China is rapidly becoming a major player in the higher education game if the 2018 Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings are anything to go by. A number of government initiatives and funding boosts have helped to secure China as an attractive destination for international students and this momentum doesn’t appear to be waning any time soon.A key priority of the Chinese Ministry of Education is to attract more international students to the country and the fairly new development of Sino-foreign joint venture universities is helping fulfil this aim. Another way in which Chinese universities are catering to international students and aiming to better integrate local and foreign students is to provide more courses taught in English, “which opens up more opportunities for greater interactions inside and outside of the classrooms for all students”. Universities are also employing more faculty members from around the world who teach in English.

And these measures appear to be working. Duke Kunshan University’s first year recruitment effort drew applicants from more than 80 countries, and some of these students attended on-site recruitment sessions with senior and junior recruiters. However, the majority of international students were attracted to the university through digital channels. The digital recruitment strategy utilised various platforms including Google, Naver and WeChat to raise the visibility of the university, and used multilingual and localised approaches with the aim of thinking like the 16-/17-/18-year-olds that they were targeting.