Hong Kong’s international higher education hub ambitions: Policy address evolution (2000–2025) and multi-actor governance synergy

Abstract

This study examines the policy evolution and governance dynamics underpinning China's Hong Kong’s development into an International Education Hub from 2000 to 2025. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative analysis of 25 years of official policy documents, the study identifies four distinct developmental phases: local supply expansion, hub institutionalisation, research-driven integration, and infrastructural consolidation. The findings reveal a pattern of incremental policy layering in which successive governance actors built upon. The Education Bureau, the University Grants Committee, and the Legislative Council assumed differentiated yet interdependent roles, generating a hybrid governance configuration marked by both policy synergy and institutional tension. Theoretically, the study extends Knight's education hub typology by foregrounding governance over functional categorisation, showing that hub development is shaped by multi-actor coordination, path dependency, and competing policy logics. Empirically, the study offers a granular policy genealogy of China's Hong Kong's education hub trajectory, demonstrating how a non-Western regional economy has navigated the tensions between global education hub ambitions and local institutional constraints over a quarter century.

Document Type: Original article

Cited as:

Liu, J. (2025). Hong Kong’s international higher education hub ambitions: Policy address evolution (2000–2025) and multi-actor governance synergy. Education and Lifelong Development Research, 2(4): 204-216. https://doi.org/10.46690/elder.2025.04.05

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