ABSTRACT
As part of its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has made international education a key focus of its broader strategic efforts. Stretching across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, BRI represents a complex trade network for Chinese goods and services but it also represents a platform for social and cultural integration. One industry that will benefit enormously from BRI is Chinese higher education. This chapter considers the long-term impact of BRI on the higher education industry, particularly across emerging and developing economies. China’s unprecedented economic expansion now exerts a gravitational pull on the world economy but it also reflects a unique historical configuration. In this chapter, the authors speculate that the axis of higher education is shifting toward Asia and especially China as the Bretton Woods order established by the United States continues to unravel. This chapter builds the case that by using AI for learning, Chinese universities could drive a new stage of economic and cultural globalization across a complex multipolar system.
