Towards a Chinese definition of higher education internationalisation? A systematic review of the Chinese and English literature

Figures & data

Table 1. Search strings.

Database	Search string	Number of results
Scopus	((TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘internationali*ation’ OR ‘internationali*’) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘China’ OR ‘Chinese’) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘higher education’ OR ‘universit*’))) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘ar’) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘ch’) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘re’) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘bk’)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, ‘English’) OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, ‘Chinese’))	713
WoS	(TS = (‘internationali*ation’ OR ‘internationali*’) AND TS = (‘China’ OR ‘Chinese’) AND TS = (‘higher education’ OR ‘universit*’)) AND (DT = (‘ARTICLE’ OR ‘BOOK CHAPTER’ OR ‘REVIEW’ OR ‘BOOK’) AND LA = (‘ENGLISH’ OR ‘CHINESE’))	498
CNKI	TKA = (高等教育 OR 高校 OR 大学) AND TKA = (国际化) IN (PKU CORE journals AND CSSCI journals AND books)	2767

Figure 1. Flow chart of article-filtering process. Informed by Page et al. (2021).

Figure 2. Journal articles analysed: year of publication.

Table 2. Key themes relevant to the educational, economic, political and cultural logic.

	Educational	Economic	Political	Cultural
Educational	Education quality World-class universities Curriculum reform Cultivation of students Internationalisation of research	/	/	/
Economic	(International) education market competition, educational services Graduates and labour market	Economic globalisation, WTO, market competition, brand building, import and export National economic development, industrial restructuring, labour market, human capital, brain drain and brain gain	/	/
Political	Educational sovereignty Citizenship education	Economic contributions to nation building	Geopolitics, political power balance and competition, global leadership, political battle and political war, national security Ideology and political value systems in China	/
Cultural	Academic colonisation and decolonisation	Cultural industry and products	Soft power and cultural diplomacy (e.g. Confucius Institutes and Belt and Road Initiative) Ideology and political culture	Cultural colonisation, cultural self-awareness, local and indigenous cultures, national culture Cultural exchange, multiculturalism, world civilisations, human civilisations

Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. doi:10.1136/bmj.n71

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