ABSTRACT
The internationalisation of China's higher education system is part of a wider phenomenon, whereby China is resuming a key role in world affairs. Indeed, China's rise, at the end of the twentieth century and the onset of the new millennium, can be seen as one arc in a much longer series of oscillations, from a point where it was one of centres of the world (captured in the term Zhongguo or middle kingdom), to a time of national humiliation, associated with the decline and death of the Qing Dynasty, to its spectacular resurgence less than a century later. The process of internationalisation of China's universities also has its own complex and fascinating history: although it has certainly accelerated hugely in the past decade or more, it was given great impetus by the Opening Up era, after the end of the Cultural Revolution during which China and its universities were largely cut off from external relations.
