that giving up the potential value of overseas Chinese is unaffordable given the large population of those who stay abroad, the state passed policies to encourage them to serve the country from abroad by engaging in various business and academic cooperation (Chinese Education and Society 2003). This policy is viewed as a ‘diaspora option’, which helps China to ‘turn human capital, lost through the brain drain, into a positive force for development by encouraging overseas citizens or educational migrants to help their home country’ (Zweig et al. 2008, p. 2).

Altbach (2004a) proposes a push and pull model to explain the international flow of talent predominantly from less developed periphery to more developed academic and economic centres. According to Altbach, talent migration is caused by both ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors. The former principally refers to positive attractions at the centres, such as higher salary, better working conditions and career opportunities. The latter is often denoted as negative repulsions at the periphery, including lack of academic freedom, favouritism or even corruption in promotion, limited career development opportunity and the like. Altbach argues that change in the current talent flow relies more on the elimination of push factors because ‘the “push” factors can be moderated’, while the ‘“pull” factors at the centers cannot be altered much’ (Altbach 2004a, p. 14).

Nevertheless, the efforts adopted by China to combat brain drain and attract talent seem to fit more comfortably into the pull factors. Most, if not all, of the strategies are related to financial incentives and career opportunities. However, these strategies do not signify that the state has completely ignored the push factors such as lack of academic freedom. The policies examined above repeatedly emphasize the importance of university empowerment. Chinese universities are indisputably enjoying greater academic and administrative autonomy today than decades ago due to the adoption of neoliberal strategies, such as decentralization, marketization and privatization (Mok 2005a). However, this autonomy is arguably restricted and the state continues to retain effective control over the key aspects of higher education governance. The strong tradition of government intervention and well-established mechanism of control ensure the smooth implementation of decisions from both the state and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (Wang 2010).

Attempts to eliminate other push factors, such as academic corruption and favouritism, are also reported. However, despite such efforts, academic corruption and erosion of academic ethics are still regarded as major problems in Chinese universities (Zhang et al. 2007; Wang 2008). The high penetration of the party-state controlling system and consequently administrative dominance has largely transformed the higher education sector into an attachment to the government (Wang 2010). Academic corruption is deeply rooted in the Chinese bureaucratic system and therefore has to be tackled as part of a larger problem associated with the public sector in China as a whole. Despite the difficulty in eradicating the push factors in the short term, focusing on pull factors in practice to attract talent is apparently easier for China, which is probably why financial incentives are used by the Chinese government and institutions to create pulling effects on the intellectual flow.

Following a number of policies that aim to improve the status and competence of universities, higher education institutions actively participate in ranking exercises. To rank high on global league tables and achieve world-class status, Chinese universities emphasize indicators used by popular rankings to rapidly improve their standing. As one of the most important aspects affecting ranking, publication has received considerable attention in faculty review and promotion. A ‘publish or perish’ culture is emerging, exerting substantial pressure on Chinese academics, particularly untenured young academics. As most international rankings focus only on publication in English, journal articles and books written in English and published by Western publishers are encouraged and often outweigh any publications in Chinese, which is problematic for domestically trained Chinese scholars who are unfamiliar with writing in English for academic purposes. As more overseas trained students return upon graduation to work in Chinese universities, this preference obviously works in favour of overseas trained academics and is likely to cause rifts between overseas and domestically trained colleagues (Pella and Wang 2013).

The stratification of universities is adopted in the development of Chinese higher education, as indicated by top universities being selected for special funding programmes, such as ‘211’ and ‘985’ projects. This stratification, however, reinforced regional disparity in terms of the distribution of educational resources, particularly quality higher education. Universities are concentrated in major cities in developed regions (i.e. eastern costal area). Higher education institutions enjoy significantly more funding from local governments and the private sector due to the prosperity of the local economy. For example, universities in the eastern costal area received 55 % of public funding and 67 % of private funding allocated to the entire higher education sector, whereas the population in the region only accounted for 41 % of the national figure (NBSC 2008). Quality higher education also is concentrated in this region because most top universities are located in this area. For example, the majority of universities selected by the ‘985 project’, which are the best universities in China, are located in eastern provinces. By contrast, only a few are located in less developed regions (National Institute of Educational Sciences 2012).

The current admission system in higher education reinforces the regional disparity and undermines equal access for students from provinces where fewer universities exist. Higher education institutions tend to allocate a considerably larger admission quota to local students, thus facilitating the satisfaction of requirements and enrolment. Privatization and decentralization reform has prompted universities to heavily rely on provincial governments and the local private sector for a significant part of funding. In return, universities are expected to enrol more local students for their financial input. Therefore, students in the East, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai where top universities are concentrated, have a substantially easier access to quality higher education compared with their counterparts in Middle and West China (Wang 2011). Moreover, this unequal access creates a vicious circle. The better trained population in the East facilitates economic development in that region, which consequently benefits higher education development, whereas the less trained population adversely affects economic development in the Middle and West, which consequently hinders higher education. Regional disparity subsequently increases in terms of both economic and educational development.

3.2 Hong Kong: Internationalization at Home and Abroad

According to Knight (2004), the strategies and activities higher education institutions adopt to improve their international level could be divided into two categories, namely internationalization at home campus and internationalization abroad (Knight 2004, p. 16), which could be observed in Hong Kong universities. Internationalization at home presents the methods and strategies adopted by individuals, organizations or even nations to infuse an international dimension into the internal campus experience, such as redesigning the curriculum that adopts global perspectives and attracting and recruiting more international students and faculty. Internationalization abroad refers to the exposure of education institutions to the external world, including engagement of international partnership, sending students overseas and establishment of branch campus or portal campus in other countries (Knight 2004, p. 42).

3.2.1 Internationalization at Home Campus: Education Hub

Transnational cooperation has always been seen as an integral and vital facet of internationalization in higher education. The most drastically developed area in all aspects of internationalization in the world is the education and research moving across national borders during the past decades (Knight 2008; Vincent-Lancrin 2007). The development of higher education internationalization since its beginning in the Middle Ages and Renaissance period (Knight and De Wit 1995, p. 6) involved three generations of international activities, namely student mobility, programme and provider mobility and education hub. Knight (2011) described an education hub as ‘a planned effort to build a critical mass of local and international actors strategically engaged in cross-border education, training, knowledge production and innovation initiatives’ (p. 227). In the ‘Report on Hong Kong Higher Education’ issued by the UGC in 2002, the aspiration to build a ‘world city’ and ‘education hub’ in the Asia–Pacific region by developing Hong Kong’s capacity to recruit overseas students and export higher education services was initially proposed. The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB), in response to China’s 11th Five-Year Plan report, subsequently re-emphasized the potential power of Hong Kong to become the regional hub of education (2005). EMB then promulgated a series of prioritizing issues in the 2006–2007 Policy Agenda, including immigration control, boarding facilities, financial assistance and supporting local institutions, to offer services outside Hong Kong to facilitate the establishment of an education hub (EMB 2006). Universities in Hong Kong have begun to actively internationalize their higher education. The most obvious changes occurred in curriculum reform, non-local student attraction and fervour for global ranking.

Catering for the needs of a knowledge-based society, a large number of universities have started to reform their curricula, aiming to boost the spirit of lifelong learning, multicultural understanding and capacity building (Mok 2010, p. 404). Hong Kong followed this trend and changed its academic structure from a three-year British model to a four-year American model, which prevails in most universities all over the world (the new model comprises three years of junior second school, three years of senior secondary school and four years of university study). This new academic form permits more time for students to accept tertiary education with the hope of improving their competitiveness in the labour market after graduation.

Most universities regard the extra more year as an opportunity to impart more comprehensive education to students before they focus on their specialties. For instance, the HKU developed a ‘common core’ curriculum, requiring students during the first two years to take six courses in four ‘areas of inquiry’, namely humanities, global issues, Chinese culture state and the society, and scientific and technological literacy. The same situation occurred in CUHK and LU, which require students to take additional credits in general education to expand their knowledge base (CUHK, cited from Mok and Cheung 2011, p. 236) and consolidate liberal education in their core curriculum. As Hennock stated:

What I’ve liked in U.S. universities is the broad liberal education. In Hong Kong,

students have to specialise too early.. .. They don’t have the opportunity to go into

university and say, here is a whole world of knowledge. The US does have that.

(Hennock, 2010; cited from Mok and Cheung 2011, p. 236)

Another important factor in determining the level of internationalization in a certain higher education system is the proportion of international students. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 2007, Donald Tsang, reinforced the intention of expanding the population of non-local students by ‘increasing the admission quotas for non-local students to local tertiary institutions, relaxing employment restrictions on non-local students, as well as providing scholarships’ (Tsang 2007, p. 40). According to the technical report conducted by HKIED in 2009, the purpose of increasing the inbound provision of higher education for overseas students is not money-making; instead, the government has realized the importance of attracting talented students, which could also create an internationalized environment in the campus for local students to expand their horizons and understanding of different cultures (Tang et al. 2009, p. 26). The trace of international students’ increasing rate in the total number of students has confirmed the effort of the Hong Kong government in attracting more non-local talent (see Fig. 9.2).

Fig. 9.2
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Increasing rate of non-local students (1996–2014). Source UGC

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Notably, the most significant component of non-local students comes from mainland China because of geographical proximity and ease in mutual-culture understanding. In academic year 2013–2014, 14,512 non-local students enrolled in the eight UGC-funded universities, of which 11,376 came from mainland China. The number of students from other places of Asia was 2494, and students coming from other parts of the world totalled 642, accounting for only 4.42 % of the total non-local students. The result of internationalizing enrolled students seems to become ‘mainlandization’. A close examination of the actual number of students from other parts of the world from 1996 to 2014 (see Fig. 9.3) indicates that the increasing trend is slight. Attracting more global students and fulfilling the real diversification of cultures signify a crucial problem confronting the Hong Kong government.

Fig. 9.3
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Number of non-local students (1996–2014). Source UGC

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The internationalization of higher education has inevitably reinforced the globalization process, as some scholars have pointed out (Maringe 2010, p. 17); thus, competition between universities in the world intensifies. Many universities are currently exerting efforts in the quest for world-class status, and even the definition of being ‘world class’ is lacking consensus among researchers (Niland 2000; Altbach 2004b; Watson 2006). An external demonstration of world-class identity is the global league table, which could be regarded as a powerful indicator to ‘prove and advertise the standard of universities in the marketized global education market’ (Chan and Lo 2008, p. 642). If we consider the limited public funding from the Hong Kong government, then a higher ranking in the global league table not only produces prestige implications for universities, but also induces financial consequences (Mok 2005b, p. 298). According to the World and Asian Reputation Rankings conducted by the Times, universities in Hong Kong demonstrate higher performance compared with their Asian counterparts. Three HK universities belong to the top 100 around the world, and six belong to the top 100 in Asia. The prestigious profile helps recruit more international students as well as famous experts to study or participate in exchange programmes. However, the negative aspect of such rankings should also be considered. The criteria adopted in ranking universities received enormous criticism among academics and administrative staff. Criticisms include impairment of the academic freedom and institutional autonomy and undermining of the well-being of university development (Currie 2003; cited from Mok 2005b, p. 300). The exaggerated inequality among the eight UGC-funded universities appears as another problem emerging from focusing on world ranking. Given that UGC intends to allocate additional financial support to a few select universities to develop them as ‘world-class’ institutions, the phenomenon of ‘university stratification’ seems inevitable.

3.2.2 Internationalization Abroad: Exporting the Higher Education of Hong Kong

Compared with the achievements in internationalizing the higher education system of Hong Kong at the home campus in curriculum reform, attracting international talent and pursuing high ranking in global league tables, the performance abroad is poor to some extent, particularly when we consider its major destination of export educational services, mainland China. After the initial appearance of transnational higher education (TNHE) in the mid-1980s, transnational cooperation has been thriving in mainland China from two joint programmes in 1995 to 1011 in 2014. Adopting TNHE as a political tool for increasing higher education opportunities to its citizens and as an appropriate strategy for improving national teaching and research quality, the Chinese government, whether central or local, has significantly supported the development of transnational cooperation activities in the past three decades. Although Hong Kong enjoys the convenience of geographical proximity, it does not benefit from this rapid expansion in TNHE. Out of 31 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions, transnational cooperation between mainland China and Hong Kong only occurred in nine areas, with the number of cooperation activities (39 out of 1011) accounting for less than 4 % of all cooperation activities. The small proportion demonstrates the weak linkage between Hong Kong and mainland China in the trade of education services.

Nevertheless, the recent establishment of joint-venture universities, namely CUHK, Shenzhen, collaborating with Shenzhen University and Beijing Normal University–HKBU United International College in Zhuhai, indicates the active participation of Hong Kong universities in exporting their higher education to mainland China. In this English-dominated world, the demands for world-class educational resources in relatively underdeveloped areas, taking the Asia–Pacific region as an example, are increasing drastically. Australia, one of the most active education exporter countries, conducted a research in 2000 and stated that ‘Asia will represent approximately 70 % of the global demand for international education in 2025’ (IDP 2002; quoted in Knight 2006, p. 377). How Hong Kong could reap the profit in this regional market and fulfil its aspiration to become an education hub requires more attention from both policy makers and administrative staff of higher education institutions.

4 Discussion: Comparison Between Mainland China and Hong Kong

A clear and similar developing trend of higher education in mainland China and Hong Kong exists when facing the unavoidable influence of globalization. Both mainland China and Hong Kong have realized the importance of higher education and thus exert every effort to enhance their competitiveness in the global market by improving teaching and research quality. They also pay more attention to internationalization at home than actively export their higher education resources. However, policy analysis reveals that compared with Hong Kong, the Chinese government puts more emphasis on introducing talent, particularly Chinese scholars studying or working abroad, to mainland China, whereas Hong Kong, which enjoys a high proportion of overseas faculty and open market for transnational higher education (McBurnie and Ziguras 2001, pp. 89–92), has already undergone the preliminary phrases of international activities (Knight 2011) and aspires to establish and reinforce its status as an education hub in East Asia.

If the political context is considered in the analysis of strategies adopted by the two governments in internationalizing their higher education systems, the differences become more clear and understandable. The ‘wider context’ in mainland China, ‘despite a certain degree of liberalization in education system’, remains ‘state planning’ (Mok and Chan 2012, pp. 122–126), which permits a relatively small extent of autonomy devolved to universities and strict limitation of market forces participating. The central government concentrates its investment on several select higher education institutions with the hope of enhancing their world rankings. By contrast, the HKSAR government has adopted the principles of effectiveness and efficiency since the beginning of its higher education reform, taking financial support as a stimulation factor in intensifying the competition among the eight public-funded universities. The different results may be attributed to the different methods adopted by the governments under various political backgrounds.

5 Conclusion: Implications for Policy Making

The preceding discussion demonstrates the recent developments in internationalizing higher education systems in mainland China and Hong Kong. Both governments have attempted to improve the internationalization level of their higher education institutions, but the results vary. The tremendous investment concentrated in several select universities in mainland China renders disappointing results in enhancing the world ranking of Chinese universities. By contrast, the problems that have emerged, such as the ineffective use of public funding, corruption among academics and aggravating disparity between universities and regions, are significant and require more attention from policy makers. Despite some scholars stating that the governance model of higher education has changed from State-control to State-supervising and the role of the central government has been gradually minimized (Min 1994; Mok 2001), the limitation of the market force and the ensuing lack of competition among universities hinder the development of Chinese higher education institutions. The Hong Kong experiences may represent a useful model for the Chinese government.

Hong Kong, as a city-state enjoying international status and being a regional financial centre, is attractive to overseas students, particularly those from mainland China, due to its stable political environment and academic excellence. However, we have to recognize the serious competition between other Asian economies, such as Singapore, Malaysia and mainland China, in competing for talent and generating revenue from education services. The Hong Kong government, which believes in the force of the market, exerts little interference on higher education institutions. Some criticisms indicate that quality assurance activities have largely impaired Hong Kong’s academic autonomy and distracted faculty’s attention from teaching to research, as well as deepened the inequality between universities or even between different disciplines within a certain university. The autonomy enjoyed by universities in Hong Kong is relatively higher compared with their counterparts in mainland China. The government adopts financial incentives as the major method in guiding the behaviours of its higher education institutions, particularly the eight UGC-funded ones, which could be considered an important factor in securing the academic spirit, thus ensuring and spurring the high performance of Hong Kong’s higher education.

Nevertheless, the low proportion of international students from places outside Asia illustrates the weak visibility of Hong Kong’s higher education, and the disappointing performance in exporting education services demonstrates the unsuccessful strategies adopted by the government or certain universities. To facilitate Hong Kong’s bid to become an education hub and ‘world city’ both regionally and globally, similar to ‘New York in North America and London in Europe’ (UGC 2004), universities should be more active in marketizing their educational resources. Moreover, universities should further increase the admission quota for non-local students, establish funding to provide scholarships and student accommodations, relax immigration restriction and forge government-to-government cooperation in promoting transnational collaboration in higher education (Tang et al. 2009).