China’s Repositioning its Higher Education Internationalization and Implications

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and collapsing foreign relations, concerns are rising about the tension in collaborations between China and the West overlooking the implication of China’s latest initiative to ‘open up’ its education as part of its One-Belt-One-Road internationalization strategy. The initiative reflects China’s new nationalism in repositioning its education internationally especially the higher education section, which signals a shifting focus from production capability building to soft power expansion. We finish this paper with a highlight on the initiative’s multifaceted future implications concerning both China’s domestic, including disabled students’ population, and international communities.