The Chinese University of Hong Kong — Internationalisation and Global Engagement

This article maps the international academic partnerships, student exchanges, dual-degree programmes, non-local student statistics, and Greater Bay Area strategy of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). For detailed information on CUHK's Shenzhen campus, see cuhk-shenzhen.md. How does a university rooted in Hong Kong and grounded in China position itself on the global chessboard? This article attempts to trace the warp and weft of that network.

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# 1. Student Exchange Programmes

According to the Office of Academic Links (OAL) website^※, CUHK offers over 280 exchange programmes with partner institutions across more than 35 countries and territories. Programmes fall into two categories:

Selected representative partner institutions (from the OAL destinations page^※):

The full list of partner institutions is updated regularly; refer to the OAL website^※ for the latest version. For comparison, CUHK(SZ) has built an international collaboration network spanning over 290 programmes, more than 160 overseas institutions, and 37 countries and territories — a scale that, while measured differently from the Hong Kong main campus's tally, is already broadly comparable and in some respects has overtaken it, offering a concrete case study of a "catch-up by a late entrant" (see cuhk-shenzhen.md for details).

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# 2. Non-local Student Policy: the Two-stage Leap from 20% to 50%

The cap on non-local student intake has been one of the fastest-moving policy variables in Hong Kong higher education over the past two years, directly shaping CUHK's internationalisation trajectory.

# 2.1 Policy Timeline

According to a HK01 report on the 2025 Policy Address^※ and collated media coverage, the 2025 Policy Address confirmed that from the 2026/27 academic year, the cap on self-financed non-local student places across the eight publicly funded institutions will rise from 40% to 50%; the over-enrolment cap for self-financed places on research postgraduate programmes will simultaneously rise from 100% to 120%. Government officials stressed that 50% is a "ceiling" rather than a "target", and that institutions may raise their non-local proportions gradually according to their own staffing, facilities, and other conditions. Meanwhile, the 15,000 UGC-funded local places remain unchanged and are unaffected by the cap increase — in other words, the policy expands the "increment" rather than squeezing the existing local allocation.

# 2.2 Actual Enrolment

According to collated media figures^※, in the 2024/25 academic year, the actual non-local intake across the eight institutions' undergraduate programmes stood at roughly 23% of the local UGC-funded places — well below the 40% cap then in force. This indicates that expansion by individual universities after the policy relaxation remains in a gradual phase, with considerable room still available.

# 2.3 CUHK's Own Non-local Figures

According to Facts & Figures 2024/25^※, the proportion of non-local students on UGC-funded programmes at CUHK (Sha Tin main campus) has been rising steadily as the policy loosens (see key-numbers-dashboard.md for the latest year-by-year figures). For historical reference: in 2019, CUHK's total undergraduate enrolment was 17,611, of whom 2,477 (approximately 14.1%) were non-local. Among those non-local students, 60.7% (1,504) came from mainland China and 39.3% from overseas — a structure in which mainland Chinese students form the majority of the non-local cohort, a pattern that persists to this day as the basic shape of enrolment.

Non-local students come from over 100 countries and territories worldwide, predominantly from mainland China (the majority) and Southeast Asia, followed by Europe, North America, and other parts of Asia. According to a related report^※, CUHK is actively stepping up efforts to broaden its global recruitment geography, aligning with the Hong Kong SAR Government's overall strategy of building an "international education hub".

The gap between policy and institutional action: The cap increases (20% → 40% → 50%) represent a raising of the policy ceiling, but the actual enrolment percentages (e.g., the eight-institution average of roughly 23% in 2024/25) show that the real pace of internationalisation depends on each university's own "hardware and software" — halls of residence, staffing, degree of curriculum internationalisation — rather than on policy alone. This distinction between the policy ceiling and on-the-ground capacity is essential for making sense of "non-local student proportion" figures.

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# 3. International Research Alliances and Academic Networks

• Universitas 21 (U21): CUHK is a member of Universitas 21, a network of 28 research-intensive universities that fosters student and academic exchange.
• AEARU (Association of East Asian Research Universities): CUHK is a member, alongside the University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and others.
• International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and other thematic collaboration networks: CUHK maintains bilateral cooperation agreements with leading institutions worldwide in medicine, engineering, the humanities, and other fields.

Membership in academic alliances is subject to the latest official announcements.

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# 4. Dual-Degree and Joint Programmes

CUHK runs dual-degree or joint-degree programmes with several prestigious overseas universities, spanning both undergraduate and postgraduate levels:

Additionally, institutional collaboration channels exist between the Hong Kong main campus and CUHK(SZ). According to a university announcement^※, the two campuses have launched a Collaborative Double Major Program, enabling students to pursue double major studies across Shenzhen and Hong Kong — a concrete attempt, under CUHK's "one university, two campuses" framework, to interweave the threads of "internationalisation" and "north-south synergy".

Specific dual-degree programme quotas, application requirements, and annual changes can be rapid; readers should consult the latest official announcements from the relevant faculty or department. This section provides representative examples only and does not attempt an exhaustive listing.

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# 5. Internationalisation-oriented Scholarships

The Hong Kong SAR Government first introduced the Belt and Road Scholarship in the 2016/17 academic year, aiming to attract outstanding students from Belt and Road countries and regions to pursue UGC-funded full-time undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong. According to the SAR Government Belt and Road portal^※, the scheme has benefited close to 700 people since its launch. As a participating institution, CUHK nominates suitable non-local new entrants to the Education Bureau each year; students do not need to apply separately. The scholarship offers up to HK$120,000 per year, with a separate HK$50,000 tier for students with financial need. The establishment of such scholarships represents the on-the-ground realisation, at CUHK, of Hong Kong higher education's broader strategy of using scholarships as a lever to attract international students.

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# 6. Greater Bay Area Strategic Deployment

CUHK's footprint in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) forms a multi-layered network that has continued to densify over time:

# 6.1 InnoHK: Internationalised Research across Six Centres

According to the CUHK official InnoHK centres page^※, CUHK operates six InnoHK centres at Hong Kong Science Park, distributed across the "MedTech" and "AI/Robotics" clusters. Selected representative centres include:

• Hong Kong Centre for Logistics Robotics: Established by CUHK in 2020, with research contributions from the University of California, Berkeley; focuses on robotics and AI technology for the logistics sector;
• Hong Kong Centre for Construction Robotics (HKCRC): Brings together world-class professors and industry resources, dedicated to introducing robotics, automation, and AI into the construction industry;
• Multi-scale Medical Robotics Centre: Co-led by the Dean of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine and a professor from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, advancing surgical robotics through AI, imaging, and robotics technology;
• Centre for Intelligent Multidimensional Data Analysis (CIMDA): Based at Hong Kong Science Park, in close collaboration with City University of Hong Kong and the University of Oxford.

These InnoHK centres, together with CUHK's InnoHK-affiliated work in regenerative medicine, constitute the "Hong Kong nodes" of the university's internationalised research network — forming a cross-border synergy chain of "Hong Kong R&D + Shenzhen translation" with the Shenzhen-side FITRI and Shenzhen Research Institute. (For the main campus's State Key Laboratories, see 04-research/institutes-and-labs.md.)

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# 7. "North-South" and "China-Global" on a Single Map

Viewed side by side, the threads above reveal two parallel axes in CUHK's internationalisation strategy:

1. The "China-Global" axis: Over 280 overseas exchange programmes; partner institutions in more than 35 countries; academic alliances such as U21, AEARU, and IARU; dual-degree programmes; the Belt and Road Scholarship — together forming a globally oriented network.
2. The "North-South" axis: Shenzhen Research Institute (2011) → CUHK-SZ (2014) → Greater Bay Area Development Office (2020) → FITRI (established 2020 / opened 2023) — forming a steadily densifying GBA deployment timeline.

The point where these two axes intersect is precisely the unique position of Hong Kong higher education under "One Country, Two Systems": CUHK must maintain competitiveness within global university networks while also carving out its place in the national regional development strategy. The relaxation of the non-local student cap from 20% all the way to 50% is the policy footnote to both axes accelerating at once.

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