Rethinking cooperation and development in international higher education: Insights from Kazakhstan and China

China and Kazakhstan have over the past decade developed a strong partnership in the field of education.

This process has manifested in the growing number of joint higher education (HE) programs, the establishment of Confucius Institutes, and the launch of Chinese university branch campuses across Kazakhstan. There has also been a steady upward tick in the number of Kazakhstani students pursuing HE in China.

While this bilateral dynamic has been playing out, China and Kazakhstan have also both been striving, in parallel, to internationalize their HE systems.

But these two processes are in tension. This cooperation should, notionally, create a space for new, locally grounded forms of academic exchange between non-Western systems.

The evidence suggests this is not happening. In fact, the cooperation agenda is faltering in some important ways.

Kazakhstan’s role in this collaboration has remained largely limited, with few proactive initiatives originating from Kazakh institutions. Kazakhstan’s engagement in international HE cooperation with China tends to be more reactive than strategic. Although many Kazakh universities have signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Chinese counterparts, these agreements have rarely translated into substantive or sustained collaborative practices.

Student mobility between the two countries remains notably imbalanced. Official figures show that as of 2025, there were around 20,000 Kazakhstani students studying in China, compared to only 2,100 or so Chinese students studying in Kazakhstan in 2024. And most of that latter cohort were ethnic Kazakhs.

Understanding what might be going wrong here requires looking at three underlying dimensions: the orientation of internationalization policies, the structure of student mobility, and the mutual perceptions shaping academic exchange.

Western-oriented development of international HE

Over the past few decades, China and Kazakhstan alike have emphasized the need for internationalization of HE through strategies implemented both at the national level and within universities. The aim has been to improve their respective education systems’ standing in global rankings. Measures in this process have included offering more HE programs with an international character or reach, fostering global partnerships, and encouraging people in HE to move across borders.

Despite these shared goals and strategies, the two countries have adopted fundamentally different approaches in how they pursue this internationalization agenda.

Since independence, Kazakhstan has sought to align its HE system with Western models, creating U.S. or European-style universities at home, joining the Bologna Process to harmonize academic standards, and participating in the Erasmus+ program to promote student and staff mobility. The prevailing view is that accreditation from European and U.S. quality assurance agencies can enhance and ensure the quality and competitiveness of Kazakhstani education.

And yet, while Kazakhstan has increased its participation in international HE cooperation through joint ventures, it remains relatively unattractive to international students and reactive in global academic collaboration. As CAPS Unlock’s education projects coordinator, Marzhan Tajiyeva has documented in her writing, top-ranked foreign universities have shown limited interest in partnering with Kazakhstani institutions. And only a few Kazakhstani universities have established branches abroad.

By contrast, China has largely preserved its own distinct HE system within domestic universities. Only a small number of Western-style branch campuses or transnational institutions, where English is the official medium of instruction and the academic systems and pedagogical approaches follow those of their Western parent institutions, have been established. Crucially, though, the ways in which Chinese HE differs from Euro-American models are perceived by some Kazakhstani universities and students as obstacles to international collaboration and studying in China.

That said, many local Chinese universities have made significant efforts to develop English-taught international programs aimed at attracting international students. More young people from Kazakhstan have indeed later embarked on their studies in China, but this is likely more attributable to an overall rise in outbound student mobility from Kazakhstan than a strong preference for China in particular.

In fact, many Kazakhstani students still tend to regard Western universities as their preferred study destinations. In this respect, they are no different from their Chinese peers. As William Kirby and Marijk van der Wende have suggested, “students and universities in China are also much more oriented towards America and Europe than towards more adjacent nations.”

Divergent student mobility strategies

Another key factor contributing to the imbalance in student mobility between Kazakhstan and China may be the differing levels and strategies of scholarship support.

Kazakhstan has consistently invested in student mobility, most notably in the form of the government’s Bolashak scholarship program, which has funded over 14,000 students since its launch in 1993. But scrutiny of the websites of Kazakhstan’s universities strongly indicates that the country’s academic mobility efforts are focused primarily on sending students and staff abroad, not the other way around.

In 2024, about 91,200 Kazakhstani students were studying overseas, making Kazakhstan the world’s ninth-largest source of international students. Meanwhile, only around 32,000 foreign students were enrolled in Kazakhstan’s universities.

The Chinese government has, in contrast, placed a strong emphasis on attracting foreign students by offering a wide range of generous scholarships, including the BRI scholarship reserved for students from “Silk Road” countries.

In 2018, roughly 40,000 international students in China were funded through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) scholarships, representing about 65 percent of all scholarship recipients that year. The remaining students received support from other sources. Kazakhstani students ranked among the top ten groups benefiting from BRI scholarships.

It is not readily possible to prove unequivocally that China’s big increase in scholarships directly caused a rise in international students, but regardless of whether it did, the way China and Kazakhstan handle scholarships shows that they have very different strategies and objectives when it comes to attracting or sending students abroad.

Mutual misperceptions and quality concerns

Kazakhstani universities face several obstacles in building partnerships with Chinese HE institutions.

These include limited English proficiency among staff at Chinese universities, unresponsiveness to outreach due to incompatible academic norms and institutional culture, and difficulties in credit and degree recognition caused by misaligned curricula. Language barriers in Chinese society at large and the differences in pedagogical methods within the Chinese HE system also raise concerns among Kazakhstani students.

These perceptions align with the findings of a 2021 study by Fakhra Yasmin et al. that documented how Western students reported dissatisfaction with both educational and administrative quality at Chinese universities. Complainants cited the lack of English proficiency among lecturers and staff as a problem. This was viewed as incompatible with the expectations of international curricula.

A similar pattern is observed in reverse, as research suggests that Chinese students are also deterred from studying in Kazakhstan due to perceived quality concerns, high living costs, and corruption within the Kazakhstani system.

These mutual negative perceptions of each other’s social environments, academic cultures, and quality of education continue to hinder the development of reciprocal and long-term HE partnerships, despite the geographic proximity of the two countries.  

Inequality implications

Zooming out, when one looks at how China and Kazakhstan both approach international HE (what they do similarly, what they do differently, and why they struggle to maintain long-term academic partnerships), much of it points to a bigger structural issue: the global academic system is still hierarchical and unequal.

While China and Kazakhstan have become more active in international HE and global science networks, Western paradigms still dominate knowledge production and evaluation. This marginalizes non-Western epistemologies and limits their recognition in collaborations. As Aliya Kuzhabekova & Jack T. Lee have found, Western faculty in Kazakhstani universities are often reluctant to collaborate with local colleagues, perceiving them as lacking academic capacity and English proficiency. Similarly, the distinct characteristics of China’s HE system, diverging as they do from Euro-American norms, often make its impact difficult for Western scholars to fully understand or acknowledge.

This marginalization of non-Western academic value is closely tied to another dimension of global inequality: the predominance of English in academia, which gives students and academics from Anglophone countries significant advantages in learning, research, and resource acquisition.

The effect of this inequality has direct implications for China and Kazakhstan, which have both in their own ways sought in some instances to privilege English in education. In this optic, educational quality becomes prone to judgment based on English proficiency, rather than academic substance.

These same hierarchies are also reflected in patterns of student movement.

Student mobility patterns remain highly uneven. While China and Kazakhstan are increasingly receiving international students, these students are mostly from Asia or Africa, with limited representation from developed countries.

At the same time, students from China and Kazakhstan overwhelmingly pursue education in Western countries, with little reciprocal flow. This drives home the persistence of traditional East-to-West student mobility flows.

The imbalance not only contributes to brain drain, but it also perpetuates deficit-oriented narratives that frame non-Western students as less capable.

And finally, certain practices of internationalizing HE in China and Kazakhstan have created inequalities for local students.

English-taught international programs in Chinese universities are often not accessible to domestic students. To attract foreign students, many universities in both countries adopt separate admission procedures, with lower standards for international applicants. Foreign students may sometimes receive preferential treatment in areas such as accommodation, financial support, and academic evaluation.

In some cases, international students enrolled in Chinese-taught programs are even allowed to complete assignments or degree theses in English.

Recommendations

While it is undeniable that both Kazakhstani and Chinese HE systems have certain limitations, it is equally important to recognize that every nation with a long intellectual tradition possesses distinct strengths and valuable epistemic foundations.

Rather than fully replicating Western models, both countries should explore ways to contextualize external best practices within their local systems. At the same time, they should actively share their own successful educational models with the world to promote a more reciprocal approach to internationalization and extend their soft-power influence through initiatives that incorporate local language, academic strengths, and cultural heritage. These strategies can help highlight the value and impact of non-Western educational institutions and contribute to a more equitable global education landscape.

To ensure that cooperation agreements between the two systems translate into tangible outcomes, it is crucial to foster mutual understanding and support the pursuit of win-win partnerships.

One effective approach would be to strengthen the role of research centers dedicated to the partner country’s culture, politics, industry, and society, thereby deepening cross-cultural insight.

Additionally, promoting open and inclusive spaces in both countries’ HE contexts and social media platforms, and building on successful collaborations between individual universities, scholars, and students, can further enhance the sustainability, effectiveness, and reciprocity of future cooperation.

Gui Li is a doctoral student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University in Canada, and she can be reached by email at gui.li2@mail.mcgill.ca. She interned with CAPS Unlock between April 2025 and July 2025 as part of the organization’s ongoing internship program, which supports early-career researchers and writers exploring issues across Central Asia.

Gui Li interned with CAPS Unlock between April 2025 and July 2025 as part of the organization’s ongoing internship program, which supports early-career researchers and writers exploring issues across Central Asia.