Transnational Higher Education in China: Policies, Practices, and Development in a (Post-)Pandemic Era

The COVID-19 pandemic impeded the regular international student mobility (ISM) and educational exchange across the world. In response, China has witnessed a proliferation of TNHE partnerships formulated as "Internationalization at Home" (IaH), which has seemingly alleviated the immobility of students, faculty, and educational resources within a transnational lens. However, the changing trend of China's TNHE policies and practices and its impact in the pandemic context have not been systematically studied. To fill this gap, this study longitudinally traces China's TNHE policies and practices from globalization to post-pandemic glocalization by analyzing policy documents and three cases in the TNHE and pandemic IaH fields. Informed by the concept of global-national-local imbrications, this study tracks the trajectory of China's TNHE development and clarifies the interconnections among changing policies and practices across different contexts. Our findings can provide reference for the further improvement of TNHE in China and the integration of different TNHE practices into international education in the post-pandemic era. Given the methodological limits of the case-study approach, future research can offer a more comprehensive picture of TNHE in the (post)-pandemic era by collecting data from more sources and contexts.