ABSTRACT
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a country with two systems: the mainland and the special administrative systems. Most universities are located in the Chinese mainland where there has been a rapid expansion of universities, generous funding by government, and an increase in top-tier international universities. Though much smaller, the Hong Kong system, known as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC, has more top-ranked universities than any city in the world. Therefore, this chapter selects one major research university in each system for study and comparison. Both systems espouse the importance of internationalization. The Hong Kong university system, where English dominates as the medium of teaching and research, has a significant number of foreign academics, with most Chinese academics (by both citizenship and ethnicity) having earned their doctorates at overseas institutions. The Chinese mainland system, which leads the world in sending its scholars overseas to earn their doctorates, has seen its universities hiring a substantial increase in returnees, as well as some nonnationals (including returnee ethnic Chinese and other Chinese).
