Recenti sviluppi nel sistema di istruzione superiore in Cina

China’s higher education system is now the world’s largest, with 44 million students enrolled in more than 2,500 institutions across the country and around 12 million graduates per year. China’s pool of researchers is the world’s second largest after the European Union. While China is used to winning easily when it comes to quantitative data given the size of the country and its people, the surprise this time is the marked improvement in qualitative data. Compared to the early 2000s, the percentage of highly cited scientific articles produced by scientists based in China has rapidly increased, testifying to the rise in the level of Chinese universities. In addition to the large and continuous investments and the return home of numerous ‘brains’ who emigrated abroad, a great change has occurred in the attractiveness of the Chinese system, which has produced a significant increase in the number of foreign student enrollments. This latter change is in line with a now global trend, which sees higher education institutions in non-OECD countries attracting ever more students compared to those based in more developed countries.