In China, about 30% of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering hold university presidencies or other high-level administrative posts. In contrast, among Western Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, that proportion is under 5%.
In the first half of 2025, Nature Communications published around 5,400 papers, about 2,100 of them from Chinese authors—roughly 39%, the highest share globally. Based on standard pricing, Chinese research funding contributed a rough estimate of USD $14.7 million to this journal in six months—equivalent to the cost of two medium-sized scientific research vessels.
On July 20, 2022, a seemingly unremarkable document was released in Brussels. The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment was jointly signed by dozens of European research funding agencies, research institutes, national evaluation bodies, and scholarly organizations.
Today, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) simultaneously released on their official websites the list of newly elected academicians for 2025: 73 added to CAS and 71 to CAE, 144 in total.
With the increasing demand for globalized education, how to shorten the time and cost of studying abroad while ensuring teaching quality and enhancing the value of degrees has become a core focus for many universities and students. In November 2025, through our efforts, a university in Jiangsu, China, which emphasizes the training of applied talents, reached an agreement with a high-ranking public university in Illinois, USA, to implement a “3+1+1” combined undergraduate and master’s program.
After returning to the White House following the 2024 election, the Trump administration quickly placed higher education at the center of its policy storm: massive layoffs at the Department of Education, nationwide tightening or outright termination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, freezing billions of dollars in research funding at elite universities under the banner of “combating campus antisemitism,” tightening international student visas, and redirecting research funding priorities.
The U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recently sent a letter to Columbia University, calling on the institution to halt a student exchange program linked to China. The publication of the letter has drawn attention both within the campus community and across the broader higher-education sector. The move is viewed as another example of Congress intensifying scrutiny of U.S.–China educational cooperation, underscoring once again the tension universities face between their global engagement missions and mounting political pressures.
Despite a series of restrictive policies under the Trump administration—including tighter visa screening, limits on students from certain countries, and increased security reviews—international PhD enrollment at U.S. universities has remained remarkably stable. A Nature report published on 7 November 2025 notes that approximately 1.3 million international students are studying in the U.S. or participating in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program this academic year, virtually unchanged from the previous year.
On October 23, Harvard University released data for the Class of 2029, revealing that Asian Americans make up 41% of the incoming class — a 4-percentage-point increase from 37% in the Class of 2028. This change comes after the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions, prompting Harvard to adopt a “race-neutral” admissions policy.
NBER recently released a new working paper showing that China’s massive university enrollment expansion, launched in 1999, has not only reshaped its domestic higher education system but also profoundly influenced the educational and economic landscape of U.S. universities and their surrounding communities. The study argues that China’s higher education reform unintentionally became one of the key driving forces behind the expansion of U.S. higher education.
