The Dispatch
India and China
Parallel Paths in Global Higher Education Strategy
India and China are reshaping higher education through distinct internationalisation models.
By Gauri Kohli
"As of today, around 15 foreign universities are in the process of setting up international branch campuses in India."
“India and China are repositioning... to talent-retaining or talent-attracting systems.”
“Competing with the established labour markets and long-term residency pathways of the West remains a significant hurdle.”
“India and China are testing different ways of aligning universities with national priorities, market forces, and geopolitics choices.”
In brief
- India and China are racing to become global education hubs, with India embracing market-led liberalisation while China relies on state-managed models driven by strategic joint ventures.
- India allows independent foreign campuses under new reforms, whereas China maintains tight oversight on curriculum and governance to expand its soft power via the Belt and Road.
- These paths redefine global talent flows; success depends on balancing India’s financial and operational risks against China’s political constraints to build presence outside traditional Western markets.
India and China are reshaping their higher education systems in ways that could alter long-standing global patterns. Both aim to move from being major exporters of students to hubs for global talent, but they are taking different paths.
India is pursuing a liberalised approach by allowing foreign universities to establish independent branch campuses, while China continues with a state-managed model built around joint ventures.
Autonomy versus oversight
For policymakers and universities, one of the clearest differences lies in how the two countries regulate international higher education partnerships.
India’s shift is anchored in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Since then, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has rolled out reforms to open the system to global engagement. Regulations introduced between 2021 and 2023 enabled foreign universities to establish independent campuses, while the 2025 degree equivalence guidelines have ensured formal recognition of international qualifications.
The opening of Deakin University and the University of Wollongong in Gujarat’s GIFT City marks the first time foreign entities have been allowed to operate without a local partner, effectively creating an offshore educational experience within India. As of today, around 15 foreign universities are in the process of setting up international branch campuses in India.
Eldho Mathews, a higher education policy expert and former official at India’s National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), notes that this operational autonomy is a sharp departure from the Chinese framework. “India’s recent reforms such as the NEP 2020 and UGC regulations allow independent foreign branch campuses with academic and operational autonomy. But China’s model relies on mandatory joint ventures, with tighter state control over curriculum and governance,” he says.
Futao Huang, Professor at Hiroshima University’s Research Institute for Higher Education in Japan, explains that China’s model was “primarily designed to improve domestic higher education quality through controlled partnerships with foreign institutions, while retaining strong regulatory oversight”.
More recently, China has also sought to expand its own overseas branch campuses alongside selectively expanding foreign provision at home. “India’s recent reforms, by contrast, appear more market-oriented and outward-looking, aiming to attract reputable foreign universities directly and rapidly expand domestic capacity, but with potentially higher institutional and financial risk for both sides,” says Professor Huang.
Gerard A. Postiglione, Emeritus Professor, Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Education, says that India’s recent regulatory reforms are “on the right track and the timing is about right”.
By contrast, China’s economy and its early lead in mass higher education gave it the scale to experiment with and diversify transnational higher education. “For example, China used the opportunity to learn from US and UK universities through its 2003 Law on Sino-foreign cooperation in the running of educational institutions. It learned a great deal from NYU in Shanghai, Duke University in Kunshan, Nottingham in Ningbo, and many other joint campuses and thousands of joint programmes across the country,” says Professor Postiglione.
Strategic initiatives and soft power
International student recruitment has become a central lever through which both countries are advancing broader economic and diplomatic objectives.
“China has made particularly strong efforts to recruit students from Belt and Road countries through scholarships and has introduced new visa categories to retain foreign talent, especially young researchers. These shifts are partially sustainable, but they remain more state-dependent and policy-driven than in traditional Western destinations, where long-standing academic ecosystems and labour markets play a stronger pull factor,” adds Professor Huang.
Elaborating on the extent India and China are repositioning themselves from student-sending countries to talent-retaining or talent-attracting systems and the sustainability of these shifts compared to Western destinations, Professor Postiglione says, “China has launched its China Scholastic Competency Assessment as a combined approach with a clear emphasis on STEM competencies in the recruitment of foreign students pincluding students from India and other countries in the Global South, as well as the traditional foreign pool of Western students).”
On the other hand, “India has some advantage due to English language capabilities, however, China is launching its programmes in both English and Mandarin. Moreover, artificial intelligence’s improving capacity to provide translations across languages limits any language disadvantages,” adds Professor Postiglione.
But language is only one part of the equation. “As China and India begin to increase recruitment from the middle classes of the Global South, they may eventually begin to create brain drain from these countries, especially if the graduates from these countries who earn their degrees in China and India do not return after graduation,” he points out.
India is early in this transition, but the momentum is shifting. The emergence of foreign branch campuses is intended to provide “international education at home”, targeting the middle class that might otherwise have sought degrees abroad. A 2025 report by Indian Government policy think tank, NITI Aayog, titled “Internationalisation of Higher Education in India, suggests that India could host up to 359,000 international students by 2035 if reforms continue at pace.
Some initiatives illustrate how China has embedded higher education internationalisation within a broader state strategy.
At the systemic level, countries like China have embedded internationalisation into their national and regional policies through scholarship schemes, post-study work pathways, strategic branding and regulatory frameworks aligning education with broader national goals such as talent retention, soft power and economic growth.
These national priorities set an enabling environment for institutions to act, shaping their recruitment, research and partnership models. As internationalisation deepens, countries transition from attracting international students to building transnational research ecosystems and hybrid campuses,” says the report.
Institutions develop strategies to respond to these trends with targeted investments often with the support of institutional endowments to support global mobility, academic collaborations, faculty exchanges and global centres.
China’s internationalisation efforts are shaped by foreign policy priorities and its national innovation strategy through a state-led, strategically coordinated outlook. Major national initiatives that have significantly expanded the country’s global academic presence include Double First-Class Initiative which provides significant funding to an elite group of universities to help them climb global rankings and compete at the highest levels of research and innovation.
Through the Belt and Road Education Action Plan, the government has turned higher education into a bridge for foreign policy. By offering scholarships, student exchanges and joint programmes along the Belt and Road route, China is building lasting ties and expanding its soft power through the next generation of global leaders.
Its Study in China Strategy seeks to position the country as a top destination for international students by expanding English-taught programmes, improving student services and increasing scholarships through the China Scholarship Council.
A recent Australian government report highlights international engagement as a core pillar of China’s 2025 education strategy, with a strong focus on expanding transnational education (TNE) partnerships. Rising demand for international education, driven by a growing middle class and a projected peak in the college-age population around 2032, has been matched by regulatory changes. In 2025, China’s Ministry of Education streamlined its TNE framework, simplifying approvals, easing enrolment and programme restrictions, and accelerating review timelines, leading to the highest number of new higher education project approvals since 2013, including 68 joint institutes and 161 joint programmes.
However, both India and China need to address the “retention gap.” While they can attract students for degrees, competing with the established labour markets and long-term residency pathways of the West remains a significant hurdle.
Geopolitical stakes and the power of scale
Explaining why foreign universities are engaging with India now, Professor Huang says foreign universities are drawn to India by its demographic scale, expanding middle class and regulatory opening, which together offer long-term growth potential. “In China, incentives are more constrained by tighter regulation and increasing political sensitivity, especially in certain academic fields. As a result, while China offers strong infrastructure and funding, India currently presents a more flexible and commercially attractive environment for new institutional engagement,” he says.
Geopolitical factors increasingly shape both systems, but in different ways. “China faces growing constraints in collaborating with the US and some EU countries in sensitive research areas, and in sending students abroad in strategic fields. India’s approach is more focused on regulatory sovereignty and national development goals, while maintaining broad openness to Western partnerships. These differences reflect contrasting political systems and external diplomatic pressures,” notes Professor Huang.
The institutional risk and reward
For a global university, entering either market is a high-stakes calculation. “China’s state-managed internationalisation is more likely to reshape global higher education power dynamics, because internationalisation is now strongly influenced by national security concerns and geopolitical competition. In this context, China’s coordinated, policy-driven perspective may have greater systemic impact than India’s more market-led liberalisation, even if the latter proves more institutionally flexible,” says Professor Huang.
In China, the risks are often political and regulatory, but the rewards include access to a sophisticated research infrastructure and state-supported funding. In India, the risks are more financial and operational, universities must navigate a nascent regulatory environment and build their own brand presence from scratch without a local partner to lean on.
This indicates that India and China are testing different ways of aligning universities with national priorities, market forces, and geopolitics - choices that may increasingly shape where talent flows, which institutions thrive, and how higher education operates beyond the West.