There certainty seems something of a charm offensive going on between the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China and universities in both countries appear to have a key role in strengthening the relationship, especially via transnational education, or TNE.
As if to illustrate that relations between the two countries are at the crossroads, we are about to celebrate Lunar, or Chinese, New Year with festivities for the Year of the Snake starting on 29 January 2025.
According to a helpful blog from Professor Xiaohuan Zhao from the University of Sydney, the Snake in Chinese culture can symbolise polar opposites – either darkness or renewal as with shedding an old snake skin.
Higher education chiefs and political leaders hope the new year will represent wealth and wisdom; and if not a return to the so-called golden age in Sino-British relations ushered in by former Conservative prime minister David Cameron and Chinese President Xi Jinping, then at least the start of something more positive.
Strong ties without surprises
Newish Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has already met President Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Brazil in November, with Starmer reportedly telling the Chinese leader that having strong ties without “surprises” would be good for both nations.
And a China-UK Universities Roundtable in December, attended by Chinese Vice Minister of Education Wu Yan and the UK Minister of State for Skills, Further and Higher Education Baroness (Jacqui) Smith, seems to have gone well.
The meeting hosted by Queen Mary University of London saw the launch of the UK Young Envoys Scholarship Programme, which according to the Chinese Embassy in London aims to encourage educational exchanges – including more UK students going to China – and will strengthen collaboration between Chinese and British universities.
Specialty Committee on TNE
I saw this new found confidence in UK-China relations at close range during the launching ceremony of the Specialty Committee on Transnational Education (TNE) on 10 January, 2025.
The new grouping was set-up by the Association of British Chinese Professors (ABCP) and I was invited along by Dr Cheryl Yu, co-founder of Higher Education Connected and secretary of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), who I worked with on my last blog on three wishes about what we wanted to see in a new UK international education strategy.

The ABCP event was clearly timed to coincide with UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ official visit to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and Vice President Han Zheng and sign what a UK government press release called “pragmatic cooperation results in agreements worth £600 million to the UK economy over the next five years”.
The visit caused a bit of a ripple at the time with Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride accusing Reeves of “fleeing to China” rather than facing the music back home over soaring UK borrowing costs and a fall in the value of the pound.
But the Labour government said it needed to show the UK was serious about wanting greater stability and economic cooperation with the world’s second largest economy.
The online launch event for the new Specialty Committee on TNE was useful in several ways.
What I took away was not just a reminder about the important contribution that Chinese international students make to UK universities, contributing £5.7 billion in tuition fees and living costs and that the 81,000 UK TNE students in China are the biggest group of British transnational students anywhere in the world.
Chinese academics in the UK
I also gained an appreciation of just how reliant British universities are on the 6,000 Chinese academics now working in over 120 UK universities, 800 of whom are full professors.
They are playing key roles in British higher education, especially in STEM areas, as clearly demonstrated by ABCP President and Professor of Material Engineering at University of Leicester, Hongbiao Dong.
He is leading the EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Digital Transformation of Metals Industry, which aims to fuse AI into Metals Industry, and his research has been exploited in various sectors, including in aerospace by Rolls-Royce. He has also helped to establish international partnerships between UK and China, India and South Africa.
Another who spoke at the TNE speciality committee launch was its co-chair, Associate Professor Daguo Li, who is Director of China Partnerships at the University of Reading.
He told the launch event, attended by around 100 UK-China academic enthusiasts, that the new grouping would encourage networking and knowledge sharing “to enhance quality, innovation and sustainability of academic partnerships between UK institutions and their partners in China and beyond”.
Uncertainty over Trump
That could be handy with growing uncertainty about the future of the so-called ‘special relationship’ between Great Britain and the United States following Donald Trump’s inauguration as America’s 47th president and on-going difficulties in trying to fix Boris Johnson’s rushed Brexit agreement with the European Union.
Clearly with Trump threatening import tariffs, which could damage hopes of economic revival in the UK, and the European Commission playing hardball with Starmer and demanding a potentially controversial youth mobility scheme in return for easing EU border checks on UK products, the UK needs to hedge its bets on who it can rely on to boost trade and its standing in the world.
Surely this is where higher education and research comes in as one of the few remaining areas where Britain can punch above its weight.
There are plenty of burning issues to tackle, particularly with the USA pulling out of the Paris climate agreement once again, that British and Chinese researchers can provide leadership on.
Speaking frankly
That doesn’t mean that the UK should be shy about speaking frankly to China on things we disagree, such Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “domestic interference and sanctions against British parliamentarians”, as a UK government press release on Reeves’ visit to Beijing made clear.
But, the warmer relations are starting to bear some fruit with the lifting of barriers that restricted UK exports to China across a range of goods and services and “China has also agreed to continue to liberalise sectors that restrict foreign investment, such as education and culture”, according to the UK government.
Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, said the UK is looking for investment, finance and technology, but its government needs to be clear what an equal deal would look like and what we don’t want.
Asked in a TV interview if the UK needed to be careful, Brown accepted relations with China have never been easy with issues such as Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Tibet, but stressed this was part of a bigger picture.
“Reeves has excellent officials around her who do know China, she’s got a very good team in Beijing at the Embassy so I think we can handle this as long as we don’t get overexcited or over anxious,” he told Talk TV.
Higher Education mission to China
For those UK vice-chancellors and other higher education leaders interested in strategically engaging with China, the next move looks like being a higher education mission being organised by Universities UK International, UK Research and Innovation China and the British Council in April
Leina Shi, the British Council’s Head of Education in China, is probably the best contact for those who want to know more.
Shi was one of the speakers at the January UK-China TNE special committee event I mentioned earlier and she reckons UK TNE numbers might soon overtake onshore international students numbers in the UK.
The latest available data from HESA showed 758,000 overseas students in the UK compared with 571,000 UK TNE students studying for British higher education qualifications abroad in 2022/23. But the number of foreign students coming to UK, which soared during and just after the Covid pandemic, is now expected to contract, perhaps by 10-15% in the case of Chinese students, while TNE numbers just keep on growing!
Among her tips and advice for UK universities interested in TNE opportunities is that China wants foreign universities to offer more postgraduate programmes, especially in areas that support economic development strategies. So, more engineering and less undergraduate programmes in business!
Disparity between partners
Vangelis Tsiligiris, founder of the UK-based TNE Hub and a professor of international education at Nottingham Business School, also spoke at the ABCP launch event and warned UK universities about what he saw as “a disparity” between UK higher education providers of the TNE and incentives for Chinese potential partners.
He claimed too many UK universities still saw TNE as “peripheral to international student recruitment activities” because there was more money to be made from recruiting international students to come to the UK.
“But the Chinese focus is more on capacity building and quality enhancement and having TNE that adds value to the local system rather than adding numbers,” he said.
This view was supported by Dr Jingran Yu, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education, Xiamen University in China and honorary research associate in the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) at the University of Manchester in the UK.
Jingran is currently researching China’s transnational education and technical assistance along Belt and Road countries, particularly in Malaysia and Laos for her PhD.
Changing landscape
Her message was that the Chinese approach to TNE is not just about responding to the market, but following a strong steer from central government.
This is becoming even more important as the post-pandemic global higher education landscape is changing and China is responding to “rising nationalism and populism” and the “decoupling and reconsideration of research partnerships” and the rise of what she called “techno-politics and techno-nationalism”.
So China is “using TNE to develop human capital in technological fields to ensure that its talent and research can remain competitive and integrated to the global science and technology landscape,” she told the ABCP TNE launch event.
Plenty then for UK universities to think about as they plan to grow their TNE, and why transnational education, or perhaps it should be called global education development, should become more central to their international education strategies!
Main image: Year of the Snake cute character Photo credit: AbodeStock